Suppose the bitterest of your barking curs were a Reverend Desfontaines of Sodom, whom you yourself had saved from the gibbet once, and again and again from starving?
It is positively a great Anarchy, and Fountain of Anarchies, all that, if you will consider; and it will have results under the sun.

You cannot help it, say you; there is no shutting up of a Reverend Desfontaines, which would be so salutary to himself and to us all?
No:--and when human reverence (daily going, in such ways) is quite gone from the world; and your lowest blockhead and scoundrel (usually one entity) shall have perfect freedom to spit in the face of your highest sage and hero,--what a remarkably Free World shall we be! Voltaire, keeping good silence as to all this, and minded for Brussels again, receives the King of Prussia's invitation; lays it at his Eminency Fleury's feet; will not accept, unless his Eminency and my own King of France (possibly to their advantage, if one might hint such a thing!) will permit it.

[Ib.

lxxii.

555 (Letter to Fleury, "Paris, Aug.
22d").] "By all means; go, and"-- The rest is in dumb-show; meaning, "Try to pump him for us!" Under such omens, Voltaire and his divine Emilie return to their Honsbruck Lawsuit: "Silent Brussels, how preferable to Paris and its mad cries!" Voltaire, leaving the divine Emilie at Brussels, September 2d, sets out for Aix,--Aix attainable within the day.