the way to
Glasgow to attend his philosophical classes; and it was no doubt
through Tronchin, Voltaire's chief friend in that quarter, that Smith
was introduced to Voltaire. Smith told Rogers he had been in
Voltaire's company on five or six different occasions, and he no doubt
enjoyed, as most English visitors enjoyed, hospitable entertainment at
Ferney, the beautiful little temporality of the great literary
pontiff, overlooking the lake.

There was no living name before which Smith bowed with profounder
veneration than the name of Voltaire, and his recollections of their
intercourse on these occasions were always among those he cherished
most warmly. Few memorials, however, of their conversation remain, and
these are preserved by Samuel Rogers in his diary of his visit to
Edinburgh the year before Smith's death. They seem to have spoken, as
was very natural, of the Duke of Richelieu, the only famous Frenchman
Smith had yet met, and of the political question as to the revival of
the provincial assemblies or the continuance of government by royal
intendants. On this question Smith said that Voltaire expressed great
aversion to the States and favoured the side of the royal prerogative.
Of the Duke of Richelieu Voltaire said that he was an old friend of
his, but a singular character. A few years before his death his foot
slipped one day at Versailles, and the old marshal said that was the
first _faux pas_ he had ever made at court. Voltaire then seems to
have told anecdotes of the Duke's being bastilled and of his borrowing
the Embassy plate at Vienna and never returning it, and to have passed
the remark he made elsewhere that the English had only one sauce,
melted butter. Smith always spoke of Voltaire with a genuine emotion
of reverence. When Samuel Rogers happened to describe some clever but
superficial author as "a Voltaire," Smith brought his hand down on the
table with great energy and said, "Sir, there is only one
Voltaire."[154] Professor Faujas Saint Fond, Professor of Geology in
the Museum of Natural History in Paris, visited Smith in Edinburgh a
few years before Rogers was there, and says that the animation of
Smith's countenance was striking when he spoke of Voltaire, whom he
had known personally, and whose memory he revered. "Reason," said
Smith one day, as he showed M. Saint Fond a fine bust of Voltaire he
had in his room, "reason owes him incalculable obligations. The
ridicule and the sarcasm which he so pl