"Yes, you are going to bring into play your utopias, fogs and hollow dreams. These idiots dispute about the existence or non-existence of the Almighty, when they might become little gods themselves. Let us hear who are the famous philosophers whom you have enlisted!"
"I have already the leading poet and the greatest atheist of the age, who will be coming into France presently, to be made a Freemason, in the lodge I am getting up in the old Jesuits' College, Potaufer street. His name is Voltaire."
"I do not know him. The next?"
"I am to be introduced to the greatest sower of ideas of the century, the author of the Social Contract, Rousseau."
"He is not known to me either."
"I expect not, as you only know such old alchemists as Alfonso the Wise, Raymond Lully, Peter of Toledo and Albert the Great."
"Because they are the only men who have really loved a life, sowed ideas that live, and labored at the grand question of to be or not to
be."
"There are two ways of living, master."
"I only know of one—existing. But to return to your brace of philosophers. With their help you intend to——"