We will say nothing here of the confusion of tongues which took place

during the construction of the tower of Babel. It is a miracle, related

in the Holy Scriptures. We neither explain, nor even examine any

miracles, and as the authors of that great work, the Encyclopædia,

believed them, we also believe them with a lively and sincere faith.

We will simply affirm that the fall of the Roman Empire has produced

more confusion and a greater number of new languages than that of the

tower of Babel. From the reign of Augustus till the time of the

Attilas, the Clovises, and the Gondiberts, during six ages, _"terra erat

unius labii"_--"the known earth was of one language." They spoke the

same Latin at the Euphrates as at Mount Atlas. The laws which governed a

hundred nations were written in Latin and the Greek served for

amusement, whilst the barbarous jargon of each province was only for the

populace. They pleaded in Latin at once in the tribunals of Africa and

of Rome. An inhabitant of Cornwall departed for Asia Minor sure of being

understood everywhere in his route. It was at least one good effected by

the rapacity of the Romans that people found themselves as well

understood on the Danube as on the Guadalquiver. At the present time a

Bergamask who travels into the small Swiss cantons, from which he is

only separated by a mountain, has the same need of an interpreter as if

he were in China. This is one of the greatest plagues of modern life.

SECTION II.

Vanity has always raised stately monuments. It was through vanity that

men built the lofty tower of Babel. "Let us go and raise a tower, the

summit of which shall touch the skies, and render our name celebrated

before we are scattered upon the face of the earth." The enterprise was

undertaken hi the time of a patriarch named Phaleg, who counted the good

man Noah for his fifth ancestor. It will be seen that architecture, and

all the arts which accompany it, had made great progress in five

generations. St. Jerome, the same who has seen fauns and satyrs, has not

seen the tower of Babel any more than I have, but he assures us that it

was twenty thousand feet high. This is a trifle. The ancient book,

_"Jacult"_ written by one of the most learned Jews, demonstrates the

height to be eighty-one thousand Jewish feet, and every one knows that

the Jewish foot was nearly as long as the Greek. These dimensions are

still more likely than those of Jerome. This tower remains, but it is no

longer quite so high; several quite veracious travellers have seen it.

I, who have not seen it, will talk as little of it as of my grandfather

Adam, with whom I never had the honor of conversing. But consult the

reverend father Calmet; he is a man of fine wit and a profound

philosopher and will explain the thing to you. I do not know why it is

said, in Genesis, that Babel signifies confusion, for, as I have already

observed, _ba_ answers to father in the eastern languages, and _bel_

signifies God. Babel means the city of God, the holy city. But it is

incontestable that Babel means confusion, possibly because the

architects were confounded after having raised their work to eighty-one

thousand feet, perhaps, because the languages were then confounded, as

from that time the Germans no longer understood the Chinese, although,

according to the learned Bochart, it is clear that the Chinese is

originally the same language as the High German.

BACCHUS.

Of all the true or fabulous personages of profane antiquity Bacchus is

to us the most important. I do not mean for the fine invention which is

attributed to him by all the world except the Jews, but for the

prodigious resemblance of his fabulous history to the true adventures of

Moses.

The ancient poets have placed the birth of Bacchus in Egypt; he is

exposed on the Nile and it is from that event that he is named Mises by

the first Orpheus, which, in Egyptian, signifies "saved from the

waters," according to those who pretend to understand the ancient

Egyptian tongue, which is no longer known. He is brought up near a

mountain of Arabia called Nisa, which is believed to be Mount Sinai. It

is pretended that a goddess ordered him to go and destroy a barbarous

nation and that he passed through the Red Sea on foot, with a multitude

of men, women, and children. Another time the river Orontes suspended

its waters right and left to let him pass, and the Hydaspes did the

same. He commanded the sun to stand still; two luminous rays proceeded

from his head. He made a fountain of wine spout up by striking the

ground with his thyrsis, and engraved his laws on two tables of marble.

He wanted only to have afflicted Egypt with ten plagues, to be the

perfect copy of Moses.

Vossius is, I think, the first who has extended this parallel. The

bishop of Avranches, Huet, has pushed it quite as far, but he adds, in

his "Evangelical Demonstrations" that Moses is not only Bacchus, but

that he is also Osiris and Typhon. He does not halt in this fine path.

Moses, according to him, is Æsculapius, Amphion, Apollo, Adonis, and

even Priapus. It is pleasant enough that Huet founds his proof that

Moses is Adonis in their both keeping sheep: _"Et formosus oves, ad

flumina pavit Adonis."_

He contends that he is Priapus because Priapus is sometimes painted with

an ass, and the Jews were supposed, among the Gentiles, to adore an ass.

He gives another proof, not very canonical, which is that the rod of

Moses might be compared to the sceptre of Priapus. _"Sceptrum tribuitur

Priapo, virga Most."_ Neither is this demonstration in the manner of

Euclid.

We will not here speak of the more modern Bacchuses, such as he who

lived two hundred years before the Trojan war, and whom the Greeks

celebrated as a son of Jupiter, shut up in his thigh. We will pause at

him who was supposed to be born on the confines of Egypt and to have

performed so many prodigies. Our respect for the sacred Jewish books

will not permit us to doubt that the Egyptians, the Arabs, and even the

Greeks, have imitated the history of Moses. The difficulty consists

solely in not knowing how they could be instructed in this

incontrovertible history. With respect to the Egyptians, it is very

likely that they never recorded these miracles of Moses, which would

have covered them with shame. If they had said a word of it the

historians, Josephus and Philo, would not have failed to have taken

advantage of it Josephus, in his answer to Appion, made a point of

citing all the Egyptian authors who have mentioned Moses, and he finds

none who relate one of these miracles. No Jew has ever quoted any

Egyptian author who has said a word of the ten plagues of Egypt, of the

miraculous passage through the Red Sea, etc. It could not be among the

Egyptians, therefore, that this scandalous parallel was formed between

the divine Moses and the profane Bacchus.

It is very clear that if a single Egyptian author had said a word of the

great miracles of Moses all the synagogue of Alexandria, all the

disputatious church of that famous town would have quoted such word, and

have triumphed at it, every one after his manner. Athenagorus, Clement,

Origen, who have said so many useless things, would have related this

important passage a thousand times and it would have been the strongest

argument of all the fathers. The whole have kept a profound silence;

they Had, therefore, nothing to say. But how was it possible for any

Egyptian to speak of the exploits of a man who caused all the first born

of the families of Egypt to be killed; who turned the Nile to blood, and

who drowned in the Red Sea their king and all his army?

All our historians agree that one Clodowick, a Sicambrian, subjugated

Gaul with a handful of barbarians. The English are the first to say that

the Saxons, the Danes, and the Normans came by turns to exterminate a

part of their nation. If they had not avowed this truth all Europe would

have exclaimed against its concealment. The universe should exclaim in

the same manner at the amazing prodigies of Moses, of Joshua, of Gideon,

Samson, and of so many leaders and prophets. The universe is silent

notwithstanding. Amazing mystery! On one side it is palpable mat all is

true, since it is found in the holy writings, which are approved by the

Church; on the other it is evident that no people have ever mentioned

it. Let us worship Providence, and submit ourselves in all things.

The Arabs, who have always loved the marvellous, were probably the first

authors of the fables invented of Bacchus, afterwards adopted and

embellished by the Greeks. But how came the stories of the Arabs and

Greeks to agree so well with those of the Jews? It is known that the

Hebrews never communicated their books to any one till the time of the

Ptolemies; they regarded such communication as a sacrilege, and

Josephus, to justify their obstinacy in concealing the Pentateuch from

the rest of the world, says that God punished all foreigners who dared

to speak of the Jewish histories. If we are to believe him, the

historian Theopompus, for only designing to mention them in his work,

became deranged for thirty days, and the tragic poet Theodectes was

struck blind for having introduced the name of the Jews into one of his

tragedies. Such are the excuses that Flavius Josephus gives in his

answer to Appion for the history of the Jews being so long unknown.

These books were of such prodigious scarcity that we only hear of one

copy under King Josiah, and this copy had been lost for a long time and

was found in the bottom of a chest on the report of Shaphan, scribe to

the Pontiff Hilkiah, who carried it to the king.

This circumstance happened, according to the Second Book of Kings, six

hundred and twenty-four years before our vulgar era, four hundred years

after Homer, and in the most flourishing times of Greece. The Greeks

then scarcely knew that there were any Hebrews in the world. The

captivity of the Jews at Babylon still more augmented their ignorance of

their own books. Esdras must have restored them at the end of seventy

years and for already more than five hundred years the fable of Bacchus

had been current among the Greeks.

If the Greeks had founded their fables on the Jewish history they would

have chosen facts more interesting to mankind, such as the adventures of

Abraham, those of Noah, of Methuselah, of Seth, Enoch, Cain, and Eve; of

the fatal serpent and of the tree of knowledge, all which names have

ever been unknown to them. There was only a slight knowledge of the

Jewish people until a long time after the revolution that Alexander

produced in Asia and in Europe; the historian Josephus avows it in

formal terms. This is the manner in which he expresses himself in the

commencement of his reply to Appion, who (by way of parenthesis) was

dead when he answered him, for Appion died under the Emperor Claudius,

and Josephus wrote under Vespasian.

"As the country we inhabit is distant from the sea we do not apply

ourselves to commerce and have no communication with other nations. We

content ourselves with cultivating our lands, which are very fertile,

and we labor chiefly to bring up our children properly, because nothing

appears to us so necessary as to instruct them in the knowledge of our

holy laws and in true piety, which inspires them with the desire of

observing them. The above reasons, added to others already mentioned,

and this manner of life which is peculiar to us, show why we have had no

communication with the Greeks, like the Egyptians and Phœnicians. Is

it astonishing that our nation, so distant from the sea, not affecting

to write anything, and living in the way which I have related, has been

little known?"

