“It is because men fell into the practice of eating us in place of holding converse with and being instructed by us. The barbarians! Ought they not to have convinced themselves that, having the same organs as they, the same power of feeling, the same wants, the same desires, we have what they call _soul_ as well as themselves, that we are their brethren, and that only the wicked and bad deserve to be cooked and eaten? We are to such a degree your brethren that the Great Being, the Eternal and Creative Being, having made a covenant with men[164], expressly comprised us in the treaty. He forbad _you_ to feed yourselves upon our blood, and _us_ to suck yours. The fables of your Lokman, translated into so many languages, will be an everlasting witness of the happy commerce which you formerly had with us. It is true that there are many women among you who are always talking to their Dogs; but they have resolved never to make any answer, from the time that they were forced by blows of the whip to go hunting and to be the accomplices of the murder of our old common friends, the Deer and the Hares and the Partridges. You have still some old poems in which Horses talk and your coachmen address them every day, but with so much grossness and coarseness, and with such infamous words, that Horses who once loved you now detest you.... The shepherds of the Ganges, born all equal, are the owners of innumerable flocks who feed in meadows that are perpetually covered with flowers. They are never slaughtered there. It is a horrible crime in the country of the Ganges to kill and eat one’s fellows [_semblables_]. Their wool, finer and more brilliant than the most beautiful silk, is the greatest object of commerce in the Orient.” A certain king had the temerity to attack this innocent people:-- “The king was taken prisoner with more than 600,000 men. They bathed him in the waters of the Ganges; they put him on the salutary _régime_ of the country, which consists in vegetables, which are lavished by Nature for the support of all human beings. Men, fed upon carnage and drinking strong drinks, have all an empoisoned and acrid blood, which drives them mad in a hundred different ways. Their principal madness is that of shedding the blood of their brothers, and of devastating fertile plains to reign over cemeteries.” Her admirable instructor caused the princess to enter