to no one but me."

I kissed his hand, and I went to the second. He was a fine old man about
a hundred years old, clad in a white robe. He put his middle-finger on
his mouth, and with the other hand he cast some beans behind him. I
recognized Pythagoras. He assured me he had never had a golden thigh,
and that he had never been a cock; but that he had governed the
Crotoniates with as much justice as Numa governed the Romans, almost at
the same time; and that this justice was the rarest and most necessary
thing in the world. I learned that the Pythagoreans examined their
consciences twice a day. The honest people! how far we are from them!
But we who have been nothing but assassins for thirteen hundred years,
we say that these wise men were arrogant.

In order to please Pythagoras, I did not say a word to him and I passed
to Zarathustra, who was occupied in concentrating the celestial fire in
the focus of a concave mirror, in the middle of a hall with a hundred
doors which all led to wisdom. (Zarathustra's precepts are called
_doors_, and are a hundred in number.) Over the principal door I read
these words which are the precis of all moral philosophy, and which cut
short all the disputes of the casuists: "When in doubt if an action is
good or bad, refrain."

"Certainly," I said to my genius, "the barbarians who immolated all
these victims had never read these beautiful words."

We then saw the Zaleucus, the Thales, the Aniximanders, and all the
sages who had sought truth and practised virtue.

When we came to Socrates, I recognized him very quickly by his flat
nose. "Well," I said to him, "here you are then among the number of the
Almighty's confidants! All the inhabitants of Europe, except the Turks
and the Tartars of the Crimea, who know nothing, pronounce your name
with respect. It is revered, loved, this great name, to the point that
people have wanted to know those of your persecutors. Melitus and
Anitus are known because of you, just as Ravaillac is known because of
Henry IV.; but I know only this name of Anitus. I do not know precisely
who was the scoundrel who calumniated you, and who succeeded in having
you condemned to take hemlock."

"Since my adventure," replied Socrates, "I have never thought about that
man; but seeing that you make me remember it, I have much pity for him.
He was a wicked priest who secretly conducted a business in hides, a
trade reputed shameful among us. He sent his two children to m