expression, often scolded him for his imprudence. "He requires every
moment to be saved from himself," she would say. "I employ more policy
in managing him than the whole Vatican employs to keep all Christendom in
its fetters." On the appearance of danger, Voltaire ate his words
without scruple; his irreligious writings were usually launched under
cover of the anonymous. At every step, however, he was advancing farther
and farther into the lists, and at the very moment when he wrote to
Father La Tour, "If ever anybody has printed in my name a single page
which could scandalize even the parish beadle, I am ready to tear it up
before his eyes," all Europe regarded him as the leader of the open or
secret attacks which were beginning to burst not only upon the Catholic
church, but upon the fundamental verities common to all Christians.

Madame du Chatelet died on the 4th of September, 1749, at Luneville,
where she then happened to be with Voltaire. Their intimacy had
experienced many storms, yet the blow was a cruel one for the poet; in
losing Madame de Chatelet he was losing the centre and the guidance of
his life. For a while he spoke of burying himself with Dom Calmet in the
abbey of Senones; then he would be off to England; he ended by returning
to Paris, summoning to his side a widowed niece, Madame Denis, a woman of
coarse wit and full of devotion to him, who was fond of the drama and
played her uncle's pieces on the little theatre which he had fitted
up in his rooms. At that time Oreste was being played at the
_Comedie-Francaise;_ its success did not answer the author's
expectations. "All that could possibly give a handle to criticism," says
Marmontel, who was present, "was groaned at or turned into ridicule. The
play was interrupted by it every instant. Voltaire came in, and, just as
the pit were turning into ridicule a stroke of pathos, he jumped up, and
shouted, 'O, you barbarians; that is Sophocles!' _Rome Sauvee_ was played
on the stage of Sceaux, at the Duchess of Maine's; Voltaire himself took
the part of Cicero. Lekain, as yet quite a youth, and making his first
appearance under the auspices of Voltaire, said of this representation,
'I do not think it possible to hear anything more pathetic and real than
M. de Voltaire; it was, in fact, Cicero himself thundering at the bar.'"

Despite the lustre of that fame which was attested by the frequent
attacks of his enemies as much as by the admiration of hi