Page:Works of Voltaire Volume 03.djvu/123

Rh "But, gentlemen, what religion are you of?"

"Why, sir, we are for the most part drapers and manufacturers."

"If the pope, then, is not the master of your clothes and manufactures, you do very well not to acknowledge him; but as to kings, it is their business, and why do you trouble yourselves about it?"

Here a little black man took up the argument, and very learnedly set forth the grievances of the company. He talked of the revocation of the edict of Nantes with so much energy; he deplored, in so pathetic a manner, the fate of fifty thousand fugitive families, and of fifty thousand others converted by dragoons, that the ingenuous Hercules could not refrain from shedding tears.

"Whence arises it," said he, "that so great a king, whose renown expands itself even to the Hurons, should thus deprive himself of so many hearts that would have loved him, and so many arms that would have served him?"

"Because he has been imposed upon, like other great kings," replied the little orator. "He has been made to believe that as soon as he utters a word all people think as he does; and that he can make us change our religion, just as his musician Lulli, in a moment, changes the decorations of his opera. He has not only already lost five or six hundred thousand very useful subjects, but he has turned many of them into enemies; and King William, who is at this