Reader, keep them well in mind: I had rather not speak of them again.

They are essential to our Story; but they are afflictively vain, contrary to the Laws of Fact; and can, now or henceforth, in nowise be.

My friend, it was not Beelzebub, nor Mephistopheles, nor Autolyeus-Apollo that built this world and us; it was Another.

And you will get your crown well rapped, M.le Marechal, for so forgetting that fact! France is an extremely pretty creature; but this of making France the supreme Governor and God's-Vicegerent of Nations, is, was, and remains, one of the maddest notions.

France at its ideal BEST, and with a demi-god for King over it, were by no means fit for such function; nay of many Nations is eminently the unfittest for it.