Page:Works of Voltaire Volume 03.djvu/99

Rh had exhausted all their astonishment, joy, and tenderness, the prior of the Mountain and the abbé of St. Yves concluded that the Huron should be baptized with all possible expedition. But the case was very different with a tall, robust Indian of twenty-two, and an infant who is regenerated without his knowing anything of the matter. It was necessary to instruct him, and this appeared difficult, for the abbé of St. Yves supposed that a man who was not born in France could not be endowed with common sense.

The prior, indeed, observed to the company that, though, in fact, the ingenuous gentleman, his nephew, was not so fortunate as to be born in Lower Brittany, he was not, upon that account, in any way deficient in sense, which might be concluded from all his answers; and that, doubtless, nature had greatly favored him, as well on his father's as on his mother's side.

He then was asked if he had ever read any books? He said he had read Rabelais translated into English, and some passages in Shakespeare, which he knew by heart; that these books belonged to the captain on board of whose ship he came from America to Plymouth; and that he was very well pleased with them. The bailiff failed not to put many questions to him concerning these books.

"I acknowledge," said the Huron, "I thought, in reading them, I understood some things, but not the whole."