o astray, but it is full of Thee.

When he was old and suffering, he said to Madame Necker, in one of those
fits of melancholy to which he was subject, "The thinking faculty is lost
just like the eating, drinking, and digesting faculties. The marionettes
of Providence, in fact, are not made to last so long as It." In his
dying hour Voltaire was seen showing more concern for terrestrial
scandals than for the terrors of conscience, crying aloud for a priest,
and, with his mouth full of the blood he spat, still repeating in a half
whisper, "I don't want to be thrown into the kennel." A sad confession
of the insufficiency of his convictions and of the inveterate levity of
his thoughts; he was afraid of the judgment of man without dreading the
judgment of God. Thus was revealed the real depth of an infidelity of
which Voltaire himself perhaps had not calculated the extent and the
fatal influences.

Voltaire was destined to die at Paris; there he found the last joys of
his life and there he shed the last rays of his glory. For the twenty-
seven years during which he had been away from it he had worked much,
written much, done much. Whilst almost invariably disavowing his works,
he had furnished philosophy with pointed and poisoned weapons against
religion; he had devoted to humanity much time and strength; one of the
last delights he had tasted was the news of the decree which cleared the
memory of M. de Lally; he had received into his house, educated and found
a husband for the grand-niece of the great Corneille; he had applied the
inexhaustible resources of his mind at one time to good and at another to
evil, with almost equal ardor; he was old, he was ill, yet this same
ardor still possessed him when he arrived at Paris on the 10th of
February, 1778. The excitement caused by his return was extraordinary.
"This new prodigy has stopped all other interest for some time," writes
Grimm; it has put an end to rumors of war, intrigues in civil life,
squabbles at court. Encyclopeadic pride appeared diminished by half, the
Sorbonne shook all over, the Parliament kept silence; all the literary
world is moved, all Paris is ready to fly to the idol's feet." So much
attention and so much glory had been too much for the old man. Voltaire
was dying; in his fright he had sent for a priest and had confessed; when
he rose from his bed by a last effort of the marvellous elasticity,
inherent in his body and his mind, he resumed for a