by Voltaire
‘The Princess Obeira, Queen of the Island of Tahiti…’ – at that moment coffee was served; and as soon as it was taken, Dr Grou went on with his story as follows:
CHAPTER VI
‘The Princess Obeira, as I was saying, after heaping us with presents, with a politeness worthy of a Queen of England, was curious to be present one morning at our Anglican service. We celebrated it with as much pomp as we could. In the afternoon she invited us to her service: this was on 14 May 1769. We found her surrounded by about one thousand persons of both sexes arranged in a semi-circle and respectfully silent. A very pretty girl, simply decked out in a garment of amorous transparency, was lying on a platform which served as an altar. Queen Obeira ordered a fine young man of about twenty to make the sacrifice. He repeated a sort of prayer and climbed on to the altar. The two sacrificers were half-naked. The Queen, with a majestic air, instructed the young victim in the most suitable method of consummating the sacrifice. All the Tahitians watched so attentively and respectfully that not one of our sailors dared to interrupt the ceremony with an indecent laugh. That is what I have seen, I tell you; that is what our whole crew saw; it is for you to draw your own conclusions.’
‘This sacred festival does not surprise me,’ said Dr Goodman. ‘I am convinced that it was the first festival ever celebrated by man; and I do not see why we should not pray to God when we are about to make a being in His image, as we pray to Him before the meals which sustain our bodies. To labour to bring into being a creature of reason is the most noble and sacred of acts. Thus thought the early Indians, who revered the Lingam, the symbol of generation; or the ancient Egyptians, who carried the Phallus in procession; or the Greeks, who erected temples to Priapus. If one may quote the miserable little Jewish nation, clumsy imitator of all its neighbours, its holy books say that this nation too adored Priapus and that the queen mother of the Jewish king Asa was high priestess of Priapus.*
‘However this may be, it is very probable that no race ever established or could establish a cult from libertinism. Debauchery sometimes crept in over the course of time, but the institution as such is always innocent and pure. Our earliest love-feasts, where boy and girl kissed each other innocently on the mouth, did not degenerate into assignations and infidelities until much later; and would to God that I might sacrifice with Miss Fidler with no ulterior motives before Queen Obeira. That would assuredly be the finest day and the finest action of my life.’
Mr Sidrac, who had hitherto kept silent because Goodman and Grou were still talking, at last abandoned his reserve and said: ‘What I have just heard ravishes me with admiration. Queen Obeira seems to me the greatest queen of the southern hemisphere (I dare not say both hemispheres). But amidst such majesty and felicity, there is one thing which makes me tremble and which Mr Goodman raised without your replying. Is it true, Dr Grou, that Captain Wallis,20 who anchored off that fortunate isle before you, brought the two most dreadful scourges on earth, the pox and the smallpox?’
‘Alas!’ replied Dr Grou, ‘the French accuse the English and the English accuse the French. Bougainville21 says that the cursed English gave the pox to Queen Obeira; Captain Cook asserts that the Queen contracted it only from Bougainville himself. However this may be, the pox is like the fine arts, nobody knows who invented them, but eventually they run through Europe, Asia, Africa and America.’
‘I have been a surgeon for a long time,’ said Sidrac, ‘and I confess I owe the greater part of my fortune to this malady; yet I do not detest it any the less. Mrs Sidrac communicated it to me on the first night of our wedding; and, as she is an excessively delicate woman in all matters touching her honour, she published in all the London newspapers the statement that she was indeed prey to an infamous disease, but that she had contracted it in her mother’s womb, and that it was an old family habit.
‘What was Nature (as we call her) thinking of, when she poured this poison into the very wellsprings of life? It has been said,22 and I repeat, that this is the most fundamental and detestable of all contradictions. Man, they say, was after all created in God’s image! Finxit in effigiem moderantum cuncta deorum,23 and yet it is in the spermatic vessels of this image that pain, infection and death are to be found! What then becomes of Lord Rochester’s noble verse: Love, in a land of atheists, would lead to God?’24
‘Alas!’ said the excellent Goodman, ‘Perhaps I have to thank Providence that I did not marry my dear Miss Fidler; for who knows what might have happened? We are never sure of anything in this world. At any rate, Mr Sidrac, you have promised me your help in everything to do with my bladder.’ ‘I am entirely at your service,’ replied Sidrac, ‘but you must banish these gloomy thoughts.’ Goodman, speaking in this way, seemed as if to foresee his fate.
