imes rather
disingenuous, strife with a superior power. Throughout, the poet and man
of taste struggles against the philosophic freethinker: he loves the
surface impressions, perhaps the reflective illusions; "his sentiments
are worth more than his ideas." The _English Letters_ of 1735, written
some years before, and now issued with much hesitation, created a great
storm: they boldly attacked the royal power, the clergy, the faith; they
were burned by the hangman; and Voltaire had to go into voluntary exile
for a while. There his literary activity was unwearied: many of his
works were written, or at least sketched, during the next five years.
Strange problem of the human mind. While he here composed his _Mahomet_
and other serious works, he also wrote his scandalous _Pucelle_; as if
he could not rest without destroying all nobility of sentiment and faith
in heroism. While Jeanne d'Arc is the helpless victim of his shameless
attack, he is also busy with his _Siecle de Louis XIV_, a hero
apparently more to his taste than the great Maid of Orleans.

The influence of Voltaire on opinion grew slowly but steadily through
these years: no one more sedulously undermined the established faiths.
It was in these years that he enjoyed a passing favor at the French
court, whence his febrile energy, his roughnesses, his want of the true
gloss of courtiership, soon lost him the good-will of his old friend
Madame de Pompadour. He then tried Berlin, finding it equally untenable
ground; eventually he withdrew to Ferney in the territory of Geneva,
whence he kept up incessant war against all the injustices which touched
his heart. His defence of Calas, of Servin, of the luckless Lally, all
date from this time. In these days he animated the Encyclopaedists with
his spirit, encouraging them in their gigantic undertaking, the
"Carroccio of the battle of the eighteenth century." It was a huge
dictionary of human knowledge, written in direct antagonism to all
belief in spiritual powers or religion. It sold incredibly, and the
effect of it on society was immense. This great edifice, "built half of
marble, half of mud," as Voltaire himself said, had as its chief
architects Diderot and D'Alembert. Nothing contributed more to undermine
the foundations on which all institutions, and not least royalty, were
built.

A little later than Voltaire came Rousseau, "the valet who did not
become a cardinal." His influences are also later, and touched society