/> His facile pen had given its greatest glory to the reign of Louis XV.,

yet for more than a quarter of a century he had been exiled from the

land he loved, because he dared to exercise the privilege of free speech

in that land of oppression, and to deal with kings and nobles as man

with man, not as reverent worshipper with divinity. Now, in his

eighty-fourth year of age, he had ventured to come back to the city he

loved above all others, with scarcely enough life left for the journey,

and far from sure that power would not still seek to suppress genius as

it had done in the past.



If he had such fears, there was no warrant for them. Paris was ready to

worship him. The king himself would not have dared to interfere with the

popular idol in that interval of enthusiastic ebullition. All Paris was

prepared to cast itself at his feet; all France was eager to do him

honor; all calumny, jealousy, hatred were forgotten; a nation had risen

to welcome and honor its greatest genius, and the splendors of the court

paled before the glory which seemed to emanate from that feeble,

tottering veteran of the empire of thought, who had come back to occupy,

for a brief period, the throne of his old dominion.



The admiration, the enthusiasm, the glory were too much for him. He was

dying in the excitement of joy and triumph. Yet, with his wonderful

elasticity of frame and mind, he rose again for a fuller enjoyment of

that popular ovation which was to him the wine of life. The story of his

final triumph has been so graphically told by an eye-witness that we

cannot do better than to quote his words.



"M. de Voltaire has appeared for the first time at the Academy and at

the play; he found all the doors, all the approaches, to the Academy

besieged by a multitude which only opened slowly to let him pass, and

then rushed in immediately upon his footsteps with repeated plaudits and

acclamations. The Academy came out into the first room to meet him, an

honor it had never yet paid to any of its members, not even to the

foreign princes who had deigned to be present at its meetings.



"The homage he received at the Academy was merely the prelude to that

which awaited him at the National theatre. As soon as his carriage was

seen at a distance, there arose a universal shout of joy. All the

curb-stones, all the barriers, all the windows, were crammed with

spectators, and scarcely was the carriage stopped when people were

already on the imperial and even on the wheels to get a nearer view of

the divinity. Scarcely had he entered the house when Sieur Brizard came

up with a crown of laurels, which Madame de Villette placed upon the

great man's head, but which he immediately took off, though the public

urged him to keep it on by clapping of hands and by cheers which

resounded from all parts of the house with such a din as never was

heard.



"All the women stood up. I saw at one time that part of the pit which

was under the boxes go down on their knees, in despair of getting a

sight any other way. The whole house was darkened with the dust raised

by the ebb and flow of the excited multitude. It was not without

difficulty that the players managed at last to begin the piece. It was

'Irene,' which was given for the sixth time. Never had this tragedy been

better played, never less listened to, never more applauded. The

illustrious old man rose to thank the public, and, a moment afterwards,

there appeared on a pedestal in the middle of the stage a bust of this

great man, and the actresses, garlands and crowns in hand, covered it

with laurels.



"M. de Voltaire seemed to be sinking beneath the burden of age and of

the homage with which he had just been overwhelmed. He appeared deeply

affected, his eyes still sparkled amidst the pallor of his face, but it

seemed as if he breathed no longer save with the consciousness of his

glory. The people shouted, 'Lights! lights! that everybody may see him!'

The coachman was entreated to go at a walk, and thus he was accompanied

by cheering and the crowd as far as Pont Royal."



This was a very different greeting from that which Voltaire had received

fifty years before, when a nobleman with whom he had quarrelled had him

beaten with sticks in the public street, and, when Voltaire showed an

intention of making him answer at the sword's point for this outrage,

had him seized and thrown into the Bastille by the authorities. This was

but one of the several times he had been immured in this gloomy prison

for daring to say what he thought about powers and potentates. But time

brings its revenges. The Chevalier de Rohan, who had had the poet

castigated, was forgotten except as the man who had dishonored himself

in seeking to dishonor Voltaire, and the poet had become the idol of the

people of Paris, high and low alike.



