In the laundry room of my apartment building is a tall bookcase into which residents put books they wish to get rid of, in the hope that some other residents might enjoy them. (The bookcase used to be mine; I gave it away because I believed the lack of a bookcase would help me avoid amassing books. I once had over 5,000 books when I was confronted with having to move, and — to quote Roy Scheider in another context — I don’t intend to go through that hell again.) Doing laundry tonight, I saw a volume of selected works of Voltaire, and thought, “I love Voltaire’s style in the snippets that have been quoted to me by others, but the only full work I’ve read by him is Candide; I should try this.” I opened it, and discovered three crisp one-dollar bills. Was this an act of absent-mindedness, or the generous act of an Upper-Upper-West-Side freethinker shouting out to a kindred spirit? If the latter, I — with my passionate, lifelong love of religion — am probably not the ideal recipient. But I appreciate the gesture and will enjoy the book in an appropriately broadminded manner.

PS. One reason my heart warms somewhat to the skeptical Voltaire is a cute story I was once told about him by a prominent American social-conservative intellectual. It was a long time ago, and I have not been able to find confirmation of it by a (cursory) Google search, so I offer it here with no claims for its historicity, but just for fun. It seems Voltaire was out walking in the mountains with a friend, when, overcome by the beauty of the vistas before him, he spontaneously fell to his knees and clasped his hands before him. His companion, seeing from this remarkable action that Voltaire must be praying, expostulated with him: “Why, Monsieur Voltaire! Is it possible that you of all people believe in God?” To which Voltaire responded: “Bien sûr que je crois en Dieu! Mais je ne crois pas, ni en Madame Sa Mère, ni en Monsieur Son Fils.” (“Of course I believe in God! It’s just that I don’t believe in His mother or His son.”)