Denis, a woman of coarse wit and full of devotion to him, who was fond of the drama and played her uncle’s pieces on the little theatre which he had fitted up in his rooms.  At that time Oreste was being played at the Comedie-Francaise; its success did not answer the author’s expectations.  “All that could possibly give a handle to criticism,” says Marmontel, who was present, “was groaned at or turned into ridicule.  The play was interrupted by it every instant.  Voltaire came in, and, just as the pit were turning into ridicule a stroke of pathos, he jumped up, and shouted, ‘O, you barbarians; that is Sophocles!’ Rome Sauvee was played on the stage of Sceaux, at the Duchess of Maine’s; Voltaire himself took the part of Cicero.  Lekain, as yet quite a youth, and making his first appearance under the auspices of Voltaire, said of this representation, ’I do not think it possible to hear anything more pathetic and real than M. de Voltaire; it was, in fact, Cicero himself thundering at the bar.’”

Despite the lustre of that fame which was attested by the frequent attacks of his enemies as much as by the admiration of his friends, Voltaire was displeased with his sojourn at Paris, and weary of the court and the men of letters.  The king had always exhibited towards him a coldness which the poet’s adulation had not been able to overcome; he had offended Madame de Pompadour, who had but lately been well disposed towards him; the religious circle, ranged around the queen and the dauphin, was of course hostile to him.  “The place of historiographer to the king was but an empty title,” he says himself; “I wanted to make it a reality by working at the history of the war of 1741; but, in spite of my work, Moncrif had admittance to his Majesty, and I had not.”

In tracing the tragic episodes of the war, Voltaire, set as his mind was on the royal favor, had wanted in the first place to pay homage to the friends he had lost.  It was in the “eulogium of the officers who fell in the campaign of 1741” that he touchingly called attention to the memory of Vauvenargues.  He, born at Aix on the 6th of August, 1715, died of his wounds, at Paris, in 1747.  Poor and proud, resigning himself with a sigh to idleness and obscurity, the young officer had written merely to relieve his mind.  His friends had constrained him to publish a little book, one only, the Introduction de la connaissance de l’esprit humain, suivie de reflexions et de maximes.  Its success justified their affectionate hopes; delicate minds took keen delight in the first essays of Vauvenargues.  Hesitating between religion and philosophy, with a palpable leaning towards the latter, ill and yet bravely bearing the disappointments and sufferings of his life, Vauvenargues was already expiring at thirty years of age, when Provence was invaded by the enemy.  The humiliation of his country and the peril of his native province roused him from his tranquil melancholy.  “All