Here Fannia’s Toy stopped short. One of the principal perfections of these orators was to break off their discourse apropos. They talk’d as if they had never done anything else: whence some authors have inferr’d, that they were pure machines. In this place the African author specifies all the metaphysical arguments of the Cartesians against the soul of brutes, which he applies with all possible sagacity to the prating of Toys. In a word, his opinion is, that Toys speak as birds sing; that is to say, so perfectly without having been taught, that, to be sure, they are prompted by some superior intelligence.

But you ask me how he disposes of his prince. He sends him to dine with the favorite: at least ’tis there we shall find him in the following chapter.