"There were not any popes any more than cardinals."

The good bishop crossed himself; he thought he was with an evil spirit,
and jumped out of the cambiature.




_BOOKS_


You despise them, books, you whose whole life is plunged in the vanities
of ambition and in the search for pleasure or in idleness; but think
that the whole of the known universe, with the exception of the savage
races is governed by books alone. The whole of Africa right to Ethiopia
and Nigritia obeys the book of the Alcoran, after having staggered under
the book of the Gospel. China is ruled by the moral book of Confucius; a
greater part of India by the book of the Veidam. Persia was governed for
centuries by the books of one of the Zarathustras.

If you have a law-suit, your goods, your honour, your life even depends
on the interpretation of a book which you never read.

_Robert the Devil_, the _Four Sons of Aymon_, the _Imaginings of Mr.
Oufle_, are books also; but it is with books as with men; the very small
number play a great part, the rest are mingled in the crowd.

Who leads the human race in civilized countries? those who know how to
read and write. You do not know either Hippocrates, Boerhaave or
Sydenham; but you put your body in the hands of those who have read