A. It is natural also to be one-eyed, humpbacked, lame, deformed, and sickly; but we prefer persons well made and healthy.
B. Why are there so many one-eyed and deformed minds?
A. Hush! Consult, however, the article on "Omnipotence."
LAW (SALIC).
He who says that the Salic law was written with a pen from the wing of a two-headed eagle, by Pharamond's almoner, on the back of the patent containing Constantine's donation, was not, perhaps, very much mistaken.
It is, say the doughty lawyers, the fundamental law of the French Empire. The great Jerome Bignon, in his book on "The Excellence of France," says that this law is derived from natural law, according to the great Aristotle, because "in families it was the father who governed, and no dower was given to daughters, as we read in relation to the father, mother, and brothers of Rebecca."
He asserts that the kingdom of France is so excellent that it has religiously preserved this law, recommended both by Aristotle and the Old Testament. And to prove this excellence of France, he observes also, that the emperor Julian thought the wine of Surêne admirable.
But in order to demonstrate the excellence of the Salic law, he refers to Froissart, according to whom the twelve peers of France said that "the kingdom of France is of such high nobility that it never ought to pass in succession to a female."
It must be acknowledged that this decision is not a little uncivil to Spain, England, Naples, and Hungary, and more than all the rest to Russia, which has seen on its throne four empresses in succession.