They would be thought extinct today: only two families remain. Yet long ago the Troglodytes, small hideous men, more brutish than beasts, were spread across an arid country cut through with mountains. They had scarcely any human form; it would have been impossible to draw a likeness of them. They could barely see, their eyes so wild that they could not bear the light. The king who ruled them then was a good king, and he told them he wished to make himself useless, that they could, if they so willed, dispense with his services: he therefore freed his subjects. "Let virtue," he said, "serve you in place of a sovereign." Thus the Troglodyte people were left to themselves.

At first they chose magistrates; but the crude peoples of that time could not agree on the persons: disputes lasted long, and confusion only grew. The heads of families, weary of contested commands, each usurped authority in his own district. There were no more laws, no more magistrates, and each did his own will. It was the most wretched state in which men had ever been seen.

A Troglodyte on the point of death left two children. He above all charged them to love one another, and told them he left a treasure to each. But no sooner did these children find themselves heirs than they loved each other far less than they coveted the estate. Each declared he had received only debts, and owed nothing to his brother. They quarreled, and one killed the other.

Another Troglodyte met on his path a pregnant woman, a quarter of a league from the spring, the only place in the country where one could drink. He put her to death so that she might not block his passage; for, it is said, there was a law obliging men to help pregnant women, and whoever abandoned them was punished.

Two Troglodytes had herds that quarreled over a field. They wished to fight; one was the stronger, and the other resorted to a device: he went to the prince of a neighboring nation and promised him part of the field if he would come to his aid. The prince came. Both Troglodytes were killed, and the field remained with the prince.

A Troglodyte, a rich man, had an only daughter, and he saw two young men of his nation, one poor, the other rich, who both loved her. "Marry my daughter," he said, "to the more honest of the two." But he was carried off by his slaves and taken into a desert land. The two young men came for the young Troglodyte; she who kept her delivered her up, and they disputed over her long. At last they agreed that each would go his own way, and that both would marry her whom they loved. But as they walked, the poor one felt he would rather die than be the sad rival of his friend; he died of grief. The young girl, bathed in tears, died also. The other young man went to the prince who had once aided him, drew him into a war, and all the Troglodytes were exterminated.

But divine justice did not leave this punishment unmixed: two families escaped the slaughter. One dwelt in the desert, where an old man remained with his daughter. The other family lived on an island. The husband and wife had kept some feeling of humanity, and the upbringing of their children had given them gentle hearts and manners.

These two families passed their goods on to their children. The old man's daughter was married to one of the children of the other family, and the old man's son married another. The husband and wife died on the island, leaving two sons and a daughter. These children, raised in virtue by their parents, soon felt that society could not stand without laws, and made laws for themselves. They wished even to extend this gentleness to their neighbors, and sent deputies to the other scattered families.

Thus peoples were gradually reformed, united by just laws, who worked together to cultivate their lands, who loved one another, helped one another, and who, from a depraved race, became a wise and virtuous people. Virtue gave them back what violence had destroyed: they recovered, they multiplied, and their land, sterile at the beginning, became one of the most fertile on earth.

There, dear Rica, the Persian traveler told his friend, is what I know of the history of the Troglodytes. You see by this that there is nothing more just than the sentence once given: men would be most unhappy if they were abandoned solely to their natural reason, with nothing to restrain them; they would be more unhappy still under a bad government than in the confusion they would have found without any government at all. There is no evil that does not come from a misuse of liberty; and virtue, the only one that makes men happy, is that which unites them to one another.