Rica to Usbek in ***

The other day I went to dine at the house of a man of the robe [1] who had invited me several times. After talking about many things, I said to him : Monsieur, I have the impression that that your profession is very difficult. Not as much as you imagine, he replied ; the way we go about it, it is just an amusement. But how ? Is your head not always full of other people’s business ? Are you not always occupied by things that are uninteresting ? You are right, these things are not interesting, for we take no interest whatever in them, and that itself makes the profession not as onerous as you say. When I saw him taking the matter in so detached a way, I continued, and said to him : Monsieur, I have not seen your office. I should think not, for I have none. When I took this charge I needed money to pay for my provisions [2] : I sold my library, and the bookseller who took it, from a prodigious number of volumes, left me only my book of accounts. It is not that I miss them : we judges do not puff ourselves up with vain science ; what need do we have of all those volumes of laws ? Almost all the cases are hypothetical, and outside the general rule. But could that not be, monsieur, because you force them outside ? For after all, why would every people on earth have laws, if they did not have their application ? And how can you apply them, if you do not know them ? If you know the Palace, [3] added the magistrate, you would not speak as you do : we have living books, which are the lawyers ; they work for us and their duty is to instruct us. And do they not sometimes also make it their duty to deceive you ? I rejoined. You would therefore not be wrong to protect yourself from their traps. They have weapons with which they attack your equity ; it would be good for you also to have some to defend it, and not to join in the battle lightly clad among men armored to the teeth.

Paris this 13^th day of the moon of Chahban 1714