"Reason!—reason," said La Mettrie, "is kind and beneficial, when it serves to excuse and legitimate my passions and vices—my appetites—call them as you please. When it becomes annoying, I wish to kick it out of doors. Damn!—I wish to know no reason which will make me pretend to be brave, when I am not; to be a stoic, when I suffer; and submissive, when I am in a rage. Away with such reason! I'll have none of it; for it is a monster and chimera of the imagination of those triflers of antiquity whom you all admire so much and know not why. I hope its reign may never come! I like absolute power of no kind; and if I were to be forced not to believe in God, which now is my state of mind, I am sure I would go straight to mass."
"You, it is well known," said D'Argens, "are capable of anything—even in believing in the philosopher's stone of the Count of Saint Germain."
"Why not? It would be pleasant, and I need such a thing."
"Well! that is true," said Poelnitz, putting his hand in his vast and empty pockets. "The sooner its reign comes the better. I pray for it every morning and night."
"Bah!" said Frederick, who always turned a deaf ear to every insinuation. "Monsieur de Saint Germain knows, then, the secret of making gold—you did not say that?"
"Then let me invite him to supper to-morrow," said La Mettrie; "for I have an idea, Royal Gargantua, his secret would do you no harm. You have great necessities, and a most capacious stomach, as a king and a reformer."
"Be silent, Panurge!" said Frederick. "We know all about your count, who is an impudent impostor, and a person I intend to place under close surveillance. We are assured, with his fine secrets he takes more money out of the country than he leaves in it. Eh, gentlemen; do you not remember the great magician, Cagliostro, whom I made march out of Berlin, in double quick time, about six months since?"
"And who robbed me of a hundred crowns! May the devil sue him for them, say I."
"And who would have also had a hundred more, if Poelnitz could have raised them," said D'Argens.
"You drove him away; yet he played you a good trick, notwithstanding."