But for it, but for the thousand distractions of this new world, the loud acclamations, the surging stream of visitors the moment brought, Voltaire might have mourned Lekain longer.
But he was back in Paris. When he left it, he was a power, a danger, a fear. He had returned to it a king, and awaited his crowning.
CHAPTER XLIII
THE LAST VISIT
Morley speaks of Voltaire’s last visit as “one of the historic events of the century,” “the last great commotion in Paris under the old régime.” “A ghost, a prophet, an apostle,” says Grimm, “could not have excited a more fervent interest.”
The Salons worshipped the man who for sixty years had been the first wit of the wittiest age in history—the author of that dear, daring, ribald, wicked “Pucelle.”
The Philosophers kissed the hem of the garment of the author of “The Philosophical Dictionary.”
The Academy fell at the feet of him who had attempted every kind of literature and failed in none.
The Drama welcomed not only the most famous playwright since Corneille and Racine, but the man who for sixty years had not ceased to try to improve the civil status of actors.
The thrifty bourgeois left their shops and stood in crowds outside the Hôtel Villette, waiting to see him who was himself of their order and had fought for its rights and rent earth and heaven with cries against its wrongs.
The Protestant came to worship him who had preached Tolerance, defended the Calas, and flung all the weight of his scorn and passion against a law which proclaimed the heretic’s wife his mistress, and their children bastards.