Page:Works of Voltaire Volume 02.djvu/279

Rh I was perfectly well satisfied with the confession of the sensible mathematician, and, with all my misfortune, could not help laughing on learning that there was a quackery even in that science which is called the sublime science. My geometrician was a kind of philosophical patriot, who had deigned to chat with me sometimes in my cottage. I said to him:

"Sir, you have tried to enlighten the cockneys of Paris on a point of the greatest concern to mankind: that of the duration of human life. It is to you alone that the ministry owes its knowledge of the due rate of annuities for lives, according to different ages. You have proposed to furnish the houses in town with what water they may want, and to deliver us at length from the shame and ridicule of hearing water cried about the streets, and of seeing women enclosed within an oblong hoop, carrying two pails of water, both together of about thirty pounds weight, up to a fourth story. Be so good, in the name of friendship, to tell me how many two-handed bipeds there may be in France?"

.—It is assumed that there may be about twenty millions, and I am willing to adopt this calculation as the most profitable, till it can be verified, which it would be very easy to do, and which, however, has not hitherto been done, because one does not always think of everything.

.—How many acres, think you, the whole territory of France contains?