eat poet.

It is true that he should have avowed having translated two hundred of a
Jesuit's verses; but in his time, at the court of Charles II., people
did not worry themselves with either the Jesuits, or Milton, or
"Paradise Lost", or "Paradise Regained". All those things were either
scoffed at, or unknown.

_MOHAMMEDANS_

I tell you again, ignorant imbeciles, whom other ignoramuses have made
believe that the Mohammedan religion is voluptuous and sensual, there is
not a word of truth in it; you have been deceived on this point as on so
many others.

Canons, monks, vicars even, if a law were imposed on you not to eat or
drink from four in the morning till ten at night, during the month of
July, when Lent came at this period; if you were forbidden to play at
any game of chance under pain of damnation; if wine were forbidden you
under the same pain; if you had to make a pilgrimage into the burning
desert; if it were enjoined on you to give at least two and a half per
cent. of your income to the poor; if, accustomed to enjoy possession of
eighteen women, the number were cut down suddenly by fourteen; honestly,
would you dare call that religion sensual?

The Latin Christians have so many advantages over the Mussulmans, I do
not say in the matter of war, but in the matter of doctrines; the Greek
Christians have so beaten them latterly from 1769 to 1773, that it is
not worth the trouble to indulge in unjust reproaches against Islam.

Try to retake from the Mohammedans all that they usurped; but it is
easier to calumniate them.

I hate calumny so much that I do not want even to impute foolishness to
the Turks, although I detest them as tyrants over women and enemies of
the arts.

I do not know why the historian of the Lower Empire maintains that
Mohammed speaks in his Koran of his journey into the sky: Mohammed does
not say a word about it; we have proved it.

One must combat ceaselessly. When one has destroyed an error, there is
always someone who resuscitates it.

_MOUNTAIN_

It is a very old, very universal fable that tells of the mountain which,
having frightened all the countryside by its outcry that it was in
labour, was hissed by all present when it brought into the world a mere
mouse. The people in the pit were not philosophers. Those who hissed
should have admired. It was as fine for the mountain to give birth to a
mouse, as for the mouse to give birth to a mountain. A rock which
produ