LETTER LXXXVIII. Usbek to Rhedi, at Venice.

AT Paris, liberty and equality reign. Birth, virtue, nor even military service, how great soever it may be, do not distinguish a man from the croud in which he is confounded. Jealousy about rank is unknown here. They say the first person in Paris is he who hath the best horses in his chariot. A great man is he who sees the king, who talks with the ministers, hath ancestors, debts, and pensions. If he can, with all this, hide his idleness by an air of business, or a feigned attachment to his pleasures, he esteems himself the happiest of all mankind. In Persia, no person is reckoned great, but such on whom the monarch confers some part of his government. Here, there are persons who are great by their birth, but without interest. Kings act like those able artificers, who, to execute their works, always make use of the plainest tools. Favour is the great divinity of the French; the minister is the high priest, who offers her many victims: those who attend upon her are not dressed in white; sometimes the sacrificers, and sometimes the sacrifices devote even themselves to their idol, with the whole nation.

Paris, the 3d of the moon of the 2d Gemmadi,
1715.