CHAPTER VII
The next day the three philosophers debated the great question: what is the primary motivation behind all the actions of man? Goodman, whose loss of his living and his beloved was always on his mind, said that the universal principle was love and ambition. Grou, who had seen more of the world, said that it was money; and the great anatomist Sidrac insisted that it was the commode. His two companions were taken aback with astonishment; but here is how the scholarly Sidrac proved his thesis:
‘I have always remarked that the affairs of this world depend in every case upon the opinions and wishes of a principal actor, whether king, prime minister or senior civil servant. Now these opinions and wishes are the immediate consequence of the manner in which the animal spirits filter through the cerebellum, and from there into the spinal cord. These animal spirits depend upon the circulation of the blood; the blood is dependent on the formation of chyle; chyle is formed in the mesentery network of the stomach; this mesentery is attached to the intestines by means of very slender threads; and the intestines are, if I may speak frankly, full of shit. Now in spite of the three strong tunics with which each of the intestines is clothed, they are riddled with holes: for everything in nature is open-work, and there is not a grain of sand so small that does not have less than five hundred pores. You could thread a thousand needles through a cannonball if you could find needles fine enough and strong enough.
‘What occurs therefore in the case of the constipated man? The finest and most delicate particles of his excreta mix with the chyle in the Azellian veins, travel to the portal vein and into the Pecquet’s reservoir;25 they pass into the sub-clavicle; and they enter the heart of even the most courteous of men, even the most charming of women. It is an essence of dried turd that penetrates the whole body. If this essence saturates the parenchyma, vessels and glands of a bilious subject, his ill-humour turns to ferocity; the whites of his eyes become a smouldering gloom; his lips are stuck together; his complexion turns muddy. He would seem to threaten you; do not approach, and, if he is a senior minister, refrain from presenting him with a petition. He looks upon every piece of paper as an aid which he would dearly like to employ after the abominable manner of Europeans from time immemorial. Find out discreetly from his favourite manservant whether he was at stool that morning.
‘This is more important than you think. Constipation has been responsible for some of the bloodiest episodes of history. My grandfather, who died a centenarian, was Cromwell’s apothecary. He often told me how Cromwell had not been to the toilet for a week at the time he ordered the King’s head to be cut off.
‘Anyone at all familiar with European affairs knows that the scarface duc de Guise was often warned not to cross Henri III in winter when a north-east wind was blowing. At such times the king went to the toilet only with extreme difficulty. His faecal matter mounted to his head at such times, and he was capable of extremes of violence. The duc de Guise paid no attention to these counsels of wisdom. And what happened? He was murdered together with his brother.26
‘Charles IX, Henri’s predecessor, was the most constipated man in his kingdom. The passages of his colon and rectum were so blocked that in the end the blood spouted through the pores of his skin. We know on
ly too well how this dried-up humour was one of the principal causes of the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre.27
‘On the other hand, stout persons with well-lined intestines, a flowing bile duct, an easy and regular peristaltic movement which is discharged every morning as soon as they have breakfasted, with a well-rounded stool as easily passed as one spits… such individuals favoured by nature are gentle, affable, gracious, attentive, sympathetic, obliging. A no uttered by them has more grace than a yes in the mouth of the constipated.
