The year closed full of the happiest expectations. Despite gala entrances to new estates, Madame Denis, indeed, complained that the winter of 1758-59 was dull. It was all spent at Délices: as being more out of the way of the troubling of Grassets and Hallers, than Monrion. True, plenty of visitors came from Lausanne; but there were not many who came to sleep and stay. True, too, the Délices troupe had privately acted (“the only pleasure I have in this country,” Madame Denis wrote dismally) “Aménaïde,” which was to have its name changed to “Tancred” later; and as “Tancred” become immortal. But Madame Denis apparently was suffering from an indigestion which Tronchin could not cure, for she spoke slightingly of that good physician, and discontentedly of life in general. Uncle Voltaire was so absurdly busy! Trying to do a hundred things at once, and invincibly obstinate. “It is the only sign of old age he has.” “If I were not so sensitive I should be very happy.” When a lady complains she is sensitive, she always means that she is cross and offended. Uncle Voltaire had shown his invincible obstinacy by persisting in going on with that Saurin controversy when his niece thought he had very much better leave it alone.

Then, too, he was getting more and more engrossed every day with pulling down and putting up, with barns, farms, oxen, sheep, horses; and “adored the country even in winter,” while Louise, as he said himself, was “very difficult to reduce to the rôle of Ceres, of Pomona, and of Flora, and would much rather have been Thalia in Paris.” But when her uncle found Tourney and Ferney, he found a better life than he had ever known; and the dearest and crossest of nieces would not make him relinquish it. The year 1759 was still new-born when he was writing, not once but many times, that he was wonderfully well and happy, stronger and better than he had ever been; that he had only really lived since the day he chose his retreat; that he was so infinitely content “that if I dare I should think myself wise.”

“Such is my life, Madame, tranquil and occupied, full and philosophic.” “I love to plant, I love to build, and so satisfy the only tastes which gratify old age.”

“This kind of life makes one want to live.” “Property in paper depends upon fortune; property in land depends only upon God.”

“To have found the secret of being independent in France is more than to have written the ‘Henriade.’”

CHAPTER XXXII
FERNEY

Ferney, as has been said, stood on the north shore of Lake Leman, in the district of Gex, three and a half miles from Geneva and almost joining Délices. The village to which it belonged, also called Ferney, was really nothing but a mean hamlet with forty or fifty miserable inhabitants, “devoured by poverty, scurvy, and tax-gatherers.” A very ugly little church stood much too near the house.

That house, when Voltaire bought it, was very old, tumbledown, and totally inadequate to his requirements. The entrance was through two towers connected by a drawbridge. If it was picturesque, it was certainly not comfortable. When Voltaire had rebuilt it, it was certainly comfortable, and decidedly unpicturesque.

He had begun that rebuilding three months before the deed of purchase was signed. By December 6, 1758, he had twenty masons at work. By the 24th, what he might well have cynically called his optimism led him to think it “a pretty house enough.” By June, 1759, it was “a charming château in the Italian style.”

By July it was “of the Doric order. It will last a thousand years.”