Christ and the Queen's English

[the Robot Vegetable]

  "A mon tres aime frere Lazarus, ce que vous me mandez de Petrus
l'apostre de notre doux Jesus ...," wrote Mary Magdalen.  "Notre
fils Cesarion va bien ...," wrote Cleopatra to Julius Caesar.
There was a letter from Alexander the Great to Aristotle ("Mon
ami..."); from Lazarus to Saint Peter (concerning Druids); from
Pontius Pilate to Tiberius; Judas's confession (to Mary Magdalen);
a passport signed by Vercingetorix; notes from Alcibiades, Pericles,
and a letter to Pascal (on garvitation) from Newton, who was 
nineteen when Pascal died.  But M. Chasles, eminent mathematician
of the late nineteenth century, paid 140,000 francs for this
collection of autographs, for he believed them genuine: they were,
after all, written in French."

	_The Recognitions_ Gaddis, pg. 64 of penguin paperback