‘The toilet exercises such an influence that having the runs, on the other hand, often makes a man pusillanimous. Dysentery drains courage. Don’t ask a man weakened by lack of sleep, by a lingering fever, and by fifty putrid evacuations, to go attacking a demi-lune28 in the middle of the day. Which is why I cannot believe that our entire English army had dysentery during the battle of Agincourt, as is claimed, and that they carried the day with their pants down. A few soldiers may have had the runs after gorging themselves on bad grapes while on the march. Yet historians will claim that an entire sick army fought bare-bottomed, and that, so as not to show this to the French dandies, they beat them hollow, according to the expression of the Jesuit historian Father Daniel. “Now there’s a fine example of how to write history.”29
‘In the same way French historians all repeat, one after another, that our great Edward III had six burghers of Calais presented with a rope around their necks,30 intending to hang them for their courage in daring to withstand the siege, and that his wife finally obtained their pardon with her tears. These writers of fiction are unaware that it was the custom in those barbarous times for burghers to offer themselves up before their conqueror with a rope around their neck, when they had delayed him for too long in front of some ill-fortified hovel. But certainly the generous Edward had no intention of squeezing the breath out of these six hostages, whom he in fact showered with presents and honours. I am tired of all the trifles with which so many so-called historians have larded their chronicles, and all the battles they have so poorly described. I should as soon choose to believe the story that Gideon carried off his victory with the signal to break three hundred pitchers.31
‘I only read natural history now, thank God, and only so long as a Burnet, a Whiston or a Woodward32 do not bore me with their confounded systems; and that a Maillet33 no longer tells me that the Irish Sea produced the Caucasus mountain, or that our globe is made of glass; and so long as nobody tries to persuade me that little aquatic bulrushes are man-eating animals, or that corals are insects; or so long as charlatans do not insolently palm off on me their day-dreams as verities. I set more store by a good diet which maintains my humours in equilibrium, and procures me a decent digestion and a sound sleep. Drink hot drinks when the weather freezes, and cold drinks in the dog days; neither too much nor too little of anything; digest, repose, enjoy yourself, and let the rest go its ways.’
CHAPTER VIII
As Mr Sidrac was proffering these words of wisdom a servant came in to inform Mr Goodman that Lord Chesterfield’s steward was at the door, in his carriage, and wished to speak with him on urgent business. Goodman ran out to hear what he had to say, and was invited into the steward’s carriage.
‘No doubt you know, sir, what happened to Mr Sidrac on his wedding night?’ asked the steward.
‘Yes, sir, he told me the story of that little adventure just now.’
‘Very well! The same thing occurred between the fair Miss Fidler and her parson husband. The next morning they fought; the day after that they separated, and the parson has now been deprived of his living. I am in love with Miss Fidler, I know that she loves you, but nor does she hate me. I can rise above the unimportant disgrace which was the cause of her divorce. I am in love and I am without fear. Give up Miss Fidler to me and I shall see to it that you get the living, which is worth over a hundred and fifty guineas a year. You have ten minutes to make up your mind.’
‘This is a delicate proposition, sir. I must consult my philosophers Sidrac and Grou; I shall return to you forthwith.’
He ran back to his two advisers. ‘I see’, he said, ‘that the affairs of this world are not decided by digestion alone, and that love, ambition and money play a large part.’ He laid before them his situation, and begged them to decide for him at once. They both concluded that with an income of a hundred and fifty guineas he could have all the girls in his parish and Miss Fidler into the bargain.
Goodman saw the wisdom of this decision; he took the parsonage, had Miss Fidler in secret, which was far more agreeable than having her for a wife. Mr Sidrac was prodigal with his good offices where they were needed. Goodman became one of the most terrible priests in England, and remains more convinced than ever that fate governs everything in this world.
MÉLANGES
Account of the Illness,
Confession, Death and
Apparition of the Jesuit
Berthier
It was on 12 October 1759 that, unluckily for him, Brother Berthier1 travelled from Paris to Versailles with Brother Coutu,2 his usual companion. Berthier had put a few copies of the Journal de Trévoux into the carriage, to present them to his various protectors: the chambermaid to Madame the wet-nurse, one of the palace cooks, an apprentice apothecary to the King, and several other noblemen who appreciate talent. On the way, Berthier started to feel nauseous; his head grew heavy, he yawned repeatedly. ‘I don’t know what’s the matter with me,’ he said to Coutu, ‘I have never yawned so much.’ Brother Coutu replied: ‘Reverend Father, it’s only to be expected.’ ‘What do you mean, only to be expected?’ said Brother Berthier. ‘Look,’ said Brother Coutu, ‘I’m yawning too, and I don’t know why, because I haven’t read a thing all day, and you haven’t said a word to me since we set off.’ As he said this, Brother Coutu yawned more than ever. Berthier replied with a yawn which continued as if he would never stop. The coachman turned round, and seeing them, began to yawn too; the malady spread to all the passers-by, and to all the neighbouring houses. Such an effect upon others does the very presence of a learned man sometimes have!