After such an authentic avowal from a Jew, the most tenacious of the

honor of his nation that has ever written, it will be seen that it is

impossible for the ancient Greeks to have taken the fable of Bacchus

from the holy books of the Hebrews, any more than the sacrifice of

Iphigenia, that of the son of Idomeneus, the labors of Hercules, the

adventure of Eurydice, and others. The quantity of ancient tales which

resemble one another is prodigious. How is it that the Greeks have put

into fables what the Hebrews have put into histories? Was it by the

gift of invention; was it by a facility of imitation, or in consequence

of the accordance of fine minds? To conclude: God has permitted it--a

truth which ought to suffice.

Of what consequence is it that the Arabs and Greeks have said the same

things as the Jews? We read the Old Testament only to prepare ourselves

for the New, and in neither the one nor the other do we seek anything

but lessons of benevolence, moderation, gentleness, and true charity.

BACON (ROGER).

It is generally thought that Roger Bacon, the famous monk of the

thirteenth century, was a very great man and that he possessed true

knowledge, because he was persecuted and condemned to prison by a set of

ignoramuses. It is a great prejudice in his favor, I own. But does it

not happen every day that quacks gravely condemn other quacks, and that

fools make other fools pay the penalty of folly? This, our world, has

for a long time resembled the compact edifices in which he who believes

in the eternal Father anathematizes him who believes in the Holy Ghost;

circumstances which are not very rare even in these days. Among the

things which render Friar Bacon commendable we must first reckon his

imprisonment, and then the noble boldness with which he declared that

all the books of Aristotle were fit only to be burned and that at a time

when the learned respected Aristotle much more than the Jansenists

respect St. Augustine. Has Roger Bacon, however, done anything better

than the Poetics, the Rhetoric, and the Logic of Aristotle? These three

immortal works clearly prove that Aristotle was a very great and fine

genius--penetrating, profound, and methodical; and that he was only a

bad natural philosopher because it was impossible to penetrate into the

depths of physical science without the aid of instruments.

Does Roger Bacon, in his best work, in which he treats of light and

vision, express himself much more clearly than Aristotle when he says

light is created by means of multiplying its luminous species, which

action is called univocal and conformable to the agent? He also mentions

another equivocal multiplication, by which light engenders heat and heat

putrefaction.

Roger Bacon likewise tells us that life may be prolonged by means of

spermaceti, aloes, and dragons' flesh, and that the philosopher's stone

would render us immortal. It is thought that besides these fine secrets

he possessed all those of judicial astrology, without exception, as he

affirms very positively in his _"Opus Majus,"_ that the head of man is

subject to the influences of the ram, his neck to those of the bull, and

his arms to the power of the twins. He even demonstrates these fine

things from experience, and highly praises a great astrologer at Paris

who says that he hindered a surgeon from putting a plaster on the leg

of an invalid, because the sun was then in the sign of Aquarius, and

Aquarius is fatal to legs to which plasters are applied.

It is an opinion quite generally received that Roger was the inventor of

gunpowder. It is certain that it was in his time that important

discovery was made, for I always remark that the spirit of invention is

of all times and that the doctors, or sages, who govern both mind and

body are generally profoundly ignorant, foolishly prejudiced, or at war

with common sense. It is usually among obscure men that artists are

found animated with a superior instinct, who invent admirable things on

which the learned afterwards reason.

One thing that surprises me much is that Friar Bacon knew not the

direction of the magnetic needle, which, in his time, began to be

understood in Italy, but in lieu thereof he was acquainted with the

Secret of the hazel rod and many such things Of which he treats in his

"Dignity of the Experimental Art."

Yet, notwithstanding this pitiable number of absurdities and chimeras,

it must be confessed that Roger Bacon was an admirable man for his age.

What age? you will ask--that of feudal government and of the schoolmen.

Figure to yourself Samoyedes and Ostiacs who read Aristotle. Such were

we at that time.

Roger Bacon knew a little of geometry and optics, which made him pass

for a sorcerer at Rome and Paris. He was, however, really acquainted

with the matter contained in the Arabian _"Alhazen,"_ for in those days

little was known except through the Arabs. They were the physicians and

astrologers of all the Christian kings. The king's fool was always a

native; his doctor an Arab or a Jew.

Transport this Bacon to the times in which we live and he would be, no

doubt, a great man. He was gold, encrusted with the rust of the times in

which he lived, this gold would now be quickly purified. Poor creatures

that we are! How many ages have passed away in acquiring a little

reason!

BANISHMENT.

Banishment for a term of years, or for life: a penalty inflicted on

delinquents, or on individuals who are wished to be considered as such.

Not long ago it was the custom to banish from within the limits of the

jurisdiction, for petty thefts, forgeries, and assaults, the result of

which was that the offender became a great robber, forger, or murderer

in some other jurisdiction. This is like throwing into a neighbor's

field the stones that incommode us in our own.

Those who have written on the laws of nations have tormented themselves

greatly to determine whether a man who has been banished from his

country can justly be said still to belong to that country. It might

almost as well be asked whether a gambler, who has been driven away from

the gaming-table, is still one of the players at that table.

If by the law of nature a man is permitted to choose his country, still

more is the man who has lost the rights of a citizen at liberty to

choose himself a new country. May he bear arms against his former

fellow-citizens? Of this we have a thousand examples. How many French

Protestants, naturalized in England, Holland, or Germany, have served,

not only against France, but against armies in which their relatives,

their own brothers, have fought? The Greeks in the armies of the king of

Persia fought against the Greeks, their old fellow-countrymen. The Swiss

in the service of Holland have fired upon the Swiss in the service of

France. This is even worse than fighting against those who have banished

you, for, after all, drawing the sword in revenge does not seem so bad

as drawing it for hire.

BAPTISM.

_A Greek Word, Signifying Immersion._

SECTION I.

We do not speak of baptism as theologians; we are but poor men of

letters, who shall never enter the sanctuary. The Indians plunge, and

have from time immemorial plunged, into the Ganges. Mankind, always

guided by their senses, easily imagined that what purified the body

likewise purified the soul. In the subterranean apartments under the

Egyptian temples there were large tubs for the priests and the

initiated.

_O nimium faciles qui tristia crimina cædis_

_Fluminea tolli posse putatis aqua!_

Old Baudier, when he was eighty, made the following comic translation of

these lines:

_C'est une drôle de maxime,_

_Qu'une lessive efface un crime._

One can't but think it somewhat droll,

Pump-water thus should cleanse a soul.

Every sign being of itself indifferent, God vouchsafed to consecrate

this custom amongst the Hebrew people. All foreigners that came to

settle in Palestine were baptized; they were called domiciliary

proselytes.

They were not forced to receive circumcision, but only to embrace the

seven precepts of the Noachides, and to sacrifice to no strange god. The

proselytes of justice were circumcised and baptized; the female

proselytes were also baptized, quite naked, in the presence of three

men. The most devout among the Jews went and received baptism from the

hands of the prophets most venerated by the people. Hence it was that

they flocked to St. John, who baptized in the Jordan.

Jesus Christ Himself, who never baptized any one, deigned to receive

baptism from St. John. This custom, which had long been an accessory of

the Jewish religion, received new dignity, new value from our Saviour,

and became the chief rite, the principal seal of Christianity. However,

the first fifteen bishops of Jerusalem were Jews. 'The Christians of

Palestine long continued to circumcise. St. John's Christians never

received baptism from Christ.

Several other Christian societies applied a cautery to the baptized,

with a red-hot iron, being determined to the performance of this

extraordinary operation by the words of St. John the Baptist, related by

St. Luke: "I baptize you with water, but He that cometh after me shall

baptize you with fire."

This was practised by the Seleucians, the Herminians, and some others.

The words, "He shall baptize you with fire," have never been explained.

There are several opinions concerning the baptism by fire which is

mentioned by St. Luke and St. Matthew. Perhaps the most likely opinion

is that it was an allusion to the ancient custom of the devotees to the

Syrian goddess, who, after plunging into water, imprinted characters on

their bodies with a hot iron. With miserable man all was superstition,

but Jesus substituted for these ridiculous superstitions a sacred

ceremony--a divine and efficacious symbol.

In the first ages of Christianity nothing was more common than to

postpone the receiving of baptism until the last agony. Of this the

example of the Emperor Constantine is a very strong proof. St. Andrew

had not been baptized when he was made bishop of Milan. The custom of

deferring the use of the sacred bath until the hour of death was soon

abolished.

_Baptism of the Dead._

The dead also were baptized. This is established by the passage of St.

Paul to the Corinthians: "If we rise not again what shall they do that

receive baptism from the dead?" Here is a point of fact. Either the

dead themselves were baptized, or baptism was received in their names,

as indulgences have since been received for the deliverance of the souls

of friends and relatives out of purgatory.

St. Epiphanius and St. Chrysostom inform us that it was a custom in some

Christian societies, and principally among the Marcionites, to put a

living man under the dead man's bed; he was then asked if he would be

baptized; the living man answered yes, and the corpse was taken and

plunged into a tub of water. This custom was soon condemned. St. Paul

mentions it but he does not condemn it; on the contrary he cites it as

an invincible argument to prove resurrection.

_Baptism by Aspersion._

The Greeks always retained baptism by immersion. The Latins, about the

close of the eighth century, having extended their religion into Gaul

and Germany and seeing that immersion might be fatal to infants in cold

countries, substituted simple aspersion and thus drew upon themselves

frequent anathemas from the Greek Church.

St. Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, was asked if those were really baptized

who had only had their bodies sprinkled all over. He answers, in his

seventy-sixth letter, that several churches did not believe the

sprinkled to be Christians; that, for his own part, he believes that

they are so, but that they have infinitely less grace than those who

have been thrice dipped, according to custom.

A person was initiated among the Christians as soon as he was dipped;

until then he was only a catechumen. To be initiated it was necessary to

have sponsors to answer to the Church for the fidelity of the new

Christians and that the mysteries should not be divulged. Hence it was

that in the first ages the Gentiles had, in general, as little knowledge

of the Christian mysteries as the Christians had of the mysteries of

Isis and the Eleusinian Ceres.

Cyril of Alexandria, in his writing against the Emperor Julian,

expresses himself thus: "I would speak of baptism but that I fear my

words would reach them who are not initiated." At that time there was no

worship without its mysteries, its associations, its catechumens, its

initiated, and its professed. Each sect required new virtues and

recommended to its penitents a new life--_"initium novæ vitæ"_--whence

the word initiation. The initiation of Christians, whether male or

female, consisted in their being plunged quite naked into a tub of cold

water, to which sign was attached the remission of all their sins. But

the difference between Christian baptism and the Greek, Syrian,

Egyptian, and Roman ceremonies was the difference between truth and

falsehood. Jesus Christ was the High Priest of the new law.

In the second century infants began to be baptized; it was natural that

the Christians should desire their children, who would have been damned

without this sacrament, to be provided with it. It was at length

concluded that they must receive it at the expiration of eight days,

because that was the period at which, among the Jews, they were

circumcised. In the Greek Church this is still the custom.

Such as died in the first week were damned, according to the most

rigorous fathers of the Church. But Peter Chrysologos, in the fifth

century, imagined limbo, a sort of mitigated hell, or properly, the

border, the outskirt of hell, whither all infants dying without baptism

go and where the patriarchs remained until Jesus Christ's descent into

hell. So that the opinion that Jesus Christ descended into limbo, and

not into hell, has since then prevailed.

It was agitated whether a Christian in the deserts of Arabia might be

baptized with sand, this was answered in the negative. It was asked if

rosewater might be used, it was decided that pure water would be

necessary but that muddy water might be made use of. It is evident that

all this discipline depended on the discretion of the first pastors who

established it.

The Anabaptists and some other communions out of the pale have thought

that no one should be baptized without a thorough knowledge of the

merits of the case. You require, say they, a promise to be of the

Christian society, but a child can make no engagement. You give it a

sponsor, but this is an abuse of an ancient custom. The precaution was

requisite in the first establishment. When strangers, adult men and

women, came and presented themselves to be received into the society

and share in the alms there was needed a guarantee to answer for their

fidelity; it was necessary to make sure of them; they swore they would

be Jews, but an infant is in a diametrically opposite case. It has often

happened, that a child baptized by Greeks at Constantinople has

afterwards been circumcised by Turks, a Christian at eight days old and

a Mussulman at thirty years, he has betrayed the oaths of his godfather.

This is one reason which the Anabaptists might allege; it would hold

good in Turkey, but it has never been admitted in Christian countries

where baptism insures a citizen's condition. We must conform to the

rights and laws of our country.

The Greeks re-baptize such of the Latins as pass from one of our Latin

communions to the Greek communion. In the last century it was the custom

for these catechumens to pronounce the following words: "I spit upon my

father and my mother who had me ill baptized." This custom still exists,

and will, perhaps, long continue to exist in the provinces.

_Notions of Rigid Unitarians Concerning Baptism._

It is evident to whosoever is willing to reason without prejudice that

baptism is neither a mark of grace conferred nor a seal of alliance, but

simply a mark of profession.

That baptism is not necessary, neither by necessity of precept, nor by

necessity of means. That it was not instituted by Christ and that it

may be omitted by the Christian without his suffering any inconvenience

therefrom.

That baptism should be administered neither to children, nor to adults,

nor, in general, to any individual whatsoever.

That baptism might be of service in the early infancy of Christianity to

those who quitted paganism in order to make their profession of faith

public and give an authentic mark of it, but that now it is absolutely

useless and altogether indifferent.

SECTION II.

Baptism, immersion in water, abstersion, purification by water, is of

the highest antiquity. To be cleanly was to be pure before the gods. No

priest ever dared to approach the altar with a soil upon his body. The

natural inclination to transfer to the soul that which appertains to the

body led to the belief that lustrations and ablutions took away the

stains of the soul as they removed those of the garments and that

washing the body washed the soul also. Hence the ancient custom of

bathing in the Ganges, the waters of which were thought to be sacred;

hence the lustrations so frequent among every people. The Oriental

nations, inhabiting hot countries, were the most religiously attached to

these customs.

The Jews were obliged to bathe after any pollution--after touching an

unclean animal, touching a corpse, and on many other occasions.

When the Jews received among them a stranger converted to their

religion they baptized, after circumcising him, and if it was a woman

she was simply baptized--that is, dipped in water in the presence of

three witnesses. This immersion was reputed to give the persons baptized

a new birth, a new life; they became at once Jewish and pure. Children

born before this baptism had no share in the inheritance of their

brethren, born after them of a regenerated father and mother. So that,

with the Jews, to be baptized and to be born again were the same thing,

and this idea has remained attached to baptism down to the present day.

Thus, when John, the forerunner, began to baptize in the Jordan he did

but follow an immemorial usage. The priests of the law did not call him

to account for this baptizing as for anything new, but they accused him

of arrogating to himself a right which belonged exclusively to them --as

Roman Catholic priests would have a right to complain if a layman took

upon himself to say mass. John was doing a lawful thing but was doing it

unlawfully.

John wished to have disciples, and he had them. He was chief of a sect

among the lower orders of the people and it cost him his life. It even

appears that Jesus was at first among his disciples, since he was

baptized by him in the Jordan, and John sent some of his own party to

Him a short time before His death.

The historian Josephus speaks of John but not of Jesus--an incontestable

proof that in his time John the Baptist had a greater reputation than

He whom he baptized. A great multitude followed him, says that

celebrated historian, and the Jews seemed disposed to undertake whatever

he should command them.

From this passage it appears that John was not only the chief of a sect,

but the chief of a party. Josephus adds that he caused Herod some

uneasiness. He did indeed make himself formidable to Herod, who, at

length, put him to death, but Jesus meddled with none but the Pharisees.

Josephus, therefore, mentions John as a man who had stirred up the Jews

against King Herod; as one whose zeal had made him a state criminal, but

Jesus, not having approached the court, was unknown to the historian

Josephus.

The sect of John the Baptist differed widely in discipline from that of

Jesus. In the Acts of the Apostles we see that twenty years after the

execution of Jesus, Apollos of Alexandria, though become a Christian,

knew no baptism but that of John, nor had any idea of the Holy Ghost.

Several travellers, and among others Chardin, the most accredited of

all, say that in Persia there still are disciples of John, called Sabis,

who baptize in his name and acknowledge Jesus as a prophet, but not as a

god.

As for Jesus Christ Himself He received baptism but conferred it on no

one; His apostles baptized the catechumens, or circumcised them as

occasion required; this is evident from the operation of circumcision

performed by Paul on his disciple Timothy.

It also appears that when the apostles baptized it was always in the

name of Jesus Christ alone. The Acts of the Apostles do not mention any

one baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost--whence it

may be concluded that the author of the Acts of the Apostles knew

nothing of Matthew's gospel, in which it is said: "Go and teach all

nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and

of the Holy Ghost." The Christian religion had not yet received its

form. Even the Symbol, which was called the Symbol of the Apostles, was

not made until after their time, of this no one has any doubt. In Paul's

Epistle to the Corinthians we find a very singular custom which was then

introduced--that of baptizing the dead, but the rising Church soon

reserved baptism for the living alone; at first none were baptized but

adults, and the ceremony was often deferred until the age of fifty, or

the last sickness, that the individual might carry with him into the

other world the unimpaired virtue of a baptism recently performed.

Now, all children are baptized: none but the Anabaptists reserve this

ceremony for the mature age; they plunge their whole bodies into the

water. The Quakers, who compose a very numerous society in England and

in America, do not use baptism: the reason is that Jesus Christ did not

baptize any of His disciples, and their aim is to be Christians only as

His disciples were--which occasions a very wide difference between them

and other communions.

_Addition to the Article "Baptism" by Abbé Nicaise._

The Emperor Julian, the philosopher, in his immortal "Satire on the

Cæsars," puts these words into the mouth of Constantius, son of

Constantine: "Whosoever feels himself guilty of rape, murder, plunder,

sacrilege, and every most abominable crime, so soon as I have washed him

with this water, he shall be clean and pure."

It was, indeed, this fatal doctrine that occasioned the Christian

emperors, and the great men of the empire, to defer their baptism until

death. They thought they had found the secret of living criminal and

dying virtuous.

How strange an idea--that a pot of water should wash away every crime!

Now, all children are baptized because an idea no less absurd supposes

them all criminal; they are all saved until they have the use of reason

and the power to become guilty! Cut their throats, then, as quickly as

possible, to insure their entrance into paradise. This is so just a

consequence that there was once a devout sect that went about poisoning

and killing all newly-baptized infants. These devout persons reasoned

with perfect correctness, saying: "We do these little innocents the

greatest possible good; we prevent them from being wicked and unhappy in

this life and we give them life eternal."

BARUCH, OR BARAK, AND DEBORAH;

AND, INCIDENTALLY, ON CHARIOTS OF WAR.

