I would not myself refuse it, though I am at this moment engaged in composing a polemic against him.

Let me add that I am not allowing myself to be influenced in his favor by recollection of the extreme civility he was good enough to show me when I visited him at Ferney ten years ago." "It is really most considerate of you to be so lenient in your criticism of the greatest mind of the century!" Marcolina smilingly retorted.
"A great mind--the greatest of the century!" exclaimed Casanova.

"To give him such a designation seems to me inadmissible, were it only because, for all his genius, he is an ungodly man--nay positively an atheist.

No atheist can be a man of great mind." "As I see the matter, there is no such incompatibility.

But the first thing you have to prove is your title to describe Voltaire as an atheist." Casanova was now in his element.