XXVIII 
PREFACE. 
 
large a number of peers there are against whom I have not 
a shadow of evidence or even suspicion.  Luckily the jud-
ges are less wary.  While the bishops are such easy game 
as to be hardly worth powder and shot. 
There, I’ve done it now ! 
 
Vous avez écrit contre le bon Dieu ;  c’est mauvais, mais Il le vous 
pardonnera. 
Vous avez écrit contre Jésus Christ ;  c’est pire encore, mais Il 
le vous pardonnera. 
Mais vous avez écrit contre Leurs Excellences, et Elles ne le vous 
pardonneront jamais. 
 
But this lion can bite back ! 
Nor after all, is fear precisely the sentiment inspired by 
the spectacle of a nation which has so recently placed at 
the head of its affairs that William Ewart Gladstone who 
shaped his policy by the predictions of a charlatan clair-
voyant in Bond Street, while his drunken harlot performed 
her watery exploits on the stage of Drury Lane Theatre. 
The proofs, too, (in my hands) that a certain member of 
the present Cabinet derives much of his income from the 
profits of a brothel, lend a certain solidity to my position. 
This lion can bite back. 
 
 
CHRISTIANITY 
 
 
But why — we may indeed ask — all this heavy me-
tal to bombard a brothel ?  Has no good thing come out of 
Nazareth?