Page:Works of Voltaire Volume 02.djvu/296

268 little of history, and something of geometry, but I do not understand a word of Latin.

.—The sense is pretty nearly as follows: ''There is wrong on both sides. Keep to a medium in everything. Nothing too much.''

.—I say, nothing too much; that is really my situation; but the worst of it is, I have not enough.

.—I allow that you must perish of want, and I, too, and the state, too, if the new administration should continue only two years longer; but it is to be hoped heaven will have mercy on us.

.—We pass our lives in hope, and die hoping to the last. Adieu, sir; you have enlightened me, but my heart is grieved.

.—This is, indeed, often the fruit of knowledge.

When I had thanked the academician of the Academy of Sciences for having set me right, I went away quite out of heart, praising Providence, but muttering between my teeth these doleful words: "What! to have no more than forty crowns a year to live on, nor more than twenty-two years to live! Alas! may our life be yet shorter, since it is to be so miserable!"