We have no intention here to inquire at what time Baruch was chief of

the Jewish people; why, being chief, he allowed his army to be commanded

by a woman; whether this woman, named Deborah, had married Lapidoth;

whether she was the friend or relative of Baruch, or perhaps his

daughter or his mother; nor on what day the battle of Tabor, in Galilee,

was fought between this Deborah and Sisera, captain-general of the

armies of King Jabin--which Sisera commanded in Galilee an army of three

hundred thousand foot, ten thousand horse, and three thousand chariots

of war, according to the historian Josephus.

We shall at present leave out of the question this Jabin, king of a

village called Azor, who had more troops than the Grand Turk. We very

much pity the fate of his grand-vizier Sisera, who, having lost the

battle in Galilee, leaped from his chariot and four that he might fly

more swiftly on foot. He went and begged the hospitality of a holy

Jewish woman, who gave him some milk and drove a great cart-nail through

his head while he was asleep. We are very sorry for it, but this is not

the matter to be discussed. We wish to speak of chariots of war.

The battle was fought at the foot of Mount Tabor, near the river Kishon.

Mount Tabor is a steep mountain, the branches of which, somewhat less

in height, extend over a great part of Galilee. Between this mountain

and the neighboring rocks there is a small plain, covered with great

flint-stones and impracticable for cavalry. The extent of this plain is

four or five hundred paces. We may venture to believe that Sisera did

not here draw up his three hundred thousand men in order of battle; his

three thousand chariots would have found it difficult to manœuvre on

such a field.

We may believe that the Hebrews had no chariots of war in a country

renowned only for asses, but the Asiatics made use of them in the great

plains. Confucius, or rather Confutze, says positively that, from time

immemorial, each of the viceroys of the provinces was expected to

furnish to the emperor a thousand war-chariots, each drawn by four

horses. Chariots must have been in use long before the Trojan war, for

Homer does not speak of them as a new invention, but these chariots were

not armed like those of Babylon, neither the wheels nor the axles were

furnished with steel blades.

At first this invention must have been very formidable on large plains,

especially when the chariots were numerous, driven with impetuosity, and

armed with long pikes and scythes, but when they became familiar it

seemed so easy to avoid their shock that they fell into general disuse.

In the war of 1741 it was proposed to renew and reform this ancient

invention. A minister of state had one of these chariots constructed and

it was tried. It was asserted that in large plains, like that of

Lützen, they might be used with advantage by concealing them behind the

cavalry, the squadrons of which would open to let them pass and then

follow them, but the generals judged that this manœuvre would be

useless, and even dangerous, now that battles are gained by cannon only.

It was replied that there would be as many cannon hi the army using the

chariots of war to defend them as in the enemy's army to destroy them.

It was added that these chariots would, in the first instance, be

sheltered from the cannon behind the battalions or squadrons, that the

latter would open and let the chariots run with impetuosity and that

this unexpected attack might have a prodigious effect. The generals

advanced nothing in opposition to these arguments, but they would not

revive this game of the ancient Persians.

BATTALION.

Let us observe that the arrangements, the marching, and the evolutions

of battalions, nearly as they are now practised, were revived in Europe

by one who was not a military man--by Machiavelli, a secretary at

Florence. Battalions three, four, and five deep; battalions advancing

upon the enemy; battalions in square to avoid being cut off in a rout;

battalions four deep sustained by others in column; battalions flanked

by cavalry--all are his. He taught Europe the art of war; it had long

been practised without being known.

The grand duke would have had his secretary teach his troops their

exercises according to his new method. But Machiavelli was too prudent

to do so; he had no wish to see the officers and soldiers laugh at a

general in a black cloak; he reserved himself for the council.

There is something singular in the qualities which he requires in a

soldier. He must first have _gagliardia_, which signifies _alert vigor_;

he must have a quick and sure eye--in which there must also be a little

gayety; a strong neck, a wide breast, a muscular arm, round loins, but

little belly, with spare legs and feet--all indicating strength and

agility. But above all the soldier must have honor, and must be led by

honor alone. "War," says he, "is but too great a corrupter of morals,"

and he reminds us of the Italian proverb: War makes thieves, and peace

finds them gibbets.

Machiavelli had but a poor opinion of the French infantry, and until the

battle of Rocroi it must be confessed that it was very bad. A strange

man this Machiavelli! He amused himself with making verses, writing

plays, showing his cabinet the art of killing with regularity, and

teaching princes the art of perjuring themselves, assassinating, and

poisoning as occasion required--a great art which Pope Alexander VI.,

and his bastard Cæsar Borgia, practised in wonderful perfection without

the aid of his lessons.

Be it observed that in all Machiavelli's works on so many different

subjects there is not one word which renders virtue amiable--not one

word proceeding from the heart. The same remark has been made on

Boileau. He does not, it is true, make virtue lovely, but he represents

it as necessary.

BAYLE.

Why has Louis Racine treated Bayle like a dangerous man, with a cruel

heart, in an epistle to Jean Baptiste Rousseau, which, although printed,

is but little known?

He compares Bayle, whose logical acuteness detected the errors of

opposing systems, to Marius sitting upon the ruins of Carthage:

_Ainsi d'un œil content Marius, dans sa fuite,_

_Contemplait les débris de Carthage détruite._

Thus exiled Marius, with contented gaze,

Thy ruins, Carthage, silently surveys.

Here is a simile which exhibits very little resemblance, or, as Pope

says, a simile dissimilar. Marius had not destroyed reason and

arguments, nor did he contentedly view its ruins, but, on the contrary,

he was penetrated with an elevated sentiment of melancholy on

contemplating the vicissitudes of human affairs, when he made the

celebrated answer: "Say to the proconsul of Africa that thou hast seen

Marius seated on the ruins of Carthage."

We ask in what Marius resembled Bayle? Louis Racine, if he thinks fit,

may apply the epithets "hard-hearted" and "cruel" to Marius, to Sulla,

to the triumvirs, but, in reference to Bayle the phrases "detestable

pleasure," "cruel heart," "terrible man," should not be put in a

sentence written by Louis Racine against one who is only proved to have

weighed the arguments of the Manichæans, the Paulicians, the Arians, the

Eutychians, against those of their adversaries. Louis Racine proportions

not the punishment to the offence. He should remember that Bayle

combated Spinoza, who was too much of a philosopher, and Jurieu, who was

none at all. He should respect the good manners of Bayle and learn to

reason from him. But he was a Jansenist, that is to say, he knew the

words of the language of Jansenism and employed them at random. You may

properly call cruel and terrible a powerful man who commands his slaves,

on pain of death, to go and reap corn where he has sown thistles; who

gives to some of them too much food, and suffers others to die of

hunger; who kills his eldest son to leave a large fortune to the

younger. All that is frightful and cruel, Louis Racine! It is said that

such is the god of thy Jansenists, but I do not believe it. Oh slaves of

party, people attacked with the jaundice, you constantly see everything

yellow!

And to whom has the unthinking heir of a father who had a hundred times

more taste than he has philosophy, addressed this miserable epistle

against the virtuous Bayle? To Rousseau--a poet who thinks still less;

to a man whose principal merit has consisted in epigrams which are

revolting to the most indulgent reader; to a man to whom it was alike

whether he sang Jesus Christ or Giton. Such was the apostle to whom

Louis Racine denounced Bayle as a miscreant. What motive could the

author of "Phædra" and "Iphigenia" have for falling into such a

prodigious error? Simply this, that Rousseau had made verses for the

Jansenists, whom he then believed to be in high credit.

Such is the rage of faction let loose upon Bayle, but you do not hear

any of the dogs who have howled against him bark against Lucretius,

Cicero, Seneca, Epicurus, nor against the numerous philosophers of

antiquity. It is all reserved for Bayle; he is their fellow citizen--he

is of their time--his glory irritates them. Bayle is read and Nicole is

not read; behold the source of the Jansenist hatred! Bayle is studied,

but neither the reverend Father Croiset, nor the reverend Father

Caussin; hence Jesuitical denouncement!

In vain has a Parliament of France done him the greatest honor in

rendering his will valid, notwithstanding the severity of the law. The

madness of party knows neither honor nor justice. I have not inserted

this article to make the eulogy of the best of dictionaries, which would

not be becoming here, and of which Bayle is not in need; I have written

it to render, if I can, the spirit of party odious and ridiculous.

BDELLIUM.

We are very much puzzled to know what this Bdellium is which is found

near the shores of the Pison, a river of the terrestrial paradise which

turns into the country of the Havilah, where there is gold. Calmet

relates that, according to several commentators, Bdellium is the

carbuncle, but that it may also be crystal. Then it is the gum of an

Arabian tree and afterwards we are told that capers are intended. Many

others affirm that it signifies pearls. Nothing but the etymologies of

Bochart can throw a light on this question. I wish that all these

commentators had been upon the spot.

The excellent gold which is obtained in this country, says Calmet, shows

evidently that this is the country of Colchis and the golden fleece is a

proof of it. It is a pity that things have changed so much for

Mingrelia; that beautiful country, so famous for the loves of Medea and

Jason, now produces gold and Bdellium no more than bulls which vomit

fire and flame, and dragons which guard the fleece. Everything changes

in this world; and if we do not skilfully cultivate our lands, and if

the state remain always in debt, we shall become a second Mingrelia.

BEARD.

Certain naturalists assure us that the secretion which produces the

beard is the same as that which perpetuates mankind. An entire

hemisphere testifies against this fraternal union. The Americans, of

whatever country, color, or stature they may be, have neither beards on

their chins, nor any hair on their bodies, except their eyebrows and the

hair of their heads, I have legal attestations of official men who have

lived, conversed, and combated with thirty nations of South America, and

they attest that they have never seen a hair on their bodies; and they

laugh, as they well may, at writers who, copying one another, say that

the Americans are only without hair because they pull it out with

pincers; as if Christopher Columbus, Fernando Cortes, and the other

adventurers had loaded themselves with the little tweezers with which

our ladies remove their superfluous hairs, and had distributed them in

all the countries of America.

