aire came often to see him. By way of
reply he repeated these lines of the poet:--

"Vetabo qui Cereris sacrum vulgarit arcanum sub usdem sit trabibus."

I spent three days with this celebrated man, but I thought myself obliged
to refrain from asking his opinion on any religious questions, although I
had a great desire to do so, as it would have pleased me to have had his
opinion on that delicate subject; but I believe that in matters of that
kind M. Haller judged only by his heart. I told him, however, that I
should consider a visit to Voltaire as a great event, and he said I was
right. He added, without the slightest bitterness,

"M. de Voltaire is a man who ought to be known, although, in spite of the
laws of nature, many persons have found him greater at a distance than
close at hand."

M. de Haller kept a good and abundant though plain table; he only drank
water. At dessert only he allowed himself a small glass of liqueur
drowned in an enormous glass of water. He talked a great deal of
Boerhaave, whose favourite pupil he had been. He said that after
Hypocrates, Boerhaave was the greatest doctor and the greatest chemist
that had ever existed.

"How is it," said I, "that he did not attain mature age?"

"Because there is no cure for death. Boerhaave was born a doctor, as
Homer was born a poet; otherwise he would have succumbed at the age of
fourteen to a malignant ulcer which had resisted all the best treatment
of the day. He cured it himself by rubbing it constantly with salt
dissolved in his own urine."

"I have been told that he possessed the philosopher's stone."

"Yes, but I don't believe it."

"Do you think it possible?"

"I have been working for the last thirty years to convince myself of its
impossibility; I have not yet done so, but I am sure that no one who does
not believe in the possibility of the great work can be a good chemist."

When I left him he begged me to write and tell him what I thought of the
great Voltaire, and in, this way our French correspondence began. I
possess twenty-two letters from this justly celebrated man; and the last
word written six months before, his too, early death. The longer I live
the more interest I take in my papers. They are the treasure which
attaches me to life and makes death more hateful still.

I had been reading at Berne Rousseau's "Heloise," and I asked M. Haller's
opinion of it. He told me that he had once read part of it to oblige a
friend, and fro