“Est ubi peccat.”
Voltaire opened a door, and I saw a hundred great files full of papers.
“That’s my correspondence,” said he. “You see before you nearly fifty thousand letters, to which I have replied.”
“Have you a copy of your answers?”
“Of a good many of them. That’s the business of a servant of mine, who has nothing else to do.”
“I know plenty of booksellers who would give a good deal to get hold of your answers.
“Yes; but look out for the booksellers when you publish anything, if you have not yet begun; they are greater robbers than Barabbas.”
“I shall not have anything to do with these gentlemen till I am an old man.”
“Then they will be the scourge of your old age.”
Thereupon I quoted a Macaronic verse by Merlin Coccaeus.