Page:Works of Voltaire Volume 02.djvu/187

Rh the mountaineer. He said the custom of boiling and roasting a neighbor must be both ancient and natural, since it prevailed in both hemispheres, and therefore it must be an innate idea; that men were hunted before beasts because it was easier to kill men than wolves; that if the Jews, in their books, so long unknown, imagined that a certain Cain killed a certain Abel, it could only be with a view to eating him; that the same Jews admit they had often fed on human flesh; that the best historians describe the Jews as eating the bleeding flesh of Romans, whom they massacred in Egypt, Cyprus, and Asia, in their revolts against the emperors Trajan and Adrian.

We allowed him to indulge in these coarse jokes, which, though unfortunately true at the bottom, had neither Grecian wit nor Roman urbanity.

Freind, without answering him, addressed the natives. Parouba translated, phrase by phrase. Tillotson himself never spoke with more force. The insinuating Smaldridge never displayed more touching graces. The great secret of eloquence is to convince. He proved to them, accordingly, that the execrable custom of burning captives inspired a ferocity destructive to the human race. For this reason they were strangers to the comforts of society and the tillage of the ground.

At last they all swore, by their great manitou, that they would not burn men and women again.

Thus, from a single conversation, Freind became