LETTER XCVIII. Usbek to Ibben, at Smyrna.

THERE is no country in the world where fortune is so inconstant as in this. A revolution of ten years shall precipitate the rich man into misery, and exalt the poor man with rapid wings to the summit of affluence. The new-made rich man admires the wisdom of providence, the poor man the blind disposal of fate. Those who collect the taxes, swim in the midst of treasures: there are among them a few Tantaluses. Yet they come into this employment from extreme wretchedness. They are despised like dirt whilst they are poor; when they are rich, they are well enough esteemed, as they neglect nothing to acquire respect. At present they are in a terrible situation. They are going to erect a chamber of justice, called so, because it is to strip them of all their riches. They cannot transfer their effects, nor conceal them; for they are obliged to render a just account, upon pain of death; so that they are compelled to pass a very narrow straight, as I may say, between their lives and their money. To fill up their misfortune, there is a minister remarkable for his wit, who honours them with his jokes, and is very merry upon all the deliberations of the council. They will not always find ministers disposed to make the people laugh; and they ought to take it kindly of him for behaving so. The body of footmen is more respectable in France than any where else: it is a seminary of great lords; they fill up the vacancies in the other states. Those who compose it take place of the unfortunate great, of ruined magistrates, of gentlemen killed by the fury of war; and when they cannot supply them from among themselves, they raise up all the great families by the help of their daughters, who are a kind of a dung by which mountainous

and barren lands are fattened. I find providence, Ibben, wonderful in her manner of distributing wealth. If she granted it only to good men, it would not have been sufficiently distinguished from virtue, and men would never have been sensible of the insignificancy of riches. But when we examine who are the people most loaded with them, by despising of the rich, we shall come at last to contemn riches themselves.

Paris, the 26th of the moon Maharran,
1717.