Silence.

CATHERINE [soliloquizing enthusiastically]. What a wonderful
author is Monsieur Voltaire! How lucidly he exposes the folly of
this crazy plan for raising the entire revenue of the country
from a single tax on land! how he withers it with his irony! how
he makes you laugh whilst he is convincing you! how sure one
feels that the proposal is killed by his wit and economic
penetration: killed never to be mentioned again among educated
people!

EDSTASTON. For Heaven's sake, Madam, do you intend to leave me
tied up like this while you discuss the blasphemies of that
abominable infidel? Agh!! [She has again applied her toe.] Oh!
Oo!

CATHERINE [calmly]. Do I understand you to say that Monsieur
Voltaire is a great philanthropist and a great philosopher as
well as the wittiest man in Europe?

EDSTASTON. Certainly not. I say that his books ought to be burnt
by the common hangman [her toe touches his ribs]. Yagh! Oh don't.
I shall faint. I can't bear it.

CATHERINE. Have you changed your opinion of Monsieur Voltaire?

EDSTASTON. But you can't expect me as a member of the Church of
England [she tickles him] --agh! Ow! Oh Lord! he is anything you
like. He is a philanthropist, a philosopher, a beauty: he ought