ather from
one of his masters.

After a few years Ardassan Ougli became pasha with three tails. He made
a prodigious fortune, and he firmly believed that all men, excepting the
Great Turk and the Grand Vizier, were born to serve him, and all women
to give him pleasure in accordance with his caprice.

SECTION II

How has it been possible for one man to become another man's master, and
by what species of incomprehensible magic has he been able to become the
master of many other men? On this phenomenon a great number of good
volumes have been written; but I give the preference to an Indian fable,
because it is short, and because the fables have said everything.

Adimo, the father of all the Indians, had two sons and two daughters by
his wife Procriti. The elder son was a giant, the younger was a little
hunchback, the two daughters were pretty. As soon as the giant was
conscious of his strength, he lay with his two sisters, and made the
little hunchback serve him. Of his two sisters, one was his cook, the
other his gardener. When the giant wanted to sleep, he started by
chaining his little hunchback brother to a tree; and when the brother
escaped, he caught him in four strides, and gave him twenty strokes with
a length of ox sinew.

The hunchback became submissive and the best subject in the world. The
giant, satisfied to see him fulfilling his duties as subject, permitted
him to lie with one of his sisters for whom he himself had taken a
distaste. The children who came of this marriage were not entirely
hunchbacked; but they had sufficiently misshapen forms. They were
reared in fear of God and the giant. They received an excellent
education; they were taught that their great uncle was giant by divine
right, that he could do with his family as pleased him; that if he had a
pretty niece or great-niece, she was for him alone without a doubt, and
that no one could lie with her until he wanted her no longer.

The giant having died, his son, who was not by a long way as strong and
as big as he, thought nevertheless that he, like his father, was giant
by divine right. He claimed to make all the men work for him, and to lie
with all the women. The family leagued itself against him, he was beaten
to death, and the others turned themselves into a republic.

The Siamese, on the contrary, maintain that the family had started by
being republican, and that the giant did not come until after a great
number of years and dissensi