The initiation in the mysteries of Eleusis lasted nine days.  The ceremonies were very imposing, and the company of the highest.  Plutarch informs us that Alcibiades was sentenced to death and his property confiscated, because he had dared to turn the mysteries into ridicule in his house.  He was even sentenced to be cursed by the priests and priestesses, but the curse was not pronounced because one of the priestesses opposed it, saying: 

“I am a priestess to bless and not to curse!”

Sublime words!  Lessons of wisdom and of morality which the Pope despises, but which the Gospel teaches and which the Saviour prescribes.

In our days nothing is important, and nothing is sacred, for our cosmopolitan philosophers.

Botarelli publishes in a pamphlet all the ceremonies of the Freemasons, and the only sentence passed on him is: 

“He is a scoundrel.  We knew that before!”

A prince in Naples, and M. Hamilton in his own house, perform the miracle of St. Januarius; they are, most likely, very merry over their performance, and many more with them.  Yet the king wears on his royal breast a star with the following device around the image of St. Januarius:  ‘In sanguine foedus’.  In our days everything is inconsistent, and nothing has any meaning.  Yet it is right to go ahead, for to stop on the road would be to go from bad to worse.

We left Lyons in the public diligence, and were five days on our road to Paris.  Baletti had given notice of his departure to his family; they therefore knew when to expect him.  We were eight in the coach and our seats were very uncomfortable, for it was a large oval in shape, so that no one had a corner.  If that vehicle had been built in a country where equality was a principle hallowed by the laws, it would not have been a bad illustration.  I thought it was absurd, but I was in a foreign country, and I said nothing.  Besides, being an Italian, would it have been right for me not to admire everything which was French, and particularly in France?—­Example, an oval diligence:  I respected the fashion, but I found it detestable, and the singular motion of that vehicle had the same effect upon me as the rolling of a ship in a heavy sea.  Yet it was well hung, but the worst jolting would have disturbed me less.

As the diligence undulates in the rapidity of its pace, it has been called a gondola, but I was a judge of gondolas, and I thought that there was no family likeness between the coach and the Venetian boats which, with two hearty rowers, glide along so swiftly and smoothly.  The effect of the movement was that I had to throw up whatever was on my stomach.  My travelling companions thought me bad company, but they did not say so.  I was in France and among Frenchmen, who know what politeness is.  They only remarked that very likely I had eaten too much at my supper, and a Parisian abbe, in order to excuse me, observed that my stomach was weak.  A discussion arose.