Not so fast, my life, said the
emperor, you must not rise till you go to execution; it is now one in
the morning, and you have not begun your story.
My great grandfather, continued the princess, was a Dutch merchant, who
passed many years in Japan--On what account? said the emperor. He went
thither to abjure his religion, said she, that he might get money enough
to return and defend it against Philip 2d. You are a pleasant family,
said the emperor; but though I love fables, I hate genealogies. I know
in all families, by their own account, there never was any thing but
good and great men from father to son; a sort of fiction that does not
at all amuse me. In my dominions there is no nobility but flattery.
Whoever flatters me best is created a great lord, and the titles I
confer are synonimous to their merits. There is Kiss-my-breech-Can, my
favourite; Adulation-Can, lord treasurer; Prerogative-Can, head of the
law; and Blasphemy-Can, high-priest. Whoever speaks truth, corrupts his
blood, and is ipso facto degraded. In Europe you allow a man to be noble
because one of his ancestors was a flatterer. But every thing
degenerates, the farther it is removed from its source. I will not hear
a word of any of your race before your father: what was he?
It was in the height of the contests about the bull unigenitus--I tell
you, interrupted the emperor, I will not be plagued with any more of
those people with Latin names: they were a parcel of coxcombs, and seem
to have infected you with their folly.
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