grew weary of the delicious quiet
of Civey, and the indictment against him having been quashed, he would
go away to Paris or elsewhere. On these trips if he did not take Madame
along she would grow furious, then lacrimose and finally
submissive--with a weepy protest. If he failed to write her daily she
grew hysterical. Two winters they spent together in Paris and another at
Brussels.

A lawsuit involving the estate of the Marquis du Chatelet, that had been
in the courts for eighty years, was pushed to a successful issue by
Voltaire and Madame. Four hundred fifty thousand dollars were secured,
but of this Voltaire, strangely enough, took nothing.

That the bond between Emilie and Voltaire was very firm is shown by the
fact that, after they had been together ten years, he declined to leave
her to accept an invitation to visit Frederick the Great at Berlin.
Frederick was a married man, but his was a strictly bachelor court--for
prudential reasons. Frederick and Emilie had carried on a spirited
correspondence, but this was as close as he cared for her to come to
him. All of his communications with females were limited to letters,
and Voltaire once said that that was the reason he was called Frederick
the Great.

Madame du Chatelet died when she was forty-two; Voltaire was fifty-five.
For fifteen years this strange and most romantic friendship had
continued, and to a degree it had worn itself out. Toward the last the
lady had been exacting and dictatorial, and thinking that Voltaire had
slighted her by not taking her more into his confidence, she had
accepted another lover, a man ten years her junior. If she had thought
to make Voltaire jealous, she had reckoned without her host--he was
relieved to find her fierce supervision relaxed.

When she passed away he worked his woe up into a pretty panegyric,
closed up his affairs at Civey, and left there forever.

* * * * *

So far as the government was concerned, Voltaire seems to have passed
his days in accepting rewards and receiving punishments. Interdict,
exile, ostracism were followed by honors, pension and office.

His one lasting love was the drama. About every two years a swirl of
excitement was caused at Paris by the announcement of a new play by
Voltaire. These plays seemed to appeal mostly to the nobility, the
clergy and those in public office. And the object in every instance was
to get even with somebody, and place some one in a