Gentlemen: When, forty-four years ago, your countryman Medina became a bankrupt in London, being twenty thousand francs in my debt, he told me that "it was not his fault; that he was unfortunate"; that "he had never been one of the children of Belial"; that "he had always endeavored to live as a son of God"—that is, as an honest man, a good Israelite. I was affected; I embraced him; we joined in the praise of God; and I lost eighty per cent.
You ought to know that I never hated your nation; I hate no one; not even Fréron.
Far from hating, I have always pitied you. If, like my protector, good Pope Lambertini, I have sometimes bantered a little, I am not therefore the less sensitive. I wept, at the age of sixteen, when I was told that a mother and her daughter had been burned at Lisbon for having eaten, standing, a little lamb, cooked with lettuce, on the fourteenth day of the red moon; and I can assure you that the extreme beauty that this girl was reported to have possessed, had no share in calling forth my tears, although it must have increased the spectators' horror for the assassins, and their pity for the victim.
I know not how it entered my head to write an epic poem at the age of twenty. (Do you know what an epic poem is? For my part I knew nothing of the matter.) The legislator Montesquieu had not yet written his "Persian Letters," which you reproach me with having commented on; but I had already of myself said, speaking of a monster well known to your ancestors, and which even now is not without devotees:
Il vient; le fanatisme est son horrible nom;
Enfant dénaturé de la religion;
Armé pour la défendre, il cherche à la détruire,
Et reçu dans son sein, l'embrasse et le déchire,
C'est lui qui dans Raba, sur les bords de l'Arnon
Guidait les descendans du malheureux Ammon,
Quand à Moloch leur dieu des mères gémissantes
Offraient de leurs enfans les entrailles fumantes.
Il dicta de Jephté le serment inhumain;
Dans le cœur de sa fille il conduisait sa main.
C'est lui qui, de Calchas ouvrant la bouche impie
Demanda par sa voix la mort d'Iphigénie.
France, dans tes forêts il habita long-temps,
À l'affreux Tentatès il offrit ton encens.
Tu n'a point oublié ces sacres homicides,
Qu' à tes indignes dieux présentaient tes druides.
Du haut du capitole il criait aux Païens.
"Frappez, exterminez, déchirez les chrétiens."
Mais lorsqu'au fils de Dieu Rome enfin, fut soumise,
Du capitole en cendre il passa dans l'Eglise;
Et dans les cœurs chrétiens inspirant ses fureurs,
De martyrs qu'ils étaient les fit persécuteurs.
Dans Londres il a formé la secte turbulente
Qui sur un roi trop faible a mis sa main sanglante;
Dans Madrid, dans Lisbonne, il allume ces feux,
Ces buchers solennels où des Juifs malheureux
Sont tous les ans en pompe envoyés par des prêtres,
Pour n'avoir point quitté la foi de leurs ancêtres.
He comes; the fiend Fanaticism comes—
Religion's horrid and unnatural child—
Armed to defend her, arming to destroy—
Tearing her bosom in his feigned embrace.
'Twas he who guided Amnion's wretched race
On Anion's banks, where mothers offered up
Their children's mangled limbs on Moloch's altars.
'Twas he who prompted Jephthah's barbarous oath,
And aimed the poniard at his daughter's heart.
'Twas he who spoke, when Calchas' impious tongue
Called for the blameless Iphigenia's death.
France, he long revelled in thy forest shades,
Offering thy incense to the grim Tentâtes,
Whetting the savage Druid's murderous knife
To sate his worthless gods with human gore.
He, from the Capitol, stirred Pagan hearts
To exterminate Christ's followers; and he,
When Rome herself had bowed to Christian truth,
Quitted the Capitol to rule the church—
To reign supreme in every Christian soul,
And make the Pagans martyrs in their turn.
His were in England the fierce sect who laid
Their bloody hands on a too feeble king.
His are Madrid's and Lisbon's horrid fires,
The yearly portion of unhappy Jews,
By priestly judges doomed to temporal flames
For thinking their forefathers' faith the best.
You clearly see, then, that even so long ago I was your servant, your friend, your brother; although my father and mother had preserved to me my fore-skin.
I am aware that virility, whether circumcised or uncircumcised, has caused very fatal quarrels. I know what it cost Priam's son Paris, and Agamemnon's brother Menelaus. I have read enough of your books to know that Hamor's son Sichem ravished Leah's daughter Dinah, who at most was not more than five years old, but was very forward for her age. He wanted to make her his wife; and Jacob's sons, brothers of the violated damsel, gave her to him in marriage on condition that he and all his people should be circumcised. When the operation was performed, and all the Sichemites, or Sechemites, were lying-in of the pains consequent thereupon, the holy patriarchs Simeon and Levi cut all their throats one after another. But, after all, I do not believe that uncircumcision ought now to produce such abominable horrors; and especially I do not think that men should hate, detest, anathematize, and damn one another every Saturday and Sunday, on account of a morsel more or less of flesh.
If I have said that some of the circumcised have clipped money at Metz, at Frankfort on the Oder, and at Warsaw (which I do not remember) I ask their pardon; for, being almost at the end of my pilgrimage, I have no wish to embroil myself with Israel.
I have the honor to be (as they say),
Yours, etc.