"'Nevertheless, Sire, in the war your sight was good enough; and, if I remember right, it reached very far!' KING.

"'It was not I; it was my glass.' EGO.

"'Ha, I should have liked to find that glass;--but, I fear it would have suited my eyes as little as Scanderbeg's sword my arm.' "I forget how the conversation changed; but I know it grew so free that, seeing somebody coming to join in it, the King warned him to take care; that it was n't safe to converse with a man doomed by the theologians to Everlasting Fire.

I felt as if he somewhat overdid this of his 'being doomed,' and that he boasted too much of it.

Not to hint at the dishonesty of these free-thinking gentlemen (MESSIEURS LES ESPRITS FORTS), who very often are thoroughly afraid of the Devil, it is, at least, bad taste to make display of such things: and it was with the people of bad taste whom he has had about him, such as a Jordan, a D'Argens, Maupertuis, La Beaumelle, La Mettrie, Abbe de Prades, and some dull sceptics of his own Academy, that he had acquired the habit of mocking at Religion; and of talking (DE PARLER) Dogma, Spinoism, Court of Rome and the like.