At the time when all of France was mad over the Mississippi Bubble and John Law was controller-general, there came to him a man who always had reason on his side. Said he to Law in the presence of a large crowd:

  “Sir, you are the biggest madman, the biggest fool, or the biggest rogue who has yet appeared among us, and that is saying a great deal. This is how I prove it. You have imagined that a state’s wealth can be increased ten-fold with paper, but as this paper can only represent only the money that is representative of true wealth – the products of the land and industry – you should have begun by giving us ten times more corn, wine, cloth, canvas, etc. That is not enough. You must be sure of your market. But you make ten times as many notes as we have silver and commodities, therefore you are ten times more extravagant, or more inept, or more of a rogue than all the comptrollers who have preceded you. Now this is how I prove the major of my thesis.”

  But he had hardly started his major when he was led off to a lunatic asylum. When he came out of the asylum, where he studied hard and strengthened his reason, he went to Rome, where he asked for a public audience with the Pope, on condition that he would not be interrupted in his harangue. And he spoke to the Pope in these terms: “Holy Father, you are an antichrist and this is how I prove it to your holiness. I call antichrist the man who does contrary to what Christ did and commanded. Now Christ was poor, and you are very rich; he paid tribute, and you exact tribute; he submitted to the powers that were, and you have become a power yourself; he walked on foot, and you go to Castle Gandolfo in a sumptuous equipage; He ate whatever anyone was good enough to give him, and you want us to eat fish on Friday and Saturday, when we live far from sea and River; he forbade Simon Barjona to use a sword, and you have in your service, etc. etc., etc. Therefore in this sense your holiness is antichrist. In every other sense I hold you in great veneration, and I ask you for an indulgence in articulo mortis (at the moment of death.”

  My man was put in the Castillo St. Angelo. When he came out of the Castillo St. Angelo; he rushed to Venice, and asked to speak to the doge.

  “Your serenity,” he said. “Must be a very extravagant person to marry the sea every year: for, in the first place, one only marries the same person once; secondly, your marriage resembles Harlequin’s which was half made seeing that it lacked but the consent of the bride; thirdly, how do you know that other maritime powers will not one day declare you incapable of consummating the marriage?”

  Having spoken, he was shut up in the tower of St. Mark’s.

  When he came out of the Tower of St. Mark’s, he went to Constantinople where he had an audience with the Mufti, and spoke to him in these terms: “Your religion, although it has some good points, such as worship of a supreme Being, and the rule of being just and charitable, is otherwise nothing but a rehash of Judaism and a tedious collection of fairy tales. If the archangel  Gabriel had brought the leaves of the Koran to Mohamed from some planet, all Arabia would have seen Gabriel come down; But nobody saw him. Therefore Mohammed was a brazen imposter who deceived imbeciles.”

  Hardly had he pronounced these words than he was run through with a sword. Nevertheless he had always been right, and always had reason on his side.

The foregoing consists of selected articles from Voltaire’s PHILOSOPHICAL DICTIONARY, translated by H. I. Woolf.