God, Tournebroche, in that, not having given you talents of any kind, He does not expose you to become one day the scourge of nations. One recognises the favourites of God by their lack of wit, and I have experienced that the fairly quick intelligence heaven has given me has been but an unceasing cause of danger to my peace in this world and in the next. What would it be if the heart and thought of a Cæsar dwelt in my head and my breast? My desires would recognise no sex and I should be untouched by pity. I should light the fire of inextinguishable war at home and abroad. And yet the great Cæsar had a delicate soul and a certain gentleness. He died decently under the dagger of his virtuous assassins. Day of the Ides of March! Ever fatal day, when sententious brutes destroyed this charming monster! I am fain to weep over the divine Julius along with Venus, his mother, and if I call him a monster it is from affection, for in his equable soul nothing was excessive save power. He had a natural feeling for rhythm and proportion. He found equal pleasure in his youth in the beauties of debauchery or those of grammar. He was an orator, and his beauty doubtless ornamented the purposed dryness of his speeches. He loved Cleopatra with that geometric exactitude that he brought to all his doings. He put in his writings and in his actions his talent for clarity. He was the friend of order and peace, even in war, sensitive to harmony, and so able a maker of laws that we still live, barbarians as we are, under the majesty of his rule, which has made the world what it is to-day. You see, my son, I am not sparing in praise or love for him. Commander, dictator, sovereign-pontiff he moulded the world with his beautiful hands. And I—I, have been professor of eloquence at the college of Beauvais, secretary to an opera-singer, librarian to my Lord Bishop of Séez, public-writer at the cemetery of the Holy Innocents, and tutor to the son of your father at the sign of the _Reine Pédauque_. I have made a beautiful catalogue of precious manuscripts, I have written some pamphlets, of which it is best not to speak, and set down on wastepaper certain maxims scornfully declined by the booksellers. Nevertheless, I would not change my existence for that of the great Cæsar. It would cost my innocence too much. And I would rather be an obscure man, poor and despised, as indeed I am, than rise to the height whence new destinies are opened to the world through paths of blood.