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Updated: May 12, 2025
Ready witted, she was quick at repartee; and possessing a keen sense of humour, she saw enjoyment in that which to many would be commonplace. Only one thing marred my happiness. That was the memory of a cruel look which rested on Voltaire's face as we went away together. From that moment I am sure he regarded me as his rival, and from that moment he sought to measure his strength with mine.
They seize our effects; under violent protest, worse than vain. "Voltaire demands to have at least his snuffbox, cannot do without snuff; they answer, 'It is usual to take everything. "His," Voltaire's, "eyes were sparkling with fury; from time to time he lifted them on mine, as if to interrogate me. All on a sudden, noticing a door half open, he dashes through it, and is out.
"M. d'Argental," said the king, "unites then at my court the double function of minister of Parma and steward of Ferney.* Are these two offices compatible?" * The name of Voltaire's residence TRANS "Yes, sire," replied the duke, laughing, "since he has not presented officially to your majesty the letters of his creation as comte de Tournay." The king began to laugh.
The intellectual freedom, the vigorous precision, the elegant urbanity which characterise the earlier work appear in a yet more perfect form in the later one. Voltaire's book, as its title indicates, is in effect a series of generalised reflections upon a multitude of important topics, connected together by a common point of view.
A year of intercourse with so full and alert and brilliant a mind as Voltaire's, must have been more to one so appreciative of mental greatness as Vauvenargues, than many years of intercourse with subalterns in the Regiment of the King. With death, now known to be very near at hand, he had made his account before.
It will work deep and far, in such a time as ours. And Strauss seems perfectly secure against the sort of answer to which Voltaire's critical and historical shallowness perpetually exposed him. It seems admitted that the orthodox theologians have failed to give any sufficient answer.
Voltaire's good sense and sound judgment were as much at the service of his friends in warning them of shortcomings, as in eulogising what they achieved. And he had good faith enough to complain to his friends, instead of complaining of them.
His obiter dicta have often the penetration, and always more than the equity, of Voltaire's, for Dryden never loses temper, and never altogether qualifies his judgment by his self-love. "He was a more universal writer than Voltaire," said Horne Tooke, and perhaps it is true that he had a broader view, though his learning was neither so extensive nor so accurate.
It was at Rheims that I heard the name of Shakespeare for the first time. It was pronounced by Charles Nodier. That was in 1825, during the coronation of Charles X. No one at that time spoke of Shakespeare quite seriously. Voltaire's ridicule of him was law. Mme. de Stael had adopted Germany, the great land of Kant, of Schiller, and of Beethoven.
An illogical act on Voltaire's part, we may remark, by the way; for Voltaire would have defended Jesus as he defended Calas; and even for those who deny superhuman incarnations, what does the crucifix represent? The assassinated sage. In this nineteenth century, the religious idea is undergoing a crisis.
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