consequence to be treated seriously.  It had to be mangled so as not to come into direct conflict with our lords the theologians, gentry who so clearly see the spirituality of the soul that, if they could, they would consign to the flames the bodies of those who have a doubt about it.”  The theologians confined themselves to burning the book; the decree of Parliament delivered on the 10th of June, 1734, ordered at the same time the arrest of the author; the bookseller was already in the Bastille.  Voltaire was in the country, attending the Duke of Richelieu’s second marriage; hearing of the danger that threatened him, he took fright and ran for refuge to Bale.  He soon left it to return to the castle of Cirey, to the Marchioness du Chatelet’s, a woman as learned as she was impassioned, devoted to literature, physics, and mathematics, and tenderly attached to Voltaire, whom she enticed along with her into the paths of science.  For fifteen years Madame du Chatelet and Cirey ruled supreme over the poet’s life.  There began a course of metaphysics, tales, tragedies; Alzire, Merope, Mahomet, were composed at Cirey and played with ever increasing success.  Pope Benedict XIV. had accepted the dedication of Mahomet, which Voltaire had addressed to him in order to cover the freedoms of his piece.  Every now and then, terrified in consequence of some bit of anti-religious rashness, he took flight, going into hiding at one time to the court of Lorraine beneath the wing of King Stanislaus, at another time in Holland, at a palace belonging to the King of Prussia, the Great Frederick.  Madame du Chatelet, as unbelieving as he at bottom, but more reserved in expression, often scolded him for his imprudence.  “He requires every moment to be saved from himself,” she would say.  “I employ more policy in managing him than the whole Vatican employs to keep all Christendom in its fetters.”  On the appearance of danger, Voltaire ate his words without scruple; his irreligious writings were usually launched under cover of the anonymous.  At every step, however, he was advancing farther and farther into the lists, and at the very moment when he wrote to Father La Tour, “If ever anybody has printed in my name a single page which could scandalize even the parish beadle, I am ready to tear it up before his eyes,” all Europe regarded him as the leader of the open or secret attacks which were beginning to burst not only upon the Catholic church, but upon the fundamental verities common to all Christians.

Madame du Chatelet died on the 4th of September, 1749, at Luneville, where she then happened to be with Voltaire.  Their intimacy had experienced many storms, yet the blow was a cruel one for the poet; in losing Madame de Chatelet he was losing the centre and the guidance of his life.  For a while he spoke of burying himself with Dom Calmet in the abbey of Senones; then he would be off to England; he ended by returning to Paris, summoning to his side a widowed niece, Madame