e of adventurous young wives of Quality, to the
remote lodging of the witty M. de Voltaire, and make his dim evening
radiant to him. [One of Voltaire's Letters.] Then again, in public
crowds, I have seen them; obliged to dismount to the peril of Madame's
diamonds, there being a jam of carriages, and no getting forward for
half the day. In short, they are becoming more and more intimate, to the
extremest degree; and, scorning the world, thank Heaven that they are
mutually indispensable. Cannot we get away from this scurvy wasp's-nest
of a Paris, thought they, and live to ourselves and our books?

"Madame was of high quality, one of the Breteuils; but was poor in
comparison, and her Husband the like. An old Chateau of theirs, named
Cirey, stands in a pleasant enough little valley in Champagne; but so
dilapidated, gaunt and vacant, nobody can live in it. Voltaire, who is
by this time a man of ample moneys, furnishes the requisite cash; Madame
and he, in sweet symphony, concert the plans: Cirey is repaired,
at least parts of it are, into a boudoir of the gods, regardless of
expense; nothing ever seen so tasteful, so magnificent; and the two
withdraw thither to study, in peace, what sciences, pure and other, they
have a mind to. They are recognized as lovers, by the Parisian public,
with little audible censure from anybody there,--with none at all from
the easy Husband; who occasionally even visits Cirey, if he be passing
that way; and is content to take matters as he finds them, without
looking below the surface. [See (whosoever is curious) Madame de
Grafigny, _Vie Privee de Voltaire et de Madame du Chatelet_ (Paris,
1820). A six months of actual Letters written by poor Grafigny, while
sheltering at Cirey, Winter and Spring, 1738-1739; straitened there
in various respects,--extremely ill off for fuel, among other things.
Rugged practical Letters, shadowing out to us, unconsciously oftenest,
and like a very mirror, the splendid and the sordid, the seamy side
and the smooth, of Life at Cirey, in her experience of it. Published,
fourscore years after, under the above title.] For the Ten Commandments
are at a singular pass in cultivated France at this epoch. Such
illicit-idyllic form of life has been the form of Voltaire's since
1733,"--for some three years now, when Friedrich and we first make
acquaintance with him. "It lasted above a dozen years more: an illicit
marriage after its sort, and subject only to the liabilities of s