history, I could prove to you that evil has always come here below through a few men of genius; but I don’t know any history because I don’t know anything at all. The devil take me if I’ve ever learnt a single thing and if, having learnt nothing, I am worse off. One day I was at table with one of the King’s Ministers who has brains enough for ten. Well, he showed us as plain as two and two make four that nothing is more useful to the nations of the earth than lies, nothing more harmful than the truth.