Note 4 — Chapter LIX · WERTHER AND DON JUAN

See the Vie privée du duc de Richelieu, nine volumes in 8vo. Why, at the moment that an assassin kills a man, does he not fall dead at his victim's feet? Why is there illness? And, if there is illness, why does not a Troistaillons die of the colic? Why does Henry IV reign twenty-one years and Lewis XV fifty-nine? Why is not the length of life in exact proportion to the degree of virtue in each man? These and other "infamous questions," English philosophers will say there is certainly no merit in posing; but there would be some merit in answering them otherwise than with insults and "cant."