Page:Works of Voltaire Volume 02.djvu/308

276 they ought not, at forty crowns a head, to possess above ten million eight hundred thousand livres. Pray, how much have they actually?

.—They have to the amount of fifty millions, including the masses, and alms to the mendicant monks, who really lay a considerable tax on the people. A begging friar of a convent in Paris publicly bragged that his wallet was worth fourscore thousand livres a year.

.—Let us now consider how much the distribution of fifty millions among ninety thousand shaven crowns gives to each? Let us see, is it not five hundred and fifty-five livres?

.—Yes, and a considerable sum it is in a numerous society, where the expenses even diminish by the quantity of consumers; for ten persons may live together much cheaper than if each had his separate lodging and table.

.—So that the ex-Jesuits, to whom there is now assigned a pension of four hundred livres, are then really losers by the bargain.

.—I do not think so, for they are almost all of them retired among their friends, who assist them. Several of them say masses for money, which they did not do before; others get to be preceptors; some are maintained by female bigots; each has made a shift for himself; and, perhaps, at this time, there are few of them who have tasted of the world, and of liberty, that would resume their former chains. The monkish life, whatever they may say, is not at all to