Montesquieu

“ The Seraglio at Ispahan, the 8th of the first moon of Rebiab, 1720.
Letter 161 Roxana to Usbek, at Paris
YES, I have deceived you; I have led away your eunuchs: I have made sport of your jealousy; and I have known how to turn your frightful seraglio into a place of pleasure and delight.
I am at the point of death; the poison courses through my veins: for what should I do here, since the only man who bound me to life is no more? I die; but my spirit shall not pass unaccompanied: I have dispatched before me those sacrilegious gaolers who spilt the sweetest blood in the world. ”

“ And what are you, but vile instruments whom I may destroy at my pleasure; whose existence depends upon obedience; who have been sent into the world to live under my laws, or to die when I require it; who will cease to breathe as soon as my happiness, my love, my jealousy, has no more need of your ignoble service; who, in fine, can have no other lot that submission, whose soul is my will, whose only hope begins and ends in pleasing me? ”

“ We imagine that there is no more difference between the administration of the revenues of a prince and the fortune of a private person, than there is between counting a hundred thousand tomans and counting only a hundred; but the matter is very much more delicate and mysterious. It requires the greatest geniuses to work night and day, inventing endless new schemes with all the pains of travail; they must listen to the advice of a multitude of people, who, unasked, meddle in their affairs; they have to retire and live shut up in closets inaccessible to the great, and worshipped by the small ”

“ The soul, while united to the body, is a slave under a tyrant. If the blood moves sluggishly, if our spirits are not light enough, or high enough, we fall into dejection, and grow melancholy; but, if we drink what has the power to change the disposition of our body, our soul becomes capable of receiving delightful impressions, and experiences an inward joy as its machine recovers, so to speak, life and motion. ”

“ You have been careful to tell me that eunuchs are not men, and that your virtue raises you above those thoughts which an imperfect likeness might arouse. That is not enough either for you or for me: not enough for you, because you have done that which the laws of the seraglio forbid; not enough for me, inasmuch as you have robbed me of honour, in exposing yourself to the gaze—what do I say?—perhaps to the attempts of a traitor who would have defiled you by his misdeeds, and still more by his repining and his impotent despair. You will doubtless tell me that you have always been faithful. ”

“ We are no longer allowed to speak; to write would be a crime: we have no liberty except to weep.
A crowd of new eunuchs have entered the seraglio, and beset us night and day: our sleep is constantly interrupted by their real or feigned suspicions. What consoles me is, that all this cannot last for ever, and that my troubles will end with my life. And the end is not far distant, cruel Usbek: I will not give you time to put an end to all these outrages.
The Seraglio at Ispahan, the 2nd of the moon of Maharram, 1720. ”

“ Paris is perhaps the most luxurious city in the world; in it pleasure is carried to the highest pitch of refinement; yet life there is perhaps harder than in any other city. That one man may live delicately, a hundred must labour without intermission. It comes into a lady’s head that she ought to appear at an assembly in a certain dress; from that moment fifty workmen must go without sleep, and without time to eat or drink; she commands, and is obeyed as promptly as our monarch would be, because interest is the greatest monarch in the world. ”

“ But, when the laws bestow us on one man they withdraw us from all others, and place us as far from them as if a hundred thousand leagues intervened.
Nature, diligent in the service of men, has been no niggard in her dowry of desire; to women also she has not been unkind, and has destined us to be the living instruments of the enjoyment of our masters; she has set us on fire with passion in order that they may live at ease; should they quit their insensibility, she has provided us to restore them to it, without our ever being able to taste the happiness of the condition into which we put them. ”

“ With us, character is uniform, because it is constrained; we do not see people as they are, but as they are obliged to be; in that slavery of heart and mind, it is only fear that utters a dull routine of words, very different from the language of nature which expresses itself so variously.
Dissimulation, that art so practised and so necessary with us, is here unknown: they say everything, see everything, and hear everything; hearts are as open as faces; in manners, in virtue, even in vice, one detects always a certain artlessness. ”

“ A certain degree of dread attaches to a certain degree of punishment, and each feels it in his own way: a punishment which would not rob a Turk of a single quarter of an hour’s sleep, would overwhelm a Frenchman with infamy and despair.
Besides, I do not see that police regulations, justice, and equity, are better observed in Turkey, in Persia, or in the dominions of the Mogul, than in the Republics of Holland, and of Venice, and even in England: it does not appear that fewer crimes are committed there, and that men, intimidated by the greatness of punishments, are more obedient to the laws. ”

“ You are the scourge of vice, and the very monument of fidelity.
You command them and they obey. You fulfill implicitly all their desires, and exact from them a like obedience to the laws of the seraglio; you take a pride in rendering them the meanest services; you submit to their lawful commands with reverence and in dread; you serve them like the slave of their slaves. But, resuming your power, you command imperiously, as my representative, whenever you apprehend any slackening of the laws of chastity and modesty. ”

“ I know not how it happens, but the wickedest king is hardly ever so bad as his minister; if he commits a vile action, it has nearly always been suggested to him: thus the ambition of princes is never so dangerous as the baseness of their advisers. But can you understand how a man who was yesterday made minister, and may perhaps to-morrrow be disgraced, can become in a moment his own enemy, the enemy of his family, of his country, and of the people who are yet to be born of those he is about to oppress? ”

“ What is your opinion, sublime dervish, of the Christians? Do you think that at the day of judgment, like the unbelieving Turks, who are to serve the Jews for asses, they will be hurried off at the gallop into hell? I am well aware that their abode will not be with the prophets, and that the great Hali’s mission was not to them. But, do you think they will be condemned to everlasting punishment because they have not been fortunate enough to find mosques in their country? Will God chastise them for failing to practise a religion which He has withheld from their knowledge? ”

“ Usbek can be as brilliant and satirical on occasion as his younger companion, but his aim is to probe to the heart of things, and he knows that truth will only reveal itself to a reverent search. To him all religions are worthy of respect, and their ministers also, for “God has chosen for Himself, in every corner of the earth, souls purer than the rest, whom He has separated from the impious world that their mortification and their fervent prayers may suspend His wrath.” He thinks that the surest way to please God is to obey the laws of society, and to do our duty towards men. ”

“ I have no other business than to provoke husbands, and drive fathers mad; I delight in alarming a woman who thinks me hers, and in bringing her within an ace of losing me. A set of us young fellows divide up Paris among us in this pursuit, and keep it wondering at everything we do.’ ‘From what I understand,’ said I, ‘you make more stir than the most valorous warrior, and are more regarded than a grave magistrate. If you were in Persia you would not enjoy all these advantages; you would be held fitter to guard our women than to please them.’ The blood mounted to my face ”

“ It must indeed be admitted that the life of the seraglio is more conducive to health than to happiness, it is so dull and uniform. Everything turns upon discipline and duty; the very pleasures are solemn, and mirth itself is sad; enjoyment is hardly ever tasted except as an indication of authority and dependence.
Even the men are not so cheerful in Persia as in France: one never sees that freedom of spirit, and that air of contentment, which I find here among all sorts and conditions of men. ”

“ The incomes of citizens cannot be farmed: they consist only in skill and industry: each has his own, and makes the best of it.
He who would wish to count the dervishes who run after the revenue of some mosque, might as well attempt to number the sands of the sea, or the slaves of our monarch.
An infinite number of professors of languages, of arts, and of sciences, teach what they do not know; and their talent is not by any means despicable; for much less wit is required to exhibit one’s knowledge, than to teach what one knows nothing of. ”