Voltaire's Romances, Complete in One Volume — Voltaire — John Shaqi
Voltaire's Romances, Complete in One Volume
Voltaire · en
During the stay of Mr. Andrew at Paris, there happened a very important
quarrel. The point was, to decide whether Marcus Antoninus was an honest
man, and whether he was in hell, or in purgatory, or in limbo, waiting
till the day of resurrection. All the men of sense took the part of
Marcus Antoninus. They said: Antoninus has been always just, temperate,
chaste, and beneficent. It is true, he has not so good a place in
paradise as St. Anthony; for proportions ought to be observed, as has
been before recommended. But certainly the soul of Antoninus is not
roasting on a spit in hell. If he is in purgatory, he ought to be
delivered out of it; there need only be masses said for him. Let the
Jesuits, who have no longer anything to do, say three thousand masses
for the repose of the soul of Marcus Antoninus. Putting each mass at
fifteen pence, they will get two thousand two hundred and fifty livres
by it. Besides, some respect is owing to a crowned head. He should not
be lightly damned.
The party opposed to these good people pretended, on the contrary, that
no compounding for salvation ought to be allowed to Marcus Antoninus;
that he was a heretic; that the Carpocratians and the Alcgi were not so
bad as he; that he had died without confession; that it was necessary to
make an example; that it was right to damn him, if but to teach better
manners to the emperors of China and Japan,--to those of Persia, Turkey,
and Morocco,--to the kings of England, Sweden, Denmark, and Prussia, to
the stadtholder of Holland,--to the avoyers of the Canton of Berne, who
no more go to confession than did the Emperor Marcus Antoninus; that, in
short, there is an unspeakable pleasure in passing sentence against a
dead sovereign, which one could not fulminate against him in his
lifetime, for fear of losing one's ears.
This quarrel became as furious as was formerly that of the Ursulines and
the Annonciades. In short, it was feared that it would come to a schism,
as in the time of the hundred and one Mother Goose's tales, and of
certain bills payable to the bearer in the other world. To be sure, a
schism is something very terrible. The meaning of the word is a division
in opinion, and till this fatal moment all men had been agreed to think
the same thing.