I believed for a long time that the Esquimaux were excepted from the

general laws of the new world; but I am assured that they are as free

from hair as the others. However, they have children in Chile, Peru, and

Canada, as well as in our bearded continent. There is, then, a specific

difference between these bipeds and ourselves, in the same way as their

lions, which are divested of the mane, and in other respects differ from

the lions of Africa.

It is to be remarked that the Orientals have never varied in their

consideration for the beard. Marriage among them has always existed, and

that period is still the epoch of life from which they no longer shave

the beard. The long dress and the beard impose respect. The Westerns

have always been changing the fashion of the chin. Mustaches were worn

under Louis XIV. towards the year 1672. Under Louis XIII. a little

pointed beard prevailed. In the time of Henry IV. it was square. Charles

V., Julius II., and Francis I. restored the large beard to honor in

their courts, which had been a long time in fashion. Gownsmen, through

gravity and respect for the customs of their fathers, shaved themselves;

while the courtiers, in doublets and little mantles, wore their beards

as long as they could. When a king in those days sent a lawyer as an

ambassador, his comrades would laugh at him if he suffered his beard to

grow, besides mocking him in the chamber of accounts or of

requests,--But quite enough upon beards.

BEASTS.

What a pity and what a poverty of spirit to assert that beasts are

machines deprived of knowledge and sentiment, which effect all their

operations in the same manner, which learn nothing, never improve, etc.

What is this bird, who makes its nest in a semicircle when he attaches

it to a wall; and in a circle on a tree--this bird does all in the same

blind manner! The hound, which you have disciplined for three months,

does he not know more at the end of this time than he did before? Does

the canary, to which you play an air, repeat ft directly? Do you not

employ a considerable time in teaching it? Have you not seen that he

sometimes mistakes it, and that be corrects himself?

Is it because I speak to you that you judge I have sentiment, memory,

and ideas? Well, suppose I do not speak to you; you see me enter my room

with an afflicted air, I seek a paper with disquietude, I open the

bureau in which I recollect to have shut it, I hid it and read it with

joy. You pronounce that I have felt the sentiment of affliction and of

joy; that I have memory and knowledge.

Extend the same judgment to the dog who has lost his master, who has

sought hum everywhere with grievous cries, and who enters the house

agitated and restless, goes upstairs and down, from room to room, and at

last finds in the closet the master whom he loves, and testifies his joy

by the gentleness of his cries, by his leaps and his caresses.

Some barbarians seize this dog, who so prodigiously excels man in

friendship, they nail him to a table and dissect him living to show the

mesenteric veins. You discover in him the same organs of sentiment which

are in yourself. Answer me, machinist, has nature arranged all the

springs of sentiment in this animal that he should not feel? Has he

nerves, and is he incapable of suffering? Do not suppose this

impertinent contradiction in mature.

But the masters of this school ask, what is the soul of beasts? I do not

understand tins question. A tree has the faculty of receiving in its

fibres the sap which circulates, of evolving its buds, its leaves, and

its fruits. You will ask me what is the soul of this tree? It has

received these gifts. The animal has received those of sentiment,

memory, and a certain number of ideas. Who has bestowed these gifts; who

has given these faculties? He who has made the herb of the field to

grow, and who makes the earth gravitate towards the sun.

The souls of beasts are _substantial forms_, says Aristotle; and after

Aristotle, the Arabian school; and after the Arabian school, the

Angelical school; and after the Angelical school, the Sorbonne; and

after the Sorbonne, every one in the world.

The souls of beasts are material, exclaim other philosophers. These have

not been more fortunate than the former. They are in vain asked what is

a material soul? They say that it is a matter which has sensation; but

who has given it this sensation? It is a material soul, that is to say,

it is composed of a matter which gives sensation to matter. They cannot

get out of this circle.

Listen to one kind of beasts reasoning upon another; their soul is a

spiritual being, which dies with the body; but what proof have you of

it? What idea have you of this spiritual being, which has sentiment,

memory, and its share of ideas and combinations, but which can never

tell what made a child of six years old? On what ground do you imagine

that this being, which is not corporeal, perishes with the body? The

greatest beasts are those who have suggested that this soul is neither

body nor spiritan excellent system! We can only understand by spirit

something unknown, which is not body. Thus the system of these gentlemen

amounts to this, that the soul of beasts is a substance which is neither

body, nor something which is not body. Whence can proceed so many

contradictory errors? From the custom which men have of examining what a

thing is before they know whether it exists. They call the speech the

effect of a breath of mind, the soul of a sigh. What is the soul? It is

a name which I have given to this valve which rises and falls, which

lets the air in, relieves itself, and sends it through a pipe when I

move the lungs.

There is not, then, a soul distinct from the machine. But what moves the

lungs of animals? I have already said, the power that moves the stars.

The philosopher who said, _"Deus est animâ brutorum."_--God is the soul

of the brutes--is right; but he should have gone much further.

BEAUTIFUL (THE).

Since we have quoted Plato on love, why should we not quote him on "the

beautiful," since beauty causes love. It is curious to know how a Greek

spoke of the beautiful more than two thousand years since.

"The man initiated into the sacred mysteries, when he sees a beautiful

face accompanied by a divine form, a something more than mortal, feels a

secret emotion, and I know not what respectful fear. He regards this

figure as a divinity.... When the influence of beauty enters into his

soul by his eyes he burns; the wings of his soul are bedewed; they lose

the hardness which retains their germs and liquefy themselves; these

germs, swelling beneath the roots of its wings, they expand from every

part of the soul (for soul had wings formerly)," etc.

I am willing to believe that nothing is finer than this discourse of the

divine Plato; but it does not give us very clear ideas of the nature of

the beautiful.

Ask a toad what is beauty--the great beauty _To Kalon_; he will answer

that it is the female with two great round eyes coming out of her little

head, her large flat mouth, her yellow belly, and brown back. Ask a

negro of Guinea; beauty is to him a black, oily skin, sunken eyes, and a

flat nose. Ask the devil; he will tell you that the beautiful consists

in a pair of horns, four claws, and a tail. Then consult the

philosophers; they will answer you with jargon; they must have something

conformable to the archetype of the essence of the beautiful--to the _To

Kalon_.

I was once attending a tragedy near a philosopher. "How beautiful that

is," said he. "What do you find beautiful?" asked I. "It is," said he,

"that the author has attained his object." The next day he took his

medicine, which did him some good. "It has attained its object," cried I

to him; "it is a beautiful medicine." He comprehended that it could not

be said that a medicine is beautiful, and that to apply to anything

the epithet beautiful it must cause admiration and pleasure. He admitted

that the tragedy had inspired him with these two sentiments, and that it

was the _To Kalon_, the beautiful.

We made a journey to England. The same piece was played, and, although

ably translated, it made all the spectators yawn. "Oh, oh!" said he,

"the _To Kalon_ is not the same with the English as with the French." He

concluded after many reflections that "the beautiful" is often merely

relative, as that which is decent at Japan is indecent at Rome; and that

which is the fashion at Paris is not so at Pekin; and he was thereby

spared the trouble of composing a long treatise on the beautiful.

[Illustration: A beautiful face accompanied by a divine form.]

There are actions which the whole world considers fine. A challenge

passed between two of Cæsar's officers, mortal enemies, not to shed each

other's blood behind a thicket by tierce and quarte, as among us, but to

decide which of them would best defend the camp of the Romans, about to

be attacked by the barbarians. One of the two, after having repulsed the

enemy, was near falling; the other flew to his assistance, saved his

life, and gained the victory. A friend devotes himself to death for his

friend, a son for his father. The Algonquin, the French, the Chinese,

will mutually say that all this is very beautiful, that such actions

give them pleasure, and that they admire them.

They will say the same of great moral maxims; of that of Zoroaster: "If

in doubt that an action be just, desist;" of that of Confucius: "Forget

injuries; never forget benefits."

The negro, with round eyes and flattened nose, who would not give the

ladies of our court the name of beautiful, would give it without

hesitation to these actions and these maxims. Even the wicked man

recognizes the beauty of the virtues which he cannot imitate. The

beautiful, which only strikes the senses, the imagination, and what is

called the spirit, is then often uncertain; the beauty which strikes the

heart is not. You will find a number of people who will tell you they

have found nothing beautiful in three-fourths of the "Iliad"; but nobody

will deny that the devotion of Codrus for his people was fine, supposing

it was true.

Brother Attinet, a Jesuit, a native of Dijon, was employed as designer

in the country house of the Emperor Camhi, at the distance of some

leagues from Pekin.

"This country house," says he, in one of his letters to M. Dupont, "is

larger than the town of Dijon. It is divided into a thousand habitations

on one line; each one has its courts, its parterres, its gardens, and

its waters; the front of each is ornamented with gold varnish and

paintings. In the vast enclosures of the park, hills have been raised by

hand from twenty to sixty feet high. The valleys are watered by an

infinite number of canals, which run a considerable distance to join and

form lakes and seas. We float on these seas in boats varnished and

gilt, from twelve to thirteen fathoms long and four wide. These barks

have magnificent saloons, and the borders of the canals are covered with

houses, all in different tastes. Every house has its gardens and

cascades. You go from one valley to another by alleys, alternately

ornamented with pavilions and grottoes. No two valleys are alike; the

largest of all is surrounded by a colonnade, behind which are gilded

buildings. All the apartments of these houses correspond in magnificence

with the outside. All the canals have bridges at stated distances; these

bridges are bordered with balustrades of white marble sculptured in

basso-relievo.

