"Let us see," said Condorcet, with his affected look of simplicity, "a philosopher is not sorry to meet a prophet." "You, M. Condorcet," continued M. Cazotte, "you will be stretched out upon the floor of a dungeon, there to yield up your ghost. You will die of poison, which you will swallow to save yourself from the hangman--of the poison which the good luck of the times, which then will be, will have compelled you always to have carried with you." This at first excited great astonishment, but we soon remembered that the good Cazotte occasionally dreamed waking, and we all laughed heartily. "M. Cazotte," said one of the guests, "the tale you relate to us here is not as merry as your 'Devil in Love' (a romance which Cazotte had written). What kind of a devil has given you the dungeon, the poison, and the hangman?--what has this in common with philosophy, and with the reign of Reason?" "This is just what I told you," replied Cazotte. "In the name of philosophy, in the name of humanity, of liberty, of reason, it shall be that you shall take such an end; and then reason will still reign, for she will have temples; yes, at the same time there will be no temples in all France, but temples of Reason." "Truly," said Chamfort, with a scornful smile, "you will not be one of the priests in these temples?" "This I hope," replied Cazotte, "but you, M. de Chamfort, who will be one of them--and very worthy you are to be one--you will open your veins with twenty-two incisions of the razor--and yet you will only die a few months afterwards." They look at each other, and continue to laugh. Cazotte continues: "You, M. Vicq d'Azyr, you will not open your veins yourself; but afterwards you will get them opened six times in one day, and during the night you will die." "You, M. Nicolli, you will die on the scaffold." "You, M. Bailly, on the scaffold!" "You, M. Malesherbes--you, on the scaffold!" "God be thanked," exclaimed M. Roucher, "it appears M. Cazotte has it to do only with the Academy; he has just started a terrible butchery among them; I--thanks to heaven--" Cazotte interrupted him: "you?--you, too, will die on the scaffold." "Ha! this is a bet," they exclaimed from all sides; "he has sworn to extirpate everything!" _Cazotte._--"No, it is not I that has sworn it." "Then we must be put under the yokes of the Turks and Tartars?--and yet--" _Cazotte._--"Nothing less: I have told you already; you will then be only under the reign of philosophy and reason; those who shall treat you in this manner, will all be philosophers, will always carry on the same kind of conversation which you have peddled out for the last hour, will repeat all your maxims; they will, like you, cite verses from Diderot and the Pucelle."