Page:Works of Voltaire Volume 02.djvu/285

Rh .—Not in the least. The others, who possess their portions, set them to work and share with them. It is from this arrangement that the pay comes for the divine, the confectioner, the apothecary, the preacher, the actor, the attorney, and the hackney-coachman. You thought yourself very ill off to have no more than a hundred and twenty livres a year, reduced to a hundred and eight by your tax of twelve livres. But consider the soldiers who devote their blood to their country at the rate of fourpence a day. They have not above sixty-three livres a year for their livelihood, and yet they make a comfortable shift, by a number of them joining their little stock and living in common.

.—So, then, an ex-Jesuit has more than five times the pay of a soldier. And yet the soldiers have done more service to the state under the eyes of the king at Fontenoy, at Lawfeld, at the siege of Fribourg, than the reverend father Lavalette ever did in his life.

.—Nothing can be truer; nay, every one of these turned-adrift Jesuits, having now become free, has more to spend than what he cost his convent. There are even some among them who have gained a good deal of money by scribbling pamphlets against the parliaments, as, for example, the reverend father Patouillet, and the reverend father Nonnotte. In short, in this world every one sets his wits to work for a livelihood. One is at the head of a manufactory of stuffs; another