"In the middle of the great sea is raised a rock, and on this rock is a

square pavilion, in which are more than a hundred apartments. From this

square pavilion there is a view of all the palaces, all the houses, and

all the gardens of this immense enclosure, and there are more than four

hundred of them.

"When the emperor gives a fête all these buildings are illuminated in an

instant, and from every house there are fireworks.

"This is not all; at the end of what they call the sea is a great fair,

held by the emperor's officers. Vessels come from the great sea to

arrive at this fair. The courtiers disguise themselves as merchants and

artificers of all sorts; one keeps a coffee house, another a tavern; one

takes the profession of a thief, another that of the officer who

pursues him. The emperor and all the ladies of the court come to buy

stuffs, the false merchants cheat them as much as they can; they tell

them that it is shameful to dispute so much about the price, and that

they are poor customers. Their majesties reply that the merchants are

knaves; the latter are angry and affect to depart; they are appeased;

the emperor buys all and makes lotteries of it for all his court.

Farther on are spectacles of all sorts."

When brother Attinet came from China to Versailles he found it small and

dull. The Germans, who were delighted to stroll about its groves, were

astonished that brother Attinet was so difficult. This is another reason

which determines me not to write a treatise on the beautiful.

BEES.

The bees may be regarded as superior to the human race in this, that

from their own substance they produce another which is useful; while, of

all our secretions, there is not one good for anything; nay, there is

not one which does not render mankind disagreeable.

I have been charmed to find that the swarms which turn out of the hive

are much milder than our sons when they leave college. The young bees

then sting no one; or at least but rarely and in extraordinary cases.

They suffer themselves to be carried quietly in the bare hand to the

hive which is destined for them. But no sooner have they learned in

their new habitation to know their interests than they become like us

and make war. I have seen very peaceable bees go for six months to labor

in a neighboring meadow covered with flowers which secreted them. When

the mowers came they rushed furiously from their hive upon those who

were about to steal their property and put them to flight.

We find in the Proverbs attributed to Solomon that "there are four

things, the least upon earth, but which are wiser than the wise men--the

ants, a little people who lay up food during the harvest; the hares, a

weak people who lie on stones; the grasshoppers, who have no kings and

who journey in flocks; and the lizards, which work with their hands and

dwell in the palaces of kings." I know not how Solomon forgot the bees,

whose instinct seems very superior to that of hares, which do not lie on

stone; or of lizards, with whose genius I am not acquainted. Moreover, I

shall always prefer a bee to a grasshopper.

The bees have, in all ages, furnished the poet with descriptions,

comparisons, allegories, and fables. Mandeville's celebrated "Fable of

the Bees" made a great noise in England. Here is a short sketch of it:

Once the bees, in worldly things,

Had a happy government;

And their laborers and their kings

Made them wealthy and content;

But some greedy drones at last

Found their way into their hive;

Those, in idleness to thrive,

Told the bees they ought to fast.

Sermons were _their_ only labors;

Work they preached unto their neighbors.

In their language they would say,

"You shall surely go to heaven,

When to us you've freely given

Wax and honey all away."--

Foolishly the bees believed,

Till by famine undeceived;

When their misery was complete,

All the strange delusion vanished!

Now the drones are killed or banished,

And the bees again may eat.

Mandeville goes much further; he asserts that bees cannot live at their

ease in a great and powerful hive without many vices. "No kingdom, no

state," says he, "can flourish without vices. Take away the vanity of

ladies of quality, and there will be no more fine manufactures of silk,

no more employment for men and women in a thousand different branches; a

great part of the nation will be reduced to beggary. Take away the

avarice of our merchants, and the fleets of England will be annihilated.

Deprive artists of envy, and emulation will cease; we shall sink back

into primitive rudeness and ignorance."

It is quite true that a well-governed society turns every vice to

account; but it is not true that these vices are necessary to the

well-being of the world. Very good remedies may be made from poisons,

but poisons do not contribute to the support of life. By thus reducing

the "Fable of the Bees" to its just value, it might be made a work of

moral utility.

BEGGAR--MENDICANT

Every country where begging, where mendicity, is a profession, is ill

governed. Beggary, as I have elsewhere said, is a vermin that clings to

opulence. Yes; but let it be shaken off; let the hospitals be for

sickness and age alone, and let the shops be for the young and vigorous.

The following is an extract from a sermon composed by a preacher ten

years ago for the parish of St. Leu and St. Giles, which is the parish

of the beggars and the convulsionaries: "_Pauper es

evangelicantur_"--"the gospel is preached to the poor."

"My dear brethren the beggars, what is meant by the word _gospel_? It

signifies _good news_. It is, then, good news that I come to tell you;

and what is it? It is that if you are idlers you will die on a

dung-hill. Know that there have been idle kings, so at least we are

told, and they at last had not where to lay their heads. If you work,

you will be as happy as other men.

"The preachers at St. Eustache and St. Roche may deliver to the rich

very fine sermons in a flowery style, which procure for the auditors a

light slumber with an easy digestion, and for the orator a thousand

crowns; but I address those whom hunger keeps awake. Work for your

bread, I say; for the Scripture says that he who does not work deserves

not to eat. Our brother in adversity, Job, who was for some time in your

condition, says that man is born to labor as the bird is to fly. Look

at this immense city; every one is busy; the judges rise at four in the

morning to administer justice to you and send you to the galleys when

your idleness has caused you to thieve rather awkwardly.

"The king works; he attends his council every day; and he has made

campaigns. Perhaps you will say he is none the richer. Granted; but that

is not his fault. The financiers know, better than you or I do, that not

one-half his revenue ever enters his coffers. He has been obliged to

sell his plate in order to defend us against our enemies. We should aid

him in our turn. The Friend of Man (_l'Ami des Hommes_) allows him only

seventy-five millions per annum. Another friend all at once gives him

seven hundred and forty. But of all these Job's comforters, not one will

advance him a single crown. It is necessary to invent a thousand

ingenious ways of drawing this crown from our pockets, which, before it

reaches his own, is diminished by at least one-half.

"Work, then, my dear brethren; act for yourselves, for I forewarn you

that if you do not take care of yourselves, no one will take care of

you; you will be treated as the king has been in several grave

remonstrances; people will say, 'God help you.'

"We will go into the provinces, you will answer; we skill be fed by the

lords of the land, by the farmers, by the curates. Do not flatter

yourselves, my dear brethren, that you shall eat at their tables; they

have for the most part enough to do to feed themselves, notwithstanding

the 'Method of Rapidly Getting Rich by Agriculture' and fifty other

works of the same kind, published every day at Paris for the use of the

people in the country, with the cultivation of which the authors never

had anything to do.

"I behold among you young men of some talent, who say that they will

make verses, that they will write pamphlets, like Chisiac, Normotte, or

Patouillet; that they will work for the _'Nouvelles Ecclésiastiques'_

that they will write sheets for Fréron, funeral orations for bishops,

songs for the comic opera. Any of these would at least be an occupation.

When a man is writing for the _'Année Littéraire,'_ he is not robbing on

the highway, he is only robbing his creditors. But do better, my dear

brethren in Jesus Christ--my dear beggars, who, by passing your lives in

asking charity, run the risk of the galleys; do better; enter one of the

four mendicant orders; you will then be not only rich, but honored

also."

BEKKER,

"THE WORLD BEWITCHED," THE DEVIL, THE BOOK OF ENOCH, AND SORCERERS.

This Balthazar Bekker, a very good man, a great enemy of the everlasting

hell and the devil, and a still greater of precision, made a great deal

of noise in his time by his great book, "The World Bewitched."

One Jacques-George de Chaufepied, a pretended continuator of Bayle,

assures us that Bekker learned Greek at Gascoigne. Niceron has good

reasons for believing that it was at Franeker. This historical point has

occasioned much doubt and trouble at court.

The fact is that in the time of Bekker, a minister of the Holy

Gospel--as they say in Holland--the devil was still in prodigious credit

among divines of all sorts in the middle of the seventeenth century, in

spite of the good spirits which were beginning to enlighten the world.

Witchcraft, possessions, and everything else attached to that fine

divinity, were in vogue throughout Europe and frequently had fatal

results.

A century had scarcely elapsed since King James himself--called by Henry

IV. _Master_ James--that great enemy of the Roman communion and the

papal power, had published his "Demonology" (what a book for a king!)

and in it had admitted sorceries, incubuses, and succubuses, and

acknowledged the power of the devil, and of the pope, who, according to

him, had just as good a right to drive Satan from the bodies of the

possessed as any other priest. And we, miserable Frenchmen, who boast of

having recovered some small part of our senses, in what a horrid sink of

stupid barbarism were we then immersed! Not a parliament, not a

presidential court, but was occupied in trying sorcerers; not a great

jurisconsult who did not write memorials on possessions by the devil.

France resounded with the cries of poor imbecile creatures whom the

judges, after making them believe that they had danced round a cauldron,

tortured and put to death without pity, in horrible torments. Catholics

and Protestants were alike infected with this absurd and frightful

superstition; the pretext being that in one of the Christian gospels it

is said that disciples were sent to cast out devils. It was a sacred

duty to put girls to the torture in order to make them confess that they

had lain with Satan, and that they had fallen in love with him in the

form of a goat. All the particulars of the meetings of the girls with

this goat were detailed in the trials of the unfortunate individuals.

They were burned at last, whether they confessed or denied; and France

was one vast theatre of judicial carnage.

