Pope in these terms:

"Holy Father, you are an antichrist and this is how I prove it to Your
Holiness. I call antichrist the man who does the contrary to what Christ
did and commanded. Now Christ was poor, and you are very rich; he paid
tribute, and you exact tribute; he submitted to the powers that were,
and you have become a power; he walked on foot, and you go to
Castel-Gandolfo in a sumptuous equipage; he ate all that one was so good
as to give him, and you want us to eat fish on Friday and Saturday, when
we live far from sea and river; he forbade Simon Barjona to use a sword,
and you have swords in your service, etc., etc., etc. Therefore in this
sense Your Holiness is antichrist. In every other sense I hold you in
great veneration, and I ask you for an indulgence _in articulo mortis_."

My man was put in the Castello St. Angelo.

When he came out of the Castello St. Angelo, he rushed to Venice, and
asked to speak to the doge.

"Your Serenity," he said, "must be a scatter-brain to marry the sea
every year: for firstly, one only marries the same person once;
secondly, your marriage resembles Harlequin's which was half made,
seeing that it lacked but the consent of the bride; thirdly, who has
told you that one day other maritime powers will not declare you
incapable of consummating the marriage?"

He spoke, and was shut up in the Tower of St. Mark's.

When he came out of the Tower of St. Mark's, he went to Constantinople;
he had audience of the mufti; and spoke to him in these terms:

"Your religion, although it has some good points, such as worship of the
great Being, and the necessity of being just and charitable, is
otherwise nothing but a rehash of Judaism and a tedious collection of
fairy tales. If the archangel Gabriel had brought the leaves of the
Koran to Mahomet from some planet, all Arabia would have seen Gabriel
come down: nobody saw him; therefore Mahomet was a brazen impostor who
deceived imbeciles."

Hardly had he pronounced these words than he was impaled. Nevertheless
he had always been right, and had always had reason on his side.

_RELIGION_

I meditated last night; I was absorbed in the contemplation of nature; I
admired the immensity, the course, the harmony of these infinite globes
which the vulgar do not know how to admire.

I admired still more the intelligence which directs these vast forces. I
said to myself: "One must be blind not to be dazzled by this spectacle;
one mu