[5] P. 20. Such was the aversion of the Japanese to the Christian faith that they compelled Europeans trading with their islands to trample on the cross, renounce all marks of Christianity, and swear that it was not their religion. See chap. xi. of the voyage to Laputa in Swift's _Gulliver's Travels_. [6] P. 23. This _auto-da-fe_ actually took place, some months after the earthquake, on June 20, 1756. [7] P. 23. The rejection of bacon convicting them, of course, of being Jews, and therefore fitting victims for an _auto-da-fe_. [8] P. 24. The _San-benito_ was a kind of loose over-garment painted with flames, figures of devils, the victim's own portrait, etc., worn by persons condemned to death by the Inquisition when going to the stake on the occasion of an _auto-da-fe_. Those who expressed repentance for their errors wore a garment of the same kind covered with flames directed downwards, while that worn by Jews, sorcerers, and renegades bore a St. Andrew's cross before and behind. [9] P. 26. "This Notre-Dame is of wood; every year she weeps on the day of her _fete_, and the people weep also. One day the preacher, seeing a carpenter with dry eyes, asked him how it was that he did not dissolve in tears when the Holy Virgin wept. 'Ah, my reverend father,' replied he, 'it is I who refastened her in her niche yesterday. I drove three great nails through her behind; it is then she would have wept if she had been able.'"--Voltaire, _Melanges_. [10] P. 42. The following posthumous note of Voltaire's was first added to M. Beuchot's edition of his works issued in 1829; "See the extreme discretion of the author; there has not been up to the present any Pope named Urban X.; he feared to give a bastard to a known Pope. What circumspection! What delicacy of conscience!" The last Pope Urban was the eighth, and he died in 1644. [11] P. 45. Muley-Ismael was Emperor of Morocco from 1672 to 1727, and was a notoriously cruel tyrant. [12] P. 47. "Oh, what a misfortune to be an eunuch!" [13] P. 48. Carlo Broschi, called Farinelli, an Italian singer, born at Naples in 1705, without being exactly Minister, governed Spain under Ferdinand VI.; he died in 1782. He has been made one of the chief persons in one of the comic operas of MM. Auber and Scribe. [14] P. 53. Jean Robeck, a Swede, who was born in 1672, will be found mentioned in Rousseau's _Nouvelle Heloise_. He drowned himself in the Weser at Bremen in 1729, and was the author of a Latin treatise on voluntary death, first printed in 1735. [15] P. 60. A spontoon was a kind of half-pike, a military weapon carried by officers of infantry and used as a medium for signalling orders to the regiment. [16] P. 64. Later Voltaire substituted the name of the Father Croust for that of Didrie. Of Croust he said in the _Dictionnaire Philosophique_ that he was "the most brutal of the Society."