I have before me a collection of these infernal proceedings, made by a

counsellor of the Parliament of Bordeaux, named De Langre, and addressed

to Monseigneur Silleri, chancellor of France, without Monseigneur

Silleri's having ever thought of enlightening those infamous

magistrates. But, indeed, it would have been necessary to begin by

enlightening the chancellor himself. What was France at that time? A

continual St. Bartholomew--from the massacre of Vassy to the

assassination of Marshal d'Ancre and his innocent wife.

Will it be believed that in the time of this very Bekker, a poor girl

named Magdalen Chaudron, who had been persuaded that she was a witch,

was burned at Geneva?

The following is a very exact summary of the procès-verbal of this

absurd and horrid act, which is not the last monument of the kind:

"Michelle, having met the devil as she was going out of the town, the

devil gave her a kiss, received her homage, and imprinted on her upper

lip and her right breast the mark which it is his custom to affix on all

persons whom he recognizes as his favorites. This seal of the devil is a

small sign-manual, which, as demonological jurisconsults affirm, renders

the skin insensible.

"The devil ordered Michelle Chaudron to bewitch two girls; and she

immediately obeyed her lord. The relatives of the young women judicially

charged her with devilish practices, and the girls themselves were

interrogated and confronted with the accused. They testified that they

constantly felt a swarming of ants in certain parts of their bodies, and

that they were possessed. The physicians were then called in, or at

least those who then passed as physicians. They visited the girls and

sought on Michelle's body for the devil's seal, which the procès-verbal

calls the _satanic marks_. They thrust a large needle into the spot, and

this of itself was a grievous torture. Blood flowed from the puncture;

and Michelle made known by her cries that satanic marks do not produce

insensibility. The judges, seeing no satisfactory evidence that Michelle

Chaudron was a witch, had her put to the torture, which never fails to

bring forth proofs. The unfortunate girl, yielding at length to the

violence of her tortures, confessed whatever was required of her.

"The physicians again sought for the satanic mark. They found it in a

small dark spot on one of her thighs. They applied the needle; but the

torture had been so excessive that the poor, expiring creature scarcely

felt the wound; she did not cry out; therefore the crime was

satisfactorily proved. But, as manners were becoming less rude, she was

not burned until she had been hanged."

Every tribunal in Christian Europe still rings with similar

condemnations; so long did this barbarous imbecility endure, that even

in our own day, at Würzburg, in Franconia, there was a witch burned in

1750. And what a witch! A young woman of quality, the abbess of a

convent! and in our own times, under the empire of Maria Theresa of

Austria!

These horrors, by which Europe was so long filled, determined Bekker to

fight against the devil. In vain was he told, in prose and verse, that

he was doing wrong to attack him, seeing that he was extremely like him,

being horribly ugly; nothing could stop him. He began with absolutely

denying the power of Satan; and even grew so bold as to maintain that he

does not exist. "If," said he, "there were a devil, he would revenge the

war which I make upon him."

Bekker reasoned but too well in saying that if the devil existed he

would punish him. His brother ministers took Satan's part and suspended

Bekker; for heretics will also excommunicate; and in the article of

cursing, Geneva mimics Rome.

Bekker enters on his subject in the second volume. According to him, the

serpent which seduced our first parents was not a devil, but a real

serpent; as Balaam's ass was a real ass, and as the whale that swallowed

Jonah was a real whale. It was so decidedly a real serpent, that all its

species, which had before walked on their feet, were condemned to crawl

on their bellies. No serpent, no animal of any kind, is called Satan, or

Beelzebub, or devil, in the Pentateuch. There is not so much as an

allusion to Satan. The Dutch destroyer of Satan does, indeed, admit the

existence of angels; but at the same time he assures us that it cannot

be proved by reasoning. "And if there are any," says he, in the eighth

chapter of his second volume, "it is hard to say what they are. The

Scripture tells us nothing about their nature, nor in what the nature of

a spirit consists. The Bible was made, not for angels, but for men;

Jesus was made a man for us, not an angel."

If Bekker has so many scruples concerning angels, it is not to be

wondered at that he has some concerning devils; and it is very amusing

to see into what contortions he puts his mind in order to avail himself

of such texts as appear to be in his favor and to evade such as are

against him.

He does his utmost to prove that the devil had nothing to do with the

afflictions of Job; and here he is even more prolix than the friends of

that holy man.

There is great probability that he was condemned only through the

ill-humor of his judges at having lost so much time in reading his work.

If the devil himself had been forced to read Bekker's "World Bewitched"

he could never have forgiven the fault of having so prodigiously wearied

him.

One of our Dutch divine's greatest difficulties is to explain these

words: "Jesus was transported by the spirit into the desert to be

tempted by the devil." No text can be clearer. A divine may write

against Beelzebub as much as he pleases, but he must of necessity admit

his existence; he may then explain the difficult texts if he can.

Whoever desires to know precisely what the devil is may be informed by

referring to the Jesuit Scott; no one has spoken of him more at length;

he is much worse than Bekker.

Consulting history, where the ancient origin of the devil is to be found

in the doctrine of the Persians, Ahrimanes, the bad principle, corrupts

all that the good principle had made salutary. Among the Egyptians,

Typhon does all the harm he can; while Oshireth, whom we call Osiris,

does, together with Isheth, or Isis, all the good of which he is

capable.

Before the Egyptians and Persians, Mozazor, among the Indians, had

revolted against God and become the devil, but God had at last pardoned

him. If Bekker and the Socinians had known this anecdote of the fall of

the Indian angels and their restoration, they would have availed

themselves of it to support their opinion that hell is not perpetual,

and to give hopes of salvation to such of the damned as read their

books.

The Jews, as has already been observed, never spoke of the fall of the

angels in the Old Testament; but it is mentioned in the New.

About the period of the establishment of Christianity a book was

attributed to "Enoch, the seventh man after Adam," concerning the devil

and his associates. Enoch gives us the names of the leaders of the

rebellious and the faithful angels, but he does not say that war was in

heaven; on the contrary, the fight was upon a mountain of the earth, and

it was for the possession of young women.

St. Jude cites this book in his Epistle: "And the angels, which kept not

their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in

everlasting chains under darkness, unto the judgment of the great

day.... Woe unto them, for they have gone in the way of Cain.... And

Enoch, also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these...."

St. Peter in his second Epistle alludes to the Book of Enoch when he

says: "For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down

to hell and delivered them into chains of darkness...."

Bekker must have found it difficult to resist passages so formal.

However, he was even more inflexible on the subject of devils than on

that of angels; he would not be subdued by the Book of Enoch, the

seventh man from Adam; he maintained that there was no more a devil than

there was a book of Enoch. He said that the devil was imitated from

ancient mythology, that it was an old story revived, and that we are

nothing more than plagiarists.

We may at the present day be asked why we call that Lucifer the _evil

spirit_, whom the Hebrew version, and the book attributed to Enoch,

named Samyaza. It is because we understand Latin better than Hebrew.

But whether Lucifer be the planet Venus, or the Samyaza of Enoch, or the

Satan of the Babylonians, or the Mozazor of the Indians, or the Typhon

of the Egyptians, Bekker was right in saying that so enormous a power

ought not to be attributed to him as that with which, even down to our

own times, he has been believed to be invested. It is too much to have

immolated to him a woman of quality of Würzburg, Magdalen Chaudron, the

curate of Gaupidi, the wife of Marshal d'Ancre, and more than a hundred

thousand other wizards and witches, in the space of thirteen hundred

years, in Christian states. Had Belthazar Bekker been content with

paring the devil's nails, he would have been very well received; but

when a curate would annihilate the devil he loses his cure.

BELIEF.

We shall see at the article "Certainty" that we ought often to be very

uncertain of what we are certain of; and that we may fail in good sense

when deciding according to what is called _common_ sense. But what is it

that we call _believing_?

A Turk comes and says to me, "I believe that the angel Gabriel often

descended from the empyrean, to bring Mahomet leaves of the Koran,

written on blue vellum."

Well, Mustapha, and on what does thy shaven head found its belief of

this incredible thing?

"On this: That there are the greatest probabilities that I have not been

deceived in the relation of these improbable prodigies; that Abubeker,

the father-in-law, Ali, the son-in-law, Aisha, or Aisse, the daughter,

Omar, and Osman, certified the truth of the fact in the presence of

fifty thousand men--gathered together all the leaves, read them to the

faithful, and attested that not a word had been altered.

"That we have never had but one Koran, which has never been contradicted

by another Koran. That God has never permitted the least alteration to

be made in this book.

"That its doctrine and precepts are the perfection of reason. Its

doctrine consists in the unity of God, for Whom we must live and die; in

the immortality of the soul; the eternal rewards of the just and

punishments of the wicked; and the mission of our great prophet

Mahomet, proved by victories.

"Its precepts are: To be just and valiant; to give alms to the poor; to

abstain from that enormous number of women whom the Eastern princes, and

in particular the petty Jewish kings, took to themselves without

scruple; to renounce the good wines of Engaddi and Tadmor, which those

drunken Hebrews have so praised in their books; to pray to God five

times a day, etc.

"This sublime religion has been confirmed by the miracle of all others

the finest, the most constant, and best verified in the history of the

world; that Mahomet, persecuted by the gross and absurd scholastic

magistrates who decreed his arrest, and obliged to quit his country,

returned victorious; that he made his imbecile and sanguinary enemies

his footstool; that he all his life fought the battles of the Lord; that

with a small number he always triumphed over the greater number; that he

and his successors have converted one-half of the earth; and that, with

God's help, we shall one day convert the other half."

Nothing can be arrayed in more dazzling colors. Yet Mustapha, while

believing so firmly, always feels some small shadows of doubt arising in

his soul when he hears any difficulties started respecting the visits of

the angel Gabriel; the sura or chapter brought from heaven to declare

that the great prophet was not a cuckold; or the mare Borak, which

carried him in one night from Mecca to Jerusalem. Mustapha stammers; he

makes very bad answers, at which he blushes; yet he not only tells you

that he believes, but would also persuade you to believe. You press

Mustapha; he still gapes and stares, and at last goes away to wash

himself in honor of Allah, beginning his ablution at the elbow and

ending with the forefinger.

