to abolish it for only five or six idle clauses that were contrary to our
belief.

They had also the trick easily to lend undue praises to all the emperors
who made for us, and universally to condemn all the actions of those who
were adversaries, as is evidently manifest in the Emperor Julian,
surnamed the Apostate,

[The character of the Emperor Julian was censured, when Montaigne
was at Rome in 1581, by the Master of the Sacred Palace, who,
however, as Montaigne tells us in his journal (ii. 35), referred it
to his conscience to alter what he should think in bad taste. This
Montaigne did not do, and this chapter supplied Voltaire with the
greater part of the praises he bestowed upon the Emperor.--Leclerc.]

who was, in truth, a very great and rare man, a man in whose soul
philosophy was imprinted in the best characters, by which he professed to
govern all his actions; and, in truth, there is no sort of virtue of
which he has not left behind him very notable examples: in chastity (of
which the whole of his life gave manifest proof) we read the same of him
that was said of Alexander and Scipio, that being in the flower of his
age, for he was slain by the Parthians at one-and-thirty, of a great many
very beautiful captives, he would not so much as look upon one. As to
his justice, he took himself the pains to hear the parties, and although
he would out of curiosity inquire what religion they were of,
nevertheless, the antipathy he had to ours never gave any counterpoise to
the balance. He made himself several good laws, and repealed a great
part of the subsidies and taxes levied by his predecessors.

We have two good historians who were eyewitnesses of his actions: one of