d no one would notice save Mme de Maintenon herself. Even His Majesty could be made aware of it only if it were mentioned in one breath with the awful news from England.
The English have at least grown in civilization of late, and only turn their kings out, instead of beheading them! They have also, so we are all told, become more artful in the excuses they make for these episodes. The usurpation of the English throne, we may be amazed to discover, is nothing more and nothing less than the working of the law of Nature. A system of philosophy has been set forth by a certain M. Locke that makes this all perfectly clear. If it is perhaps clearer to the Prince of Orange than it is to the unfortunate King James, we can only suppose that the new king sees all in the bright light of a throne, while the old one is so enveloped in shadows as to be unable to see how Nature caused his fall.
Indeed, my dear friend, are there any wonders that Nature is not capable of? In my foolish simplicity, I would have thought that the existence of an English philosopher was as contrary to Nature as the existence of a German cook, or at least of a good one. But I can attest that M. Locke does indeed exist, and is without doubt to be numbered among Nature's actual creatures, for--even greater wonder--I have chanced to meet the gentleman myself.
Do you ask how I can have kept my encounter with so momentous a personage as M. Locke a secret? I ask myself the same thing, and I can only give one answer: When I met him, I did not suppose that our encounter was momentous at all, and had quite forgotten it until this uproar from England called it back to my mind. He was, so I thought, a perfectly ordinary Englishmen, and his doctrine only mildly amusing. How in my wildest imagination could I have supposed that both would burst upon the world in this utterly extraordinary way?
Of M. Locke himself I will say very little because I remember very ...