Is Mustapha really persuaded--convinced of all that he has told us? Is

he perfectly sure that Mahomet was sent by God, as he is sure that the

city of Stamboul exists? as he is sure that the Empress Catherine II.

sent a fleet from the remotest seas of the North to land troops in

Peloponnesus--a thing as astonishing as the journey from Mecca to

Jerusalem in one night--and that this fleet destroyed that of the

Ottomans in the Dardanelles?

The truth is that Mustapha believes what he does not believe. He has

been accustomed to pronounce, with his mollah, certain words which he

takes for ideas. To _believe_ is very often to _doubt_.

"Why do you believe that?" says Harpagon. "I believe it because I

believe it," answers Master Jacques; and most men might return the same

answer.

Believe me fully, my dear reader, when I say one must not believe too

easily. But what shall we say of those who would persuade others of what

they themselves do not believe? and what of the monsters who persecute

their brethren in the humble and rational doctrine of doubt and

self-distrust?

BETHSHEMESH.

_Of the Fifty Thousand and Seventy Jews Struck with Sudden Death for

Having Looked Upon the Ark; of the Five Golden Emeroids Paid by the

Philistines; and of Dr. Kennicott's Incredulity._

Men of the world will perhaps be astonished to find this word the

subject of an article; but we here address only the learned and ask

their instruction.

Bethshemesh was a village belonging to God's people, situated, according

to commentators, two miles north of Jerusalem. The Phœnicians having,

in Samuel's time, beaten the Jews, and taken from them their Ark of

alliance in the battle, in which they killed thirty thousand of their

men, were severely punished for it by the Lord:

_"Percussit eos in secretiori parte natium, et ebullierunt villæ et

agri.... et nati sunt mures, et facta est confusio mortis magna in

civitate."_ Literally: "He struck them in the most secret part of the

buttocks; and the fields and the farmhouses were troubled.... and there

sprung up mice; and there was a great confusion of death in the city."

The prophets of the Phœnicians, or Philistines, having informed them

that they could deliver themselves from the scourge only by giving to

the Lord five golden mice and five golden emeroids, and sending him back

the Jewish Ark, they fulfilled this order, and, according to the express

command of their prophets sent back the Ark with the mice and emeroids

on a wagon drawn by two cows, with each a sucking calf and without a

driver.

These two cows of themselves took the Ark straight to Bethshemesh. The

men of Bethshemesh approached the Ark in order to look at it, which

liberty was punished yet more severely than the profanation by the

Phœnicians had been. The Lord struck with sudden death seventy men of

the people, and fifty thousand of the populace.

The reverend Doctor Kennicott, an Irishman, printed in 1768 a French

commentary on this occurrence and dedicated it to the bishop of Oxford.

At the head of this commentary he entitles himself Doctor of Divinity,

member of the Royal Society of London, of the Palatine Academy, of the

Academy of Göttingen, and of the Academy of Inscriptions at Paris. All

that I know of the matter is that he is not of the Academy of

Inscriptions at Paris. Perhaps he is one of its correspondents. His vast

erudition may have deceived him, but titles are distinct from things.

He informs the public that his pamphlet is sold at Paris by Saillant and

Molini, at Rome by Monaldini, at Venice by Pasquali, at Florence by

Cambiagi, at Amsterdam by Marc-Michel Rey, at The Hague by Gosse, at

Leyden by Jaquau, and in London by Beckett, who receives subscriptions.

In this pamphlet he pretends to prove that the Scripture text has been

corrupted. Here we must be permitted to differ with him. Nearly all

Bibles agree in these expressions: seventy men of the people and fifty

thousand of the populace--_"De populo septuaginta viros, et quinquaginta

millia plebis."_ The reverend Doctor Kennicott says to the right

reverend the lord bishop of Oxford that formerly there were strong

prejudices in favor of the Hebrew text, but that for seventeen years his

lordship and himself have been freed from their prejudices, after the

deliberate and attentive perusal of this chapter.

In this we differ from Dr. Kennicott, and the more we read this chapter

the more we reverence the ways of the Lord, which are not our ways. It

is impossible, says Kennicott, for the candid reader not to feel

astonished and affected at the contemplation of fifty thousand men

destroyed in one village--men, too, employed in gathering the harvest.

This does, it is true, suppose a hundred thousand persons, at least, in

that village, but should the doctor forget that the Lord had promised

Abraham that his posterity should be as numerous as the sands of the

sea?

The Jews and the Christians, adds he, have not scrupled to express their

repugnance to attach faith to this destruction of fifty thousand and

seventy men.

We answer that we are Christians and have no repugnance to attach faith

to whatever is in the Holy Scriptures. We answer, with the reverend

Father Calmet, that "if we were to reject whatever is extraordinary and

beyond the reach of our conception we must reject the whole Bible." We

are persuaded that the Jews, being under the guidance of God himself,

could experience no events but such as were stamped with the seal of the

Divinity and quite different from what happened to other men. We will

even venture to advance that the death of these fifty thousand and

seventy men is one of the least surprising things in the Old Testament.

We are struck with astonishment still more reverential when Eve's

serpent and Balaam's ass talk; when the waters of the cataracts are

swelled by rain fifteen cubits above all the mountains; when we behold

the plagues of Egypt, and the six hundred and thirty thousand fighting

Jews flying on foot through the divided and suspended sea; when Joshua

stops the sun and moon at noonday; when Samson slays a thousand

Philistines with the jaw-bone of an ass.... In those divine times all

was miracle, without exception, and we have the profoundest reverence

for all these miracles--for that ancient world which was not our world;

for that nature which was not our nature; for a divine book, in which

there can be nothing human.

But we are astonished at the liberty which Dr. Kennicott takes of

calling those deists and atheists, who, while they revere the Bible more

than he does, differ from him in opinion. Never will it be believed that

a man with such ideas is of the Academy of Medals and Inscriptions. He

is, perhaps, of the Academy of Bedlam, the most ancient of all, and

whose colonies extend throughout the earth.

BILHAH--BASTARDS

Bilhah, servant to Rachel, and Zilpah, servant to Leah, each bore the

patriarch Jacob two children, and, be it observed, that they inherited

like legitimate sons, as well as the eight other male children whom

Jacob had by the two sisters Leah and Rachel. It is true that all their

inheritance consisted in a blessing; whereas, William the Bastard

inherited Normandy.

Thierri, a bastard of Clovis, inherited the best part of Gaul, invaded

by his father. Several kings of Spain and Naples have been bastards. In

Spain bastards have always inherited. King Henry of Transtamare was not

considered as an illegitimate king, though he was an illegitimate child,

and this race of bastards, founded in the house of Austria, reigned in

Spain until Philip V.

The line of Aragon, who reigned in Naples in the time of Louis XII.,

were bastards. Count de Dunois signed himself "the bastard of Orleans,"

and letters were long preserved of the duke of Normandy, king of

England, which were signed "William the Bastard."

In Germany it is otherwise; the descent must be pure; bastards never

inherit fiefs, nor have any estate. In France, as has long been the

case, a king's bastard cannot be a priest without a dispensation from

Rome, but he becomes a prince without any difficulty as soon as the king

acknowledges him to be the offspring of his sire, even though he be the

bastard of an adulterous father and mother. It is the same in Spain. The

bastard of a king of England may be a duke but not a prince. Jacob's

bastards were neither princes nor dukes; they had no lands, the reason

being that their father had none, but they were afterwards called

_patriarchs_, which may be rendered _arch-fathers_.

It has been asked whether the bastards of the popes might be popes in

turn. Pope John XI. was, it is true, a bastard of Pope Sergius III., and

of the famous Marozia; but an instance is not a law.

BISHOP.

Samuel Ornik, a native of Basle, was, as is well known, a very amiable

young man, who, moreover, knew his German and Greek New Testament by

heart. At the age of twenty his parents sent him to travel. He was

commissioned to carry books to the coadjutor at Paris in the time of the

Fronde. He arrived at the archbishop's gate and was told by the Swiss

that _monseigneur_ saw no one. "My dear fellow," said Ornik, "you are

very rude to your countrymen; the apostles allowed every one to

approach, and Jesus Christ desired that little children should come unto

him. I have nothing to ask of your master; on the contrary, I bring him

something." "Enter, then," said the Swiss.

He waited an hour in the first ante-chamber. Being quite artless he

attacked with questions a domestic who was very fond of telling all he

knew about his master. "He must be pretty rich," said Ornik, "to have

such a swarm of pages and footmen running in and out of the house." "I

don't know," answered the other, "what his income is, but I hear Joli

and the Abbé Charier say that he is two millions in debt." "But who is

that lady who came out of a cabinet and is passing by?" "That is Madame

de Pomereu, one of his mistresses." "She is really very pretty, but I

have not read that the apostles had such company in their bedchambers in

a morning." "Ah! that, I believe, is monsieur, about to give audience."

"Say _sa grandeur, monseigneur_." "Well, with all my heart...." Ornik

saluted _sa grandeur_, presented his books, and was received with a most

gracious smile. _Sa grandeur_ said three words to him, and stepped into

his carriage, escorted by fifty horsemen. In stepping in, monseigneur

dropped a sheath and Ornik was astonished that monseigneur should carry

so large an inkhorn. "Do you not see," said the talker, "that it is his

dagger? every one that goes to parliament wears his dagger?" Ornik

uttered an exclamation of astonishment, and departed.