Some of the learned have pretended that this origin perfectly agrees with your history. You yourselves say, that you inhabited this desert, that there you wanted water, and lived on quails, which in reality abound there. Your accounts appear in the main to confirm that of Diodorus; but I believe only the Pentateuch. The author does not say that you had your ears and noses cut off. As far as I remember, (for I have not Diodorus at hand), you lost only your noses. I do not now recollect where I read that your ears were of the party; it might be in some fragments of Manetho, cited by St. Ephraem. In vain does the secretary, who has done me the honor of writing to me in your name, assure me that you stole to the amount of upwards of nine millions in gold, coined or carved, to go and set up your tabernacle in the desert. I maintain, that you carried off nothing but what lawfully belonged to you, reckoning interest at forty per cent., which was the lawful rate. Be this as it may, I certify that you are of very good nobility, and that you were lords of Hershalaïm long before the houses of Suabia, Anhalt, Saxony, and Bavaria were heard of. It may be that the negroes of Angola, and those of Guinea, are much more ancient than you, and that they adored a beautiful serpent before the Egyptians knew their Isis, and you dwelt near Lake Sirbo; but the negroes have not yet communicated their books to us. THIRD LETTER. _On a few Crosses which befell God's People._ Far from accusing you, gentlemen, I have always regarded you with compassion. Permit me here to remind you of what I have read in the preliminary discourse to the "Essay on the Spirit and Manners of Nations," and on general history. Here we find, that two hundred and thirty-nine thousand and twenty Jews were slaughtered by one another, from the worshipping of the golden calf to the taking of the ark by the Philistines--which cost fifty thousand and seventy Jews their lives, for having dared to look upon the ark, while those who had so insolently taken it in war, were acquitted with only the piles, and a fine of five golden mice, and five golden anuses. You will not deny that the slaughter of two hundred and thirty-nine thousand and twenty men, by your fellow-countrymen, without reckoning those whom you lost in alternate war and slavery, must have been very detrimental to a rising colony. How should I do otherwise than pity you? seeing that ten of your tribes were absolutely annihilated, or perhaps reduced to two hundred families, which, it is said, are to be found in China and Tartary. As for the two other tribes, I need not tell you what has happened to them. Suffer then my compassion, and do not impute to me ill-will. FOURTH LETTER. _The Story of Micah._ Be not displeased at my asking from you some elucidation of a singular passage in your history, with which the ladies of Paris and people of fashion are but slightly acquainted.