n of genius? And
D'Alembert, would he have attained his high fame, his universal
reputation, if he had been satisfied with his name of M. Le Rond, or Mr.
Allround? What would have become of Metastasio under his true name of
Trapasso? What impression would Melanchthon have made with his name of
Schwarzerd? Would he then have dared to raise the voice of a moralist
philosopher, of a reformer of the Eucharist, and so many other holy
things? Would not M. de Beauharnais have caused some persons to laugh and
others to blush if he had kept his name of Beauvit, even if the first
founder of his family had been indebted for his fortune to the fine
quality expressed by that name?

Would the Bourbeux have made as good a figure on the throne as the
Bourbons? I think that King Poniatowski ought to have abdicated the name
of Augustus, which he had taken at the time of his accession to the
throne, when he abdicated royalty. The Coleoni of Bergamo, however, would
find it rather difficult to change their name, because they would be
compelled at the same time to change their coat of arms (the two
generative glands), and thus to annihilate the glory of their ancestor,
the hero Bartholomeo.

Towards the end of autumn my friend Fabris introduced me to a family in
the midst of which the mind and the heart could find delicious food. That
family resided in the country on the road to Zero. Card-playing,
lovemaking, and practical jokes were the order of the day. Some of those
jokes were rather severe ones, but the order of the day was never to get
angry and to laugh at everything, for one was to take every jest
pleasantly or be thought a bore. Bedsteads would at night tumble down
under their occupants, ghosts were personated, diuretic pills or
sugar-plums were given to young ladies, as well as comfits who produced
certain winds rising from the netherlands, and impossible to keep under
control. These jokes would sometimes go rather too far, but such was the
spirit animating all the members of that circle; they would laugh. I was
not less inured than the others to the war of offence and defence, but at
last there was such a bitter joke played upon me that it suggested to me
another, the fatal consequences of which put a stop to the mania by which
we were all possessed.

We were in the habit of walking to a farm which was about half a league
distant by the road, but the distance could be reduced by half by going
over a deep and miry ditch across w