QUESTION.—Thank you, sir. I swear to you that no daughter of mine shall be a nun. They shall learn to spin, to sew, to make lace, to embroider, to render themselves useful. I look on the vows of convents to be crimes against one's country and one's self. Now, sir, I beg you will explain to me, how comes it that a certain writer, in contradiction to human kind, pretends that monks are useful to the population of a state, because their buildings are kept in better repair than those of the nobility, and their lands better cultivated?
ANSWER.—-He has a mind to divert himself; he knows but too well, that ten families who have each five thousand livres a year in land, are a hundred, nay, a thousand times more useful than a convent that enjoys fifty thousand livres a year, and which has always a secret hoard. He cries up the fine houses built by the monks, and it is precisely those fine houses that provoke the rest of the subjects; it is the very cause of complaint to all Europe. The vow of poverty condemns those palaces, as the vow of humility protests against pride, and as the vow of extinguishing one's race is in opposition to nature.
QUESTION.—Bless me! Who can this be that advances so strange a proposition?
ANSWER. It is the friend of mankind, [Monsieur le M. de Mirabeau, in his book entitled L'Ami des Hommes. It is against this marquis that the jest on the only tax is leveled; a tax proposed by him], or rather the friend of the monks.
QUESTION.—I begin to think it advisable to be very distrustful of books.
ANSWER.—The best way is to make use, with regard to them, of the same caution, as with men. Choose the most reasonable, examine them, and never yield unless to evidence.
VII.
ON TAXES PAID TO A FOREIGN POWER.
About a month ago, the Man of Forty Crowns came to me, holding both his sides, which seemed ready to burst with laughing. In short, he laughed so heartily that I could not help laughing also, without knowing at what. So true it is, that man is born an imitative animal, that instinct rules us, and that the great emotions of the soul are catching. Ut ridentibus arrident, ita flentibus adflent, Humani vultus.