Voltaire's Romances, Complete in One VolumeVoltaire
Philosophy
Voltaire's Romances, Complete in One Volume
Voltaire
French fiction -- Translations into English
When she presented herself in Bavaria and Austria, she found two or
three great wig-blocks that stared at her with stupid and astonished
eyes. Their greeting was: "Madam, we never heard of you; we do not know
you." Her answer to which was: "Gentlemen, in time you will come to know
me, and to love me. I have been well received at Berlin, at Moscow, at
Copenhagen, at Stockholm. It is long ago that I have been naturalized by
Act of Parliament in England, through the labors of Locke, Gordon,
Trenchard, Lord Shaftsbury, and a number of others of the same nation.
You will, some day or other, confer on me the like grant. I am the
daughter of Time. I expect every thing from my father."
When she passed over the frontiers of Spain and Portugal, she blessed
God on observing that the fires of the Inquisition were less frequently
kindled. She rejoiced on seeing the Jesuits expelled; but was afraid
that, while the country had been cleared of the foxes, it was still left
exposed to the ravages of wolves.
If she makes any fresh attempts to gain entrance into Italy it is
thought she will begin by establishing herself at Venice; and that she
will take up her abode in the kingdom of Naples, in spite of the
liquefaction of the saint's blood in that country, which awakens in her
mind mournful reflections on human credulity. It is pretended, that she
has an infallible secret for untying the strings of a crown, which are
entangled, nobody knows how, in those of a mitre.
XII.
The GOOD SUPPER AT MR. ANDREW'S.
We supped at Mr. Andrew's yesterday, together with a Doctor Sorbonne,
with Monsieur Pinto, the celebrated Jew, with the Chaplain of the
Protestant chapel of the Dutch Embassador, the secretary of the Prince
Galitzin of the Greek church, a Calvinist Swiss Captain, two
philosophers, and three Ladies of great wit.
The supper was a very long one; and yet, so polite it must be owned we
are grown--so much is one afraid at supper to give any cause of offence
to one's brethren, that there was no more disputing upon religion than
as if not one of those at table had ever had any. It is not so with the
Regent Coge, and the ex-Jesuit Patouillet, and with all the animals of
that kind. Those pitiful creatures will say more stupidly abusive things
in one pamphlet of two pages, than the best company in Paris can say
agreeable and instructive ones in a supper of four hours. And what is
stranger yet, they dare not tell a man to his face, what they have the
impudence to print.
The conversation turned at first on a piece of pleasantry in the Persian
Letters, in which it is repeated, after a number of grave personages,
that the world is not only growing worse, but that it is becoming
depopulated, so that if the proverb should have any truth in it, that
"the more fools there are," "the more laughter," laughing is likely to
be soon banished from the face of the earth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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