the grasp of arbitrary and capricious power, while he would at the same time enjoy the solace of the most congenial female society which, perhaps, all France could supply to him. This opportunity, of which he immediately took advantage, consisted in retiring to the country house of the Marquis du Châtelet, on the verge of Lorraine, along with the Marquis's wife:—
"I was tired," he says, "of the idle, turbulent life of Paris, of the crowd of dandies, of bad books printed with the approbation and privilege of the king, of the cabals of literary people, of the baseness and dishonesty of the scum who dishonour letters. I found in 1733 a young lady who thought much as I did, and who took the resolution to pass several years in the country, and there to cultivate her mind, far from the tumult of the world: this was the Marquise du Châtelet, the woman who was the most disposed to study the sciences of any in France. Her father, the Baron de Breteuil, had made her learn Latin, which she knew as well as Madame Dacier; she had by heart the choice passages of Horace, Virgil, and Lucretius; all the philosophical works of Cicero were familiar to her. But of all studies, she preferred mathematics and metaphysics."
Nor is this the testimony merely of a too partial admirer—critics of unimpeachable judgment confirm it. "She really took a high place in letters and philosophy," says St Beuve, "and retained the admiration of Voltaire, who was not the man to let his intellect be for long the dupe of his heart."
Madame du Châtelet, twelve years younger than Voltaire, who was not yet forty, was then about twenty-seven. Although an enemy of hers, Madame du Deffant, has left an unfavourable portrait of her, there is no doubt that she was in person as well as in mind an extremely
