The day after the trial, the son of the gaoler brought me a letter, which, to my utter astonishment, was from the Duke, and contained the following lines[†]:
* * * * * * * *
(To be continued.)
[*] Pliny long ago knew that extraordinary quality of the oil, and in our times it has been confirmed by the experiments of the immortal Franklin. Mr. Osorezkowsky, the celebrated Russian academician, experienced the same on his physical voyage, and our modern seamen in general are no strangers to that effect of the oil, and frequently make use of it in dangerous surges.
“Osorezkowsky” is the German spelling of the name Озерецковский (Ozeretskovsky).
[†] This letter is the same which is prefixed to the beginning of these Memoirs.
Footnotes in the book versions of the Victim have “the first volume” in place of “the beginning”.
A PENEGYRIC UPON IMPUDENCE.
Orators and men of wit have frequently amused themselves with maintaining paradoxes. Thus, Erasmus has written a penegyric upon folly: Montaigne has said fine things upon ignorance, which he somewhere calls “the softest pillow a man can lay his head upon:” and Cardan, in his Encomium Neronis, has, I suppose, defended every vice and every folly. It is astonishing to me, that no one has yet done justice to impudence; which has so many advantages, and for which so much may be said. Did it never strike you, what simple, naked, uncompounded impudence will do? what strange and astonishing effects it will produce? Aye, and without birth, without property, without principle, without even artifice and address, without indeed any single quality, but “the front of three-fold brass.”