finger of Providence the way in which the world is being thus prepared for general conversion to the creed of Islam. About diversities of ceremonial belief he has naturally much to say. 'The other day I was eating a rabbit at an inn. Three men who were near me made me tremble, for they all declared that I had committed a grievous sin, one because the animal was impure, and the second because it had been strangled, and the third because it was not a fish. I appealed to a Brahmin, who happened to be there and he said, 'They are all wrong, for doubtless you did not kill the animal yourself.' 'But I did.' 'Then your action is damnable and unpardonable. How did you know that your father's soul has not passed into that poor beast?'
Neither the burning question of the Bull Unigenitus[1], nor Law and his scheme, is left untouched.
He pursues a somewhat less dangerous path, though still a path paved with treacherous cinders, when he sketches, after La Bruyère's manner, contemporary social types, the 'grand seigneur' with his offensive manner of taking snuff and caressing his lapdog, the man 'of good fortunes,' the dogmatist, the director of consciences who distinguishes between grades of sin, and whose clients are not ambitious of front seats in Paradise, but wish to know how just to squeeze in. There are also national types, such as the Spaniard, whose gravity of character is manifested by his spectacles and his moustache, and who has little forms of politeness which would appear out of place in France. The captain never beats a soldier without
- ↑ Horace Walpole complained once that he found life in England so dull that he must go to Paris and try and amuse himself with the Bull Unigenitus.
