contributions, too, a gallery was built for pictures and statues, and a cabinet of objects of science formed. A set of apartments for Madame du Châtelet, and another for him, were fitted up with extraordinary taste and splendour. A guest who has left a record of her visit to Cirey, Madame de Grafigny, says that Voltaire's rooms were more like those of a prince than of a private gentleman. The rest of the mansion seems to have been left much in its former condition, which was the reverse of magnificent.
This was his home for fifteen years, from 1734 to 1749—his abode there being, however, varied by frequent visits to Paris, to Brussels, and to Berlin. While at Cirey, both he and Madame du Châtelet studied and wrote perseveringly. He was, Madame de Grafigny says, so greedy of his time, so intent upon his work, that it was sometimes necessary to tear him from his desk for supper. "But when at table he always has something to tell, very facetious, very odd, very droll, which would often not sound well except in his mouth, and which shows him still as he has painted himself for us—
'Always one foot in the coffin,
The other performing gambades.'
To be seated beside him at supper, how delightful!" Reading aloud, the performance of comedies and tragedies, marionettes, and magic-lantern, exhibited by Voltaire, fêtes—these were the chief diversions of the place. Their journeys to and from Cirey to Paris, Brussels, and elsewhere, generally made by night for economy of time, were performed in a huge carriage so crowded with trunks, baggage, and movables of all kinds, that it sometimes broke down on the road.
