JESUIT.—Your reverence is pleased to be very merry upon the matter? You the cause of the death of Henry IV.! BRAHMIN.—Alas! it is too true. This happened in the nine hundred and eighty-three thousandth year of the revolution of Saturn, which makes the fifteen hundred and fiftieth of your era. I was then young and giddy headed. I thought proper, upon a time, to take a walk, which I began with moving my left foot first, on the coast of Malabar, whence most evidently followed the death of Henry IV. JESUIT.—How so, prithee? For, as to our society, who were accused with having had a large share in that affair, we had not the least knowledge of it. BRAHMIN.—I’ll tell ye how fate thought proper to order the matter. By moving my left foot, as I told you, I unluckily tumbled my friend Eriban, the Persian merchant, into the water, and he was drowned. My friend, it seems, had a very handsome wife, that ran away with an Armenian merchant: this lady had a daughter, who married a Greek; the daughter of this Greek settled in France, and married the father of Ravaillac. Now, had not every tittle of this happened exactly as it did, you are very sensible the affairs of the houses of France and Austria would have turned out in a very different manner. The system of Europe would have been entirely changed. The wars between Turkey and the German Empire would have had quite another issue; which issue would have had an effect on Persia, as well as Persia on the East Indies; so you see it is plain to a demonstration, that the whole depended on my left foot, which was connected with all the other events of the universe, past, present, and to come. JESUIT.—I must have this affair laid before some of our fathers, who are theologians. BRAHMIN.—In the meantime, I will tell you, father, that the maid-servant of the grandfather of the founder of the _Feuillants_—for you must know I have dipped into your histories—was likewise one principal cause of the death of Henry IV., and of all the accidents which it produced. JESUIT.—This servant-maid must then have been a domineering quean! BRAHMIN.—Oh fie! no such thing. She was a mere idiot, by whom her master had a child. Madame de la Barrière, poor soul, died of grief at it. She who succeeded her was, as your chronicles tell, the grandmother of the blessed John de la Barrière, who founded the order of _Feuillants_. Ravaillac was a monk of this order. With them he sucked in a certain doctrine very fashionable in those days, as you well enough know. This doctrine taught him to believe that the most meritorious thing he could possibly do was to assassinate the best king in the whole world. What followed is known to everybody. JESUIT.—In spite of your left foot, and the wench of the grandfather of the founder of the _Feuillants_, I shall ever be of opinion that the horrible action committed by Ravaillac was a future contingent, which might very well not have happened: for, after all, man is certainly a free agent.