Ridicule is the light scourge of society, and the terror of genius.  Ridicule surrounds him with her chimeras, which, like the shadowy monsters opposing aeneas, are impalpable to his strokes:  but remember when the sibyl bade the hero proceed without noticing them, he found these airy nothings as harmless as they were unreal.  The habits of the literary character will, however, be tried by the men and women of the world by their own standard:  they have no other; the salt of ridicule gives a poignancy to their deficient comprehension, and their perfect ignorance, of the persons or things which are the subjects of their ingenious animadversions.  The habits of the literary character seem inevitably repulsive to persons of the world.  VOLTAIRE, and his companion, the scientific Madame DE CHATELET, she who introduced Newton to the French nation, lived entirely devoted to literary pursuits, and their habits were strictly literary.  It happened once that this learned pair dropped unexpectedly into a fashionable circle in the chateau of a French nobleman.  A Madame de Stael, the persifleur in office of Madame Du Deffand, has copiously narrated the whole affair.  They arrived at midnight like two famished spectres, and there was some trouble to put them to supper and bed.  They are called apparitions, because they were never visible by day, only at ten at night; for the one is busied in describing great deeds, and the other in commenting on Newton.  Like other apparitions, they are uneasy companions:  they will neither play nor walk; they will not dissipate their mornings with the charming circle about them, nor allow the charming circle to break into their studies.  Voltaire and Madame de Chatelet would have suffered the same pain in being forced to an abstinence of their regular studies, as this circle of “agreables” would have at the loss of their meals and their airings.  However, the persifleur declares they were ciphers “en societe,” adding no value to the number, and to which their learned writings bear no reference.

But if this literary couple would not play, what was worse, Voltaire poured out a vehement declamation against a fashionable species of gambling, which appears to have made them all stare.  But Madame de Chatelet is the more frequent victim of our persifleur.  The learned lady would change her apartment—­for it was too noisy, and it had smoke without fire—­which last was her emblem.  “She is reviewing her Principia; an exercise she repeats every year, without which precaution they might escape from her, and get so far away that she might never find them again.  I believe that her head in respect to them is a house of imprisonment rather than the place of their birth; so that she is right to watch them closely; and she prefers the fresh air of this occupation to our amusements, and persists in her invisibility till night-time.  She has six or seven tables in her apartments, for she wants them of all sizes;