It will soon be impossible to pronounce the word fille in good society, except to express relationship.
Why are we obliged to make use of this word to designate a child of the feminine sex? Simply because the feminine of garçon began to be used in a bad sense in the seventeenth century. Before the feminine of garçon—which the French had to give up, as they will soon have to give up the word fille—they had a word which is, in the present day, a horribly coarse expression.
Such is the march of the spirit of destruction.
The Gauls have always been rich in wit, but wit often of a bantering and sarcastic kind, which disparages and covers with ridicule, and of which Voltaire was the personification.
People who eat sausages on a Friday,[8] in France, think they are doing a smart thing, and rebelling against a form of tyranny, forgetting that Lenten fasts had originally a sanitary reason. To give rest to the stomach, such was the aim; and a French physician said to me one day: "If there were no Lent in the spring, I should order my patients to fast two or three times a week, through that season of the year."
The Talmud forbids the Jews to eat pork, because that meat is heavy and indigestible; the Koran forbids the use of wine among the Mussulmans, because of its intoxicating properties; in fact, have not all these religious edicts a foundation of common sense, and do we not give proof of common sense in conforming to them? Truly, he is but a pitiful hero—not to use a stronger term—who boasts of not following a salutary counsel, that he does not know how to appreciate, because he does not understand.
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The English, unlike us, cling to their past, and because a custom is old, that is a sufficient reason, in their eyes, for holding it sacred. I feel sure that there is not an Englishman, who does not religiously eat his slice of plum pudding on Christmas Day, let him be in the Bush, at the Antipodes, on land or on water, and no matter in what latitude.
It is a veritable communion.
The English observance of the Sunday is tyrannical, I admit, but it is an ancient institution, and, if kept in an intelligent way, should command respect.