Nay, without devils, with only those terrible bowels of mine, and scorbutic gums, it is bad enough: "Glorious promotions to me here," sneers he bitterly; "but one thing is indisputable, I have lost seven of my poor residue of teeth since I came!" In truth, we are in a sadly scorbutic state; and that, and the devils we lodge within ourselves, is the one real evil.
Could not Suspicion--why cannot she!--take her natural rest; and all these terrors vanish?
Oh, M.de Voltaire!--The practical purport, to Niece Denis, always is: Keep my retreat to Paris open; in the name of Heaven, no obstruction that way! Miserable indeed; a man fatally unfit for his present element! But he has Two considerable Sedatives, all along; two, and no third visible to me.

Sedative FIRST: that, he can, at any time, quit this illustrious Tartarus-Elysium, the envy of mankind;--and indeed, practically, he is always as if on the slip; thinking to be off shortly, for a time, or in permanence; can be off at once, if things grow too bad.

Sedative SECOND is far better: His own labor on LOUIS QUATORZE, which is steadily going on, and must have been a potent quietus in those Court-whirlwinds inward and outward.
From Berlin, already in Autumn, 1750, Voltaire writes to D'Argental: "I sha'n't go to Italy this Autumn [nor ever in my life], as I had projected.

But I will come to see YOU in the course of November" (far from it, I got into STEUER-SCHEINE then!)--And again, after some weeks: "I have put off my journey to Italy for a year.

Next Winter too, therefore, I shall see you," on the road thither.