ir, with your obliging letter; and you may perceive,
by the largeness of my paper, that I intend to give punctual answers
to all your questions, at least if my French will permit me; for, as
it is a language I do not understand to perfection, so I much fear,
that, for want of expressions, I shall be quickly obliged to finish.
Keep in mind, therefore, that I am writing in a foreign language, and
be sure to attribute all the impertinencies and triflings (sic)
dropping from my pen, to the want of proper words for declaring my
thoughts, but by no means to dulness, or natural levity.

THESE conditions being thus agreed and settled, I begin with telling
you, that you have a true notion of the alcoran, concerning which the
Greek priests (who are the greatest scoundrels in the universe) have
invented, out of their own heads, a thousand ridiculous stories, in
order to decry the law of Mahomet; to run it down, I say, without any
examination, or so much as letting the people read it; being afraid,
that if once they began to sift the defects of the alcoran, they
might not stop there, but proceed to make use of their judgment about
their own legends and fictions. In effect, there is nothing so like
as the fables of the Greeks and of the Mahometans; and the last have
multitudes of saints, at whose tombs miracles are by them said to be
daily performed; nor are the accounts of the lives of those blessed
musselmans much less stuffed with extravagancies, than the spiritual
romances of the Greek papas.

AS to your next inquiry, I assure you, 'tis certainly false, though
commonly believed in our parts of the world, that Mahomet excludes
women from any share in a future happy state. He was too much a
gentleman, and loved the fair sex too well, to use them so
barbarously. On the contrary, he promises a very fine paradise to
the Turkish women. He says, indeed, that this paradise will be a
separate place from that of their husbands; but I fancy the most part
of them won't like it the worse for that; and that the regret of this
separation will not render their paradise the less agreeable. It
remains to tell you, that the virtues which Mahomet requires of the
women, to merit the enjoyment of future happiness, are, not to live
in such a manner as to become useless to the world, but to employ
themselves, as much as possible, in making little musselmans. The
virgins, who die virgins, and the widows who marry not again, dying
in mortal sin,