Philosophical Dictionary (Vol. 2)

"ten percent," asked him jokingly what epitaph he would write for him if he were to die. Shakespeare replied:

Here lies a powerful financier,
Whom we call ten percent;
I would bet one hundred against ten
That he is not in paradise.
When Beelzebub arrived
To take hold of this tomb,
Someone said to him, what are you taking there,
Eh? It is our friend John Dacombe.

They have just revived this old joke again.

I know well that a man of the church,
Whom one feared greatly in this place,
Has just rendered his soul to God;
But I do not know if God has taken it.

There are a hundred witticisms and a hundred tales that have been circulating around the world for thirty centuries. Books are stuffed with maxims that are presented as new, but which are found in Plutarch, in Athenaeus, in Seneca, in Plautus, in all of antiquity.

These are only mistakes as innocent as they are common; but regarding voluntary falsehoods, the historical lies that attack the glory of princes and the reputation of individuals, these are serious offenses.

Of all the books swollen with false anecdotes, the one in which the most absurd lies are piled up with the most impudence is the compilation of the alleged Memoirs of Madame de