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Subject Area: Political Theory
Subject Area: Religion

RAVAILLAC. - Voltaire, The Works of Voltaire, Vol. VII (Philosophical Dictionary Part 5) [1764]

Edition used:

The Works of Voltaire, A Contemporary Version, (New York: E.R. DuMont, 1901), A Critique and Biography by John Morley, notes by Tobias Smollett, trans. William F. Fleming. Vol. VII.

Part of: The Works of Voltaire. A Contemporary Version, in 21 vols.

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RAVAILLAC.

I knew in my infancy a canon of Péronne of the age of ninety-two years, who had been educated by one of the most furious burghers of the League—he always used to say, the late M. de Ravaillac. This canon had preserved many curious manuscripts of the apostolic times, although they did little honor to his party. The following is one of them, which he bequeathed to my uncle:

Dialogue of a Page of the Duke of Sully, and of Master Filesac, Doctor of the Sorbonne, one of the two Confessors of Ravaillac.

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—He in paradise, in the Garden of Eden, the monster!)

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—I believe so; but he has taken a bad road to arrive there.)

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—I have no wish that he should address God on my account. Let him go to the devil with his prayers and his attrition.)

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—In good faith, the more I listen to you the more I regard you as a man bound yourself. You excite horror in me.)

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—And the time will never come in which I shall be made to believe that you have sent Ravaillac to the kingdom of heaven.)

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—How, scoundrel!)

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—Go on; thou appearest to me so “raca,” that I will be angry no more.)

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—My dear master damned! Listen to the wicked wretch! A cane! a cane!)

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—Hold thy tongue, master madman; if I thought that thy doctors taught a doctrine so abominable, I would burn them in their lodgings.)

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—But conscientiously, Master Filesac, does thy party really think in this manner?)

Master Filesac.

—Be assured of it; it is our catechism.

Page.

—Listen; for I must confess to thee, that one of thy Sorbonnists almost seduced me last year. He induced me to hope for a pension or a benefice. Since the king, he observed, has heard mass in Latin, you who are only a petty gentleman may also attend it without derogation. God takes care of His elect, giving them mitres, crosses, and prodigious sums of money, while you of the reformed doctrine go on foot, and can do nothing but write. I own I was staggered; but after what thou hast just said to me, I would rather a thousand times be a Mahometan than of thy creed.

The page was wrong. We are not to become Mahometans because we are incensed; but we must pardon a feeling young man who loved Henry IV. Master Filesac spoke according to his theology; the page attended to his heart.