ere; have each
his work, serious for himself; then gay Supper with a King, who is a
great man and the soul of good company."... Sparta and Athens, I tell
you: "a Camp of Mars and the Garden of Epicurus; trumpets and violins,
War and Philosophy. I have my time all to myself; am at Court and in
freedom,--if I were not entirely free, neither an enormous Pension, nor
a Gold Key tearing out one's pocket, nor a halter (LICOU), which they
call CORDON of an ORDER, nor even the Suppers with a Philosopher who
has gained Five Battles, could yield me the least happiness."
[--OEuvres,--lxxiv. 325, 326, 333 (Letters, to D'Argental and others,
"27th April-8th May, 1751").] Looked at by you, my outside friends,--ah,
had I health and YOU here, what a situation!

But seen from within, it is far otherwise. Alongside of these warblings
of a heart grateful to the first of Kings, there goes on a series
of utterances to Niece Denis, remarkable for the misery driven into
meanness, that can be read in them. Ill-health, discontent, vague
terror, suspicion that dare not go to sleep; a strange vague terror,
shapeless or taking all shapes--a body diseased and a mind diseased.
Fear, quaking continually for nothing at all, is not to be borne in a
handsome manner. And it passes, often enough (in these poor LETTERS),
into transient malignity, into gusts of trembling hatred, with a
tendency to relieve oneself by private scandal of the house we are in.
Seldom was a miserabler wrong-side seen to a bit of royal tapestry. A
man hunted by the little devils that dwell unchained within himself;
like Pentheus by the Maenads, like Actaeon by his own Dogs. Nay, without
devils, with only those terrible bowels of mine, and scorbutic gums,
it is bad enough: "Glorious promotions to me here," sneers he bitterly;
"but one thing is indisputable, I have lost seven of my poor residue of
teeth since I came!" In truth, we are in a sadly scorbutic state; and
that, and the devils we lodge within ourselves, is the one real evil.
Could not Suspicion--why cannot she!--take her natural rest; and all
these terrors vanish? Oh, M. de Voltaire!--The practical purport, to
Niece Denis, always is: Keep my retreat to Paris open; in the name of
Heaven, no obstruction that way!

Miserable indeed; a man fatally unfit for his present element! But he
has Two considerable Sedatives, all along; two, and no third visible
to me. Sedative FIRST: that, he can, at any time, quit this illustrious
T