ger. Flinging my habit to the nettles, I put a
powdered wig on my horned brow, hid my goat's legs under white
stockings, and cane in hand, my pockets stuffed with gazettes, I
frequented the fashionable world, visited the modish promenades, and
showed myself assiduously in the _cafes_ where men of letters were to be
found. I was made welcome in _salons_ where, as a happy novelty, there
were arm-chairs that fitted the form, and where both men and women
engaged in rational conversation.

"The very metaphysicians spoke intelligibly. I acquired great weight in
the town as an authority on matters of exegesis, and, without boasting,
I was largely responsible for the Testament of the cure Meslier and _The
Bible Explained_, brought out by the chaplains to the King of Prussia.

"At this time a comic and cruel misadventure befel the ancient Iahveh.
An American Quaker, by means of a kite, stole his thunderbolts.

"I was living in Paris, and was at the supper where they talked of
strangling the last of the priests with the entrails of the last of the
kings. France was in a ferment; a terrible revolution broke out. The
ephemeral leaders of the disordered State carried on a Reign of Terror
amidst unheard-of perils. They were, for the most part, less pitiless
and less cruel than the princes and judges instituted by Iahveh in the
kingdoms of the earth; nevertheless, they appeared more ferocious,
because they gave judgment in the name of Humanity. Unhappily they were
easily moved to pity and of great sensibility. Now men of sensibility
are irritable and subject to fits of fury. They were virtuous; they had
moral laws, that is to say they conceived certain narrowly defined moral
obligations, and judged human actions not by their natural consequences
but by abstract principles. Of all the vices which contribute to the
undoing of a statesman, virtue is the most fatal; it leads to murder. To
work effectively for the happiness of mankind, a man must be superior to
all morals, like the divine Julius. God, so ill-used for some time
past, did not, on the whole, suffer excessively harsh treatment from
these new men. He found protectors among them, and was adored under the
name of the Supreme Being. One might even go so far as to say that
terror created a diversion from philosophy and was profitable to the old
demiurge, in that he appeared to represent order, public tranquillity,
and the security of person and property.

"While Liberty was comi