Usbek to Rhedi in Venice

There are three kinds of estate in France : the Church, the Sword, and the Robe. [1] Each has supreme disdain for the other two ; for example, a certain person who ought to be disdained because he is a fool is often disdained only because he is a man of the robe.

Even the basest artisans quarrel over the excellence of the art they have chosen : each one raises himself above one in a different profession, proportionate to the notion he has conceived of the superiority of his own. [2]

All men are a lot like that woman from the province of Erivan [3] who, after receiving some favor from one of our monarchs, wished a thousand times in the benedictions she gave him that heaven might make him governor of Erivan.

I read in some account that, a French ship having dropped anchor off the coast of Guinea, a few members of the crew wanted to go ashore to buy some sheep. They were taken to the king, who was dispensing justice to his subjects under a tree ; he was on his throne, which is to say on a piece of wood, as proud as if he had been sitting on the throne of the Great Mogul ; he had three or four guards with wooden pikes ; a parasol shaped like a canopy kept him from the sun’s rays. All his ornaments and those of his wife the queen consisted in their black skin and a few rings. This prince, even more vain than pathetic, asked these strangers whether people talked a lot about him in France [4] : he thought his name must passed from pole to pole, and unlike that conqueror of whom it was said that he had reduced the whole earth to silence, [5] this one thought that he should make the whole world talk. [6]

When the Khan of Tartary has dined, a herald cries that all the princes of the earth may go dine if they so wish ; and that barbarian, who eats nothing but milk, has no house, and lives by pillaging, regards every king in the world as his slave, and insults them regularly twice a day.

Paris this 28^th day of the moon of Rhegeb 1713