lineage.  She was the acknowledged and respected Duchess Ventadour.  She was still beautiful, but quite deaf; consequently her voice was loud and coarse, when she believed herself to be whispering.  She invited me to read some selections from my new work in her saloon, and I was weak enough to accept the invitation.  I had just completed my ‘Brutus,’ and burned with ambition to receive the applause of the Parisiennes.  I commenced to read aloud my tragedy of ‘Brutus’ in the saloon of the duchess, surrounded by a circle of distinguished nobles, eminent in knowledge and art.  I was listened to in breathless attention.  In the deep silence which surrounded me, in the glowing eyes of my audience, in the murmurs of applause which greeted me, I saw that I was still Voltaire, and that the hangman’s hands, which had burned my ’Lettres Philosophiques,’ had not destroyed my fame or extinguished my genius.  While I read, a servant entered upon tiptoe, to rekindle the fire.  The Duchess Ventadour sat near the chimney.  She whispered, or thought she whispered, to her servant.  I read a little louder to drown her words.  I was in the midst of one of the grandest scenes of my tragedy.  My own heart trembled with emotion.  Here and there I saw eyes, which were not wont to weep, filled with tears, and heard sighs from trembling lips, accustomed only to laughter and smiles.  And now I came to the soliloquy of Brutus.  He was resolving whether he would sacrifice his son’s life to his fatherland.  There was a solemn pause, and now, in the midst of the profound silence, the Duchess Ventadour in a shrill voice, which she believed to be inaudible, said to her servant:  ’Do not fail to serve mustard with the pig’s head!’”

A peal of laughter interrupted Voltaire, in which he reluctantly joined, being completely carried away by the general mirth.

“That was indeed very piquant, and I think you must have been greatly encouraged.”

“Did you eat of the pig’s head, or were your teeth on edge?”

“No, they were sharp enough to bite, and I bit!  In my first rage I closed my book, and cried out:  ’Madame—!  Well! as you have a pig’s head, you do not require that Brutus should offer up the head of his son!’ I was on the point of leaving the room, but the poor duchess, who was just beginning to comprehend her unfortunate interruption, hastened after me, and entreated me so earnestly to remain and read further, that I consented.  I remained and read, but not from ‘Brutus.’  My rage made me, for the moment, an improvisator.  Seated near to the duchess, surrounded by the proud and hypocritical nobles, who acknowledged Phillis only because she had a fine house and gave good dinners, I improvised a poem which recalled to the grand duchess and her satellites the early days of the fair Phillis, and brought the laugh on my side.  My poem was called ’Le tu et le vous.’  Now, gentlemen, this is the story of my ‘Brutus’ and the pig’s head,”