We talk and laugh with our companions, who are dressed in a light gauze, and whose tresses are adorned with flowers; we press them to partake of exquisite sherbets, differently prepared.  The hour of supper being arrived, we repair to rooms illuminated with the lustre of a thousand tapers fragrant with amber.  The supper-room is surrounded by three vast galleries, in which are placed musicians, whose various instruments fill the mind with the most pleasurable and the softest emotions.  The young girls are seated at table with us, and, towards the conclusion of the repast, they sing songs, which are hymns in honour of the God who has endowed us with senses which shed such a charm over existence, and which promise us new pleasure from every fresh exercise of them.  After the repast is ended, we return to the dance, and, when the hour of repose arrives, we draw from a kind of lottery, in which every one is sure of a prize that is a sumptuously decorated sleeping room for the night.  These rooms are allotted to each by chance to avoid jealousy, since some rooms are handsomer than others.  Thus ends the day and gives place to a night of exquisite repose in which we enjoy well-earned sleep, that most divine of earthly gifts.

We admire the wisdom and the goodness of Faraki, who has implanted an unconscious mutual attraction between the sexes that constantly draws them towards each other.  It is this mutual love, these invisible ties, that make the world brighter, cheerier, happier.  It has been truly said that those who selfishly cut themselves away from these ties, those that lead narrow, lonely, morbid lives, lose most of life’s joys.  What should we say to the favourite of a King from whom he had received a beautiful house, and fine estates, and who chose to spoil the house, to let it fall in ruins, to abandon the cultivation of the land, and let it become sterile, and covered with thorns?  Such is the conduct of the faquirs of India, who condemn themselves to the most melancholy privations, and to the most severe sufferings.  Is not this insulting Faraki?  Is it not saying to him, I despise your gifts?  Is it not misrepresenting him and saying, You are malevolent and cruel, and I know that I can no otherwise please you than by offering you the spectacle of my miseries?  “I am told,” added he, “that you have, in your country, faquirs not less insane, not less cruel to themselves.”  I thought, with some reason, that he meant the fathers of La Trappe.  The recital of the matter afforded me much matter for reflection, and I admired how strange are the systems to which perverted reason gives birth.

The Duc de V——­ was a nobleman of high rank and great wealth.  He said to the King one evening at supper, “Your Majesty does me the favour to treat me with great kindness:  I should be inconsolable if I had the misfortune to fall under your displeasure.  If such a calamity were to befall me, I should endeavour to divert my grief by improving some beautiful estates of mine in