We must visit Voltaire at Ferney, and Madame de Stael at Coppet.  Let the patriarch come first.  Voltaire was sixty years of age when he settled on the shores of the lake, where he was to remain for another four-and-twenty years; and he did not go there for his pleasure.  He would have preferred to live in Paris, but was afraid of being locked up in the Bastille.  As the great majority of the men of letters of the reign of Louis XV. were, at one time or another, locked up in the Bastille, his fears were probably well founded.

Moreover, notes of warning had reached his ears.  “I dare not ask you to dine,” a relative said to him, “because you are in bad odor at Court.”  So he betook himself to Geneva, as so many Frenchmen, illustrious and otherwise, had done before, and acquired various properties—­at Prangins, at Lausanne, at Saint-Jean (near Geneva), at Ferney, at Tournay, and elsewhere.

He was welcomed cordially.  Dr. Tronchin, the eminent physician, cooperated in the legal fictions necessary to enable him to become a landowner in the republic.  Cramer, the publisher, made a proposal for the issue of a complete and authorized edition of his works.  All the best people called.  “It is very pleasant,” he was able to write, “to live in a country where rulers borrow your carriage to come to dinner with you.”

Voltaire corresponded regularly with at least four reigning sovereigns, to say nothing of men of letters, Cardinals, and Marshals of France; and he kept open house for travelers of mark from every country in the world.  Those of the travelers who wrote books never failed to devote a chapter to an account of a visit to Ferney; and from the mass of such descriptions we may select for quotation that written, in the stately style of the period, by Dr. John Moore, author of “Zeluco,” then making the grand tour as tutor to the Duke of Hamilton.

“The most piercing eyes I ever beheld,” the doctor writes, “are those of Voltaire, now in his eightieth year.  His whole countenance is expressive of genius, observation, and extreme sensibility.  In the morning he has a look of anxiety and discontent; but this gradually wears off, and after dinner he seems cheerful; yet an air of irony never entirely forsakes his face, but may always be observed lurking in his features whether he frowns or smiles.  Composition is his principal amusement.  No author who writes for daily bread, no young poet ardent for distinction, is more assiduous with his pen, or more anxious for fresh fame, than the wealthy and applauded Seigneur of Ferney.  He lives in a very hospitable manner, and takes care always to have a good cook.  He generally has two or three visitors from Paris, who stay with him a month or six weeks at a time.  When they go, their places are soon supplied, so that there is a constant rotation of society at Ferney.  These, with Voltaire’s own family and his visitors from Geneva, compose a company of twelve or fourteen people, who dine daily at his table, whether he appears or not.  All who bring recommendations from his friends may depend upon being received, if he be not really indisposed.  He often presents himself to the strangers who assemble every afternoon in his ante-chamber, altho they bring no particular recommendation.”