Page:Works of Voltaire Volume 03.djvu/263

Rh natural visage; so that this people seemed composed of spectres. Upon the arrival of strangers in this country they immediately purchase these visages in the same manner as people elsewhere furnish themselves with hats and shoes. Amazan despised a fashion so contrary to nature. He appeared just as he was.

Many ladies were introduced and interested themselves in the handsome Amazan. But he fled with the utmost precipitancy, uttering the name of the incomparable princess of Babylon and swearing by the immortal gods that she was far handsomer than the Venetian girls.

"Sublime traitoress," he cried in his transports, "I will teach you to be faithful!"

Now the yellow surges of the Tiber, pestiferous fens, a few pale, emaciated inhabitants clothed in tatters which displayed their dry, tanned hides, appeared to his sight and bespoke his arrival at the gate of the city of the Seven Mountains that city of heroes and legislators who conquered and polished a great part of the globe.

He expected to have seen at the triumphal gate five hundred battalions commanded by heroes, and in the senate an assembly of demi-gods giving laws to the earth. But the only army he found consisted of about thirty tatterdemalions mounting guard with umbrellas for fear of the sun. Having arrived at a temple which appeared to him very fine, but not so