Voltaire was not the only great man in Paris at this period. There was

another as great as he, but great in a very different fashion,--Benjamin

Franklin, the American philosopher and statesman, as famous for common

sense and public spirit as Voltaire was for poetical power and satirical

keenness. These two great men met, and their meeting is worthy of

description. The American envoys had asked permission to call on the

veteran of literature, a request that was willingly granted when

Voltaire learned that Franklin was one of the number. What passed

between them may be briefly related.



They found the aged poet reclining on a couch, thin of body, wrinkled of

face, evidently sick and feeble; yet his eyes, "glittering like two

carbuncles," showed what spirit lay within his withered frame. As they

entered, he raised himself with difficulty, and repeated the following

lines from Thomson's "Ode to Liberty," a poem which he had been familiar

with in England fifty years before.



"Lo! swarming southward on rejoicing suns,

Gay colonies extend, the calm retreat

Of undisturbed Distress, the better home

Of those whom bigots chase from foreign lands;

Not built on rapine, servitude, and woe,

And in their turn some petty tyrant's prey;

But bound by social Freedom, firm they rise."



He then began to converse with Franklin in English; but, on being asked

by his niece to speak in French, that she and others present might

understand what was said, he remarked,--



"I beg your pardon. I have, for the moment, yielded to the vanity of

showing that I can speak in the language of a Franklin."



Shortly afterwards, Dr. Franklin presented him his grandson, whereupon

the old man lifted his hands over the head of the youth, and said, "My

child, God and liberty! Recollect those two words."



This was not the only scene between Franklin and Voltaire. Another took

place at the Academy of Sciences at one of the meetings of that body.

The two distinguished guests sat side by side on the platform, in full

view of the audience.



During the proceedings an interruption occurred. A confused cry arose,

the names of the two great visitors alone being distinguishable. It was

taken to mean that they should be introduced. This was done. They rose

and acknowledged the courtesy by bowing and a few words. But such a

formal proceeding was far from enough to satisfy the audience. The noise

continued. Franklin and Voltaire shook hands. This gave rise to

plaudits, but the confused cries were not stilled; the audience wanted

some more decided demonstration.



"Il faut s'embrasser, a la Francoise" ["You must embrace, in French

fashion"], they cried.



John Adams, who witnessed the spectacle, thus describes what followed:

"The two aged actors upon this great theatre of philosophy and

frivolity, embraced each other by hugging one another in their arms, and

kissing each other's cheeks, and then the tumult subsided. And the cry

immediately spread through the whole kingdom, and, I suppose over all

Europe, 'How charming it was to see Solon and Sophocles embrace.'"



A month later Voltaire lay dead, his brilliant eyes closed, his active

brain at rest. The excitement of his visit to Paris and the constant

ovation which he had received had been too much for the old man. He had

died in the midst of his triumph, vanished from the stage of life just

when his genius had compelled the highest display of appreciation which

it was possible for his countrymen to give. As for the church, which his

keen pen had dealt with as severely as with the temporal powers, it

could not well forget his incessant and bitter attacks. That he might

obtain Christian burial, he confessed and received absolution from the

Abbe Gaultier; but, with his views, this was simply a sacrifice to the

proprieties; he remained a heathen poet to the end, a born satirist and

scoffer at all tradition and all conventionality.



Voltaire was deistic in belief, in no sense atheistic. Among his latest

words were, "I die worshipping God, loving my friends, not hating my

enemies, but detesting superstition." Despite the admiration of the

people, the powers of the state could not forget that the man so

enthusiastically received was the great apostle of mockery and

irreverence. The government gave its last kick to the dead lion by

ordering the papers not to comment on his death. The church laid an

interdict on his burial in consecrated ground,--an hour or two too late,

as it proved. His body, minus the heart, was transferred in 1791 to the

Pantheon, and when, in 1864, the sarcophagus was opened with the purpose

of restoring the heart to the other remains, it was found to be empty.

In the stirring days of France the body had by some one, in some way,

been removed.