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Updated: June 26, 2025
From "Fama;" from rumours, hearsays, exaggerations, scandals, superstitions, public opinions whether from the ancient public opinion that the sun went round the earth, or the equally public opinion, that those who dared to differ from public opinion were hateful to the deity, and therefore worthy of death from all these blasts of Fame's lying trumpet they helped to deliver men; and they therefore helped to insure something like peace and personal security for those quiet, modest, and generally virtuous men, who, as students of physical science, devoted their lives, during the eighteenth century, to asking of nature What are the facts of the case?
But since most people have never compared the different things which are called by the concrete name, in such a manner as to ascertain what properties these things have in common, or whether they have any; each is thrown back upon the marks by which he himself has been accustomed to be guided in his application of the term; and these, being merely vague hearsays and current phrases, are not the same in any two persons, nor in the same person at different times.
There you would find the love you sought in vain amid the swine of earth; there you would hear a concert of somewhat different melody from that of M. Rossini, voices more faultless than that of Malibran. But I am speaking as a blind man might, and repeating hearsays. If I had not visited Germany about the year 1791, I should know nothing of all this. Yes! man has a vocation for the infinite.
There you would find the love you sought in vain amid the swine of earth; there you would hear a concert of somewhat different melody from that of M. Rossini, voices more faultless than that of Malibran. But I am speaking as a blind man might, and repeating hearsays. If I had not visited Germany about the year 1791, I should know nothing of all this. Yes! man has a vocation for the infinite.
"Who is that lady?" asked the marquis, signing toward the unknown woman. "I believe she comes from Moulins," replied Monsieur de Granville. "She is the Comtesse de Vandieres, and they say she is mad; but as she has only been here two months I will not vouch for the truth of these hearsays." Monsieur d'Albon thanked his friends, and placing the colonel in the carriage, started with him for Cassan.
Haldimand told Nairne to rebuke the officers sternly for combining to subvert authority, for disrespect to their superiors, and for refusing, on the basis of futile reports and hearsays, to serve with Mackinnon. "I much mistake his character," wrote Nairne of Mackinnon, "if he can ... be prevented from calling one or two of those gentlemen to a severe account."
He stood by the old formulas; the happier was it for him that he could so stand: but in all formulas that he could stand by, there needed to be a most genuine substance. Very curious how, in that poor Paper-age, so barren, artificial, thick-quilted with Pedantries, Hearsays, the great Fact of this Universe glared in, forever wonderful, indubitable, unspeakable, divine-infernal, upon this man too!
The other lies about him, as of his having intended to desert his soldiers in Guiana, his having taken no tools to work the mine, and so forth, one only notices to say that the 'Declaration' takes care to make the most of them, without deigning, after its fashion, to adduce any proof but anonymous hearsays.
In a word, Voltaire's work from first to last was alert with unquenchable life. Some of it, much of it, has ceased to be alive for us now in all that belongs to its deeper significance, yet we recognize that none of it was ever the dreary still-birth of a mind of hearsays. There is no mechanical transmission of untested bits of current coin.
He speaks with a novelist's confidence and freedom of characters whom he in no way knows, and about whom he has nothing to tell but the vaguest and most doubtful of second-hand hearsays: The depressed invalid became now to her a burden.
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