Note 11 — INTRODUCTION
George Maidment translation
The Abbé de Buquoy (1653-1740) owed his imprisonment originally to having been found in company with dealers in contraband salt when the gabelle, or salt-tax, compelled the French people to buy salt, whether they wanted it or not, at a price two thousand times its true value. He was a man of very eccentric views, one of which was that woman was man’s chief evil, and that was why, when the patriarch Job was stripped of children, flocks, herds, &c., his wife was left to him!—T.