Other splendid achievements of this gentleman are recounted, and the list might have been longer had not the narrator interrupted his friend. “Pray,” said he, “Palamedes, when you were at Fourli, did you also learn the art of turning your friends into ridicule by telling them strange stories, and then laughing at them if they believed you?” “I assure you,” replied the traveller, “had I been disposed to learn such a lesson there was no place in the world more proper. My friend did nothing from morning to night but sneer and banter and rally; and you could scarcely ever distinguish whether he were in jest or earnest. But you think, then, that my story is improbable, and that I have used, or rather abused, the privilege of a traveller?” “To be sure,” said I, “you were but in jest. Such barbarous and savage manners are not only incompatible with a civilized intelligent people, such as you said those were; but are scarcely compatible with human nature. They exceed all we ever read among the Mingrelians and Topinamboues.” “Have a care,” cried Palamedes, “have a care! You are not aware that you are speaking blasphemy, and are abusing your favorites, the Greeks, especially the Athenians, whom I have couched all along under these bizarre names I employed. If you consider aright, there is not one stroke of the foregoing character which might not be found in the man of highest merit at Athens.... The amours of the Greeks, their marriages (the laws of Athens allowed a man to marry his sister by the father), and the exposing of their children cannot but strike you immediately. The death of Usbek is an exact counterpart to that of Caesar,”--and so the parallel runs on until Palamedes concludes triumphantly, “I think I have fairly made it appear that an Athenian man of merit might be ... incestuous, a parricide, an assassin, an ungrateful perjured traitor, and something else too abominable to be named and having lived in this manner, his death might be entirely suitable; he might conclude the scene by a desperate act of self-murder, and die with the most absurd blasphemies in his mouth. And notwithstanding this he shall have statues, if not altars, erected to his memory.”