The reader may judge of the state to which I was reduced by the following specimen.

One day, De la Haye said to me: "It is not known whether God created the world during the vernal equinox or during the autumnal one." "Creation being granted," I replied, in spite of the mercury, "such a question is childish, for the seasons are relative, and differ in the different quarters of the globe." De la Haye reproached me with the heathenism of my ideas, told me that I must abandon such impious reasonings....

and I gave way! That man had been a Jesuit.

He not only, however, refused to admit it, but he would not even suffer anyone to mention it to him.

This is how he completed his work of seduction by telling me the history of his life.
"After I had been educated in a good school," he said, "and had devoted myself with some success to the arts and sciences, I was for twenty years employed at the University of Paris.