the girl who accused herself of being enceinte by the operation of the Holy Ghost; but Berne feared the spread of the contagion, which, as you see, has already reached the people. MM. Bolingbroke and Fréret might well have those strokes of the lash on their conscience.

'I entertain, Sir, the tenderest wishes for your welfare, your repose, and your health; but I am impressed with the deepest compassion for the patient who lies under your jurisdiction. Would that it pleased Jesus Christ to send by some one the good news to you: Rise up and walk! It seems that the lofty soul of the avenger of Calas and the benefactor of so many others would be well worth the working of a unique miracle which would conquer him immediately; but the ways of God are not our ways, and although the holy thorn astonished nature and consoled the Church, the P. R. was not saved from destruction.

'I have the honour to be, with an inviolable respect and an immortal attachment, Sir, your very humble and very obedient servant.'

Allamand at Corsier above Vevey, to Voltaire at Ferney, December 9, 1768:

'The villainous old coach must have carried my A B C2 on to Berne, for I received it only ten days after it was despatched to me and, Sir, my eyes are heavy and red from having spent a night in taking my lesson from it, but I am well repaid by the unspeakable pleasure it has given me, for which I hasten to return you a thousand thanks-with the exception, however, of that which concerns too nearly our daily bread. I did not tire in admiring that abundance, that charm, and that masculine vigour of a pen whose point must have been worn out by so many labours. I was almost saying that it is the Phoenix which rises again from its ashes, but you are far from your ashes, and it is not a question of being precious when one has only had a taste of life. How many new and trenchant things there are! I think I see, especially in Conversations III., VII.,

1 Allamand did not know he was unjust to Nicolas Fréret (1688-1749); it is now proved that the latter by his immensely learned works deprived irreligion and incredulity of some of their strongest arguments.

2 L' A, B, C, ou Dialogues entre A, B, C, traduit de l'Anglais de M. Huet, by Voltaire (1768).

IX., X., XI., XIV., certain pieces which can compare favourably with the most immortal of your prose works. It is the A B C of all Moral Sciences, just as the Elements of Newton were the A B C of Physical Science, I believe, eighty years ago. Ah, Sir! why does not so fine a genius in its decline occupy itself with making the best advantage of the Gospel, which in the main is in its proper place, rather than find fault with it? Glory and success would be insured on one side, and after all, has been done up to the present on the other side it appears to me) with much peril and little hope. this effusion on account of my extreme attachment for you, and the desire which urges me to prove that so fine and so great a part of the earth has not lost fifteen hundred years in being Christian.

that which is laden (so Pray pardon

'There are various traits in these Conversations, even in the most advanced, to which you would see me agree without difficulty; I am not at all frightened, for instance, at the eternity of the world such as you expound it. The eternity of matter has always appeared to me certain. I am assured that the Scriptures contradict neither the one nor the other, and my friends saw a long time ago a paraphrase of the first chapter of Genesis which appeared to them simple and natural, and from which it would. result that Moses had in view the creation of nothing, but simply a kind of clearance of the surface of this earth. On a number of facts, dogmas and maxims, you would find our writers of the Old and New Testament more tractable than you might think, and above all much more tractable than we other theologians. We are therefore nearer changing wine into water than water into wine. In the end, I imagine that you would not judge the Bible to be unworthy of giving to the human race that which it needs as to religion. Provided Phidias has a block of marble, what matters it if it is only one block-he will manage to carve out of it his Minerva. The question is not whether the block is without a scratch, but whether we have one more entire.

'I have, Sir, in fact, a great mind to furbish up all my knowledge upon these XVI. Conversations, and avenge myself upon your raillery by writing you an epistle and a half on each; but you have better things to do than read so much nonsense, and

feast days and catechumens are approaching when I shall want quite a different A B C.

We have heard that the Czarina had been put in prison; then the news was contradicted. I do not like women who give their husbands too severe colics, but I would pardon her a good deal if she succeeded in opening all the harems of Constantinople, sending Mustapha back to Nicæa [Izneek], and reanimating the Peloponnesus, even if it were necessary to send Jean Jacques [Rousseau] to revivify Sparta and the Jesuits to reestablish Athens. We shall see when all is finished in Poland if it would not have been better to soften the lot of the Dissidents by degrees, instead of giving the alarm at one blow to the nation, by wishing to carry everything away at the first bound by force. This system of "by degrees" is of service to the man who has no courage to sell; the proverb says that prudence is the virtue of cowards; but it is better to be a coward than it is to be dead, especially if there is not another life.

'I have the honour to be, with my eternal respect, Sir, your very humble and very obedient servant.'

CHAPTER CXI

In my collections is the subjoined fragment of a letter of Voltaire on the Dogma of the Immortality of the Soul, partly written in his own hand, and annotated as belonging to the end of 1765. It appears never to have been completed, and does not bear the name of the person to whom it was to have been sent. Formerly among the papers of M. Decroix, who published Voltaire's works known as the edition of Kehl, it passed into the hands of M. Jacques Charavay, and then to M. le Baron Feuillet de Conches, in whose possession it remained for more than thirty years.

All my inquiries have led to a belief that this fragment has never been published. One or two phrases resemble others in

1 Catherine II. of Russia (1729–1796), supposed by some to have been an accomplice to the murder (by poison and strangulation) of her husband, Peter III., 1762.

2 Mustapha III., Sultan of the Ottoman Empire (1717-1774).