LETTER LXIII. Rica to Usbek, at * * *.

THOU intendest, I think, to pass thy life in the country. I was not to have lost thee at first, for more than three or four days, and here are fifteen gone, and I have not seen thee. It is true, thou art in a delightful house, where you find company suitable to your taste, and can reason at thy ease: there is nothing more necessary to make thee forget the whole universe. I, for my part, lead my life pretty nearly in the same manner, as when you saw me. I launch into the world, and endeavour to know it. My mind insensibly loses all that remained of the Asiatic, and easily conforms to European manners. I am no longer surprised at the sight of five or six women in one house, with as many men; and I begin to think it is not improper. I may say I knew nothing of women till I came here: I have learned more of them here in a month, than I should have done in thirty years in a seraglio. With us there is an uniformity of character, as it is al forced: we do not see people as they are, but as they are obliged to appear: in this state of slavery, both of body and mind, it is their fears only that speak, which have but one language, and that not of nature, which expresses herself so differently, and which appears under so many forms. Dissimulation, an art among us universally practised, and so necessary, is unknown here: they speak every thing, see every thing, and hear every thing: the heart, like the face, is visible: in their manners, in their virtue, even in their vices, there is always something genuine and native to be perceived. To please the women here, a certain talent is necessary, different from that which contributes more to their pleasure: it consists in a kind of witty playing of the fool, that amuses them, as it seems to promise them every minute what they can only hope to enjoy at too

long intervals. This playing of the fool, naturally adapted to the toilet, seems to constitute the general character of this nation; they thus play the fool in the council, at the head of an army, and do the same with ambassadors. No profession appears ridiculous but in proportion to the gravity mixed with it; a physician would not be so ridiculous, if his dress was less affectedly grave, and if he killed his patients with more pleasantry.

Paris, the 10th of the moon of the 1st Rebiab,
1714.