Note 8 — Chapter VI · DISGUISES ASSUMED BY, OR IN BEHALF OF, ROYALTY.

In Candide, or the Optimist, there is an admirable stroke of Voltaire’s; eight travellers meet in an obscure inn, and some of them with not sufficient money to pay for a scurvy dinner. In the course of conversation they are discovered to be eight monarchs in Europe, who had been deprived of their crowns. What gave point to this satire was, that these eight monarchs were not the fictitious majesties of the poetic brain; imperial shadows, like those that appeared to Macbeth; but living monarchs, who were wandering at that moment about the world.