Meanwhile Berthier was breaking out in a cold sweat. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me,’ he said, ‘I feel like ice.’ ‘I know what you mean,’ said his companion. ‘You know what I mean?’ said Berthier, ‘what do you mean by that?’ ‘Well, I’m frozen too,’ said Coutu. ‘And I’m almost asleep,’ said Berthier. ‘I’m not surprised,’ said the other. ‘How’s that?’ said Berthier. ‘Well, I’m falling asleep too,’ said his companion. So there they both were, in the grip of a soporific, lethargic malady, and in this state they arrived at the coach entry to Versailles. When the coachman opened the door of the carriage, he tried to rouse them from their profound slumber, but he failed. He called for help. At last the companion brother, who was more robust than Brother Berthier, gave some signs of life; but Berthier was colder than ever. Some of the court doctors, returning from dinner, passed by the carriage. They were asked to cast an eye on the sick man. One of them took his pulse, then went off saying that he had nothing more to do with medicine now that he was at court. Another, having examined Berthier more carefully, declared that the sickness proceeded from the gall-bladder, which was too full; a third maintained that it came from the brain, which was too empty.
While they were arguing, the patient’s condition worsened. His convulsions began to look fatal, and the three fingers with which one holds a quill were already quite rigid, when a principal doctor, who had studied under Mead and Boerhaave3 and knew rather more than the others, opened Berthier’s mouth with a feeding-bottle, and, having carefully considered the odour of his breath, pronounced that he had been poisoned.
At this word, everyone cried out. ‘Yes, gentlemen,’ he went on, ‘he has been poisoned; just touch his skin, and you can see the exhalations of a cold poison seeping through the pores; in my view a poison worse than hemlock, black hellebore, opium, nightshade and henbane combined. Coachman, have you by chance brought some parcel for
our apothecaries in your coach?’ ‘No, sir,’ replied the coachman; ‘the only package is the one the reverend Father ordered me to bring.’ At which he rummaged in the trunk and pulled out two dozen copies of the Journal de Trévoux. ‘Well, gentlemen, was I wrong?’ asked the great doctor.
Everyone present admired his prodigious sagacity: they all acknowledged the source of the evil, and the pernicious packet was immediately burned under the nose of the patient. The action of the fire lessened the weight of the particles, and Berthier’s condition was slightly relieved; but as the sickness had made great progress, and his head was affected, he was still in danger. The doctor proposed that he be made to swallow a page of the Encyclopédie, in some white wine, to revivify the humours of his clotted bile; this resulted in a copious evacuation, but his head was still dreadfully heavy, the vertigo continued, and the few words he could utter made no sense; he remained in this state for two hours, after which it was found necessary to hear his confession.
At that moment, two priests were walking along the rue des Récollets. They were approached. The first refused: ‘I shall not be responsible for the soul of a Jesuit, it’s too risky: I shall have nothing to do with that lot, either for the affairs of this world or the next. Whoever wants to can shrive a Jesuit, but it won’t be me.’ The second priest was not so difficult. ‘I’ll undertake it,’ he said, ‘one can turn anything to good account.’
He was led immediately to the room where the sick man had been carried; as Berthier still could not speak distinctly, the confessor decided to resort to questions. ‘Reverend Father,’ he began, ‘do you believe in God?’ – ‘That’s a strange question,’ said Berthier. ‘Not so strange,’ said the other; ‘there’s believing and believing: to be certain that one believes in the correct way, one must love God and one’s neighbour – do you love them sincerely?’ – ‘I would make a distinction there,’ said Berthier. ‘No distinctions, please,’ replied the confessor; ‘and no absolution, if you do not accept these two duties from the start.’ ‘All right, then,’ said Berthier, ‘since you insist, yes, I love God, and my neighbour as well as I can.’
