You belittle slander sir?  You scarcely know what you are making light of.  I have seen the most respectable people very near to being overwhelmed by it.  There is no silly piece of malice, no abomination, no absurd story that we could not get taken up and repeated by the idlers of a big city, provided we go about it the right way.  And we have in Seville such skilled people in affairs of that kind - To start with a low sound, skimming the ground like the swallow before the storm, pianissimo, very softly it murmurs, spreads swiftly, and hurls while running the poisoned dart.  Here such and such a mouth takes it up, and piano, piano it slips easily into your ear.  The evil is done; it trails; it winds; and rinforzando, from mouth to mouth it goes the dance of a pace; then suddenly, no one knows how, you see slander rear itself, hiss, swell, and grow before your eyes.  It hurls itself forward, enlarges its flight, whirls, envelops, uproots, thunders, and becomes, thanks to heavens, a universal cry, a public crescendo, a general chorus of hatred and condemnation.  What the devil could resist it?  Pierre Augustin de Beaumarchais, 1732-1799