Page:Works of Voltaire Volume 02.djvu/163

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The Atheist and the Sage.
139

You may well suppose that I, with my dear friend Las Nalgas, accompanied them."

Boca Vermeja then told him, again shedding tears, how John was jealous, or affected to be jealous, of the bachelor; how a certain Madame Clive-Hart, a very bold, spiteful, masculine, young married lady, had enslaved his mind; how he lived with libertines who had no fear of God; how, in a word, he neglected Boca Vermeja for the artful Clive-Hart; and all because Clive-Hart had a little more red and white in her complexion than poor Boca Vermeja.

"I will look into the matter at leisure," said the worthy Mr. Freind. "I must now attend parliament, to look after Lord Peterborough's business."

Accordingly, to parliament he went, where I heard him deliver a firm and concise discourse, free from commonplace epithets and circumlocutions. He never invoked a law or a testimony. He quoted, enforced and applied them. He did not say they had taken the religion of the court by surprise, by accusing Lord Peterborough of exposing Queen Anne's troops to risk, because it had nothing to do with religion. He did not call a conjecture a demonstration, nor forget his respect to an august parliament, by using common jokes. He did not call Lord Peterborough his client, because client signifies a plebeian protected by a senator. Freind spoke with confidence and modesty; he was