that the apple which tempted wretched Eve was not the fruit of an
apple-tree; that was an allegory the sense of which I have explained
to you. Although imperfect, and sometimes violent and capricious,
Jehovah was too intelligent a demiurge to be offended about an apple
or a pomegranate. One has to be a bishop or a Capuchin to support
such extravagant imaginations. And the proof that the apple was what
I said, is that Eve was stricken by a punishment suitable to her
fault. She had not been told 'You will digest laboriously,' but it
was said to her 'You'll give birth in pain'; for logic sake what
connection can be established, I beg of you, between an apple and
difficult confinement? On the other hand, the suffering is correctly
applied if the fault has been such as I showed you.

"That is, my son, the truthful explanation of original sin. It will
teach you your duty, which is, to keep away from women. To follow
this bent is fatal. All children born by those means are imbecile
and miserable."

I was stupefied, and exclaimed:

"But, sir, could children be born in another way?"

"Happily, some are born in another way," was his reply; "a
considerable number by the union of men with genii of the air. And
such are intelligent and beautiful. By such means were born the
giants of whom Hesiod and Moses speak. Thus also Pythagoras was
born, to whose bodily formation his mother, a Salamander, had
contributed a thigh of pure gold. Such also Alexander the Great,
said to have been the son of Olympias and a serpent; Scipio
Africanus, Aristomenes of Messina, Julius Caesar, Porphyry, the