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CHAPTER XIX.
END OF THE CIREY EPOCH.
It is known from the Marquise du Châtelet's correspondence that she considered the first ten years of this life at Cirey paradise. For so long Voltaire continued to be the devoted lover, full of consideration and of attention, ready with graceful gifts and still more graceful verses. He wrote poetical epistles in which she figured as the illustration or pointed the moral; he wrote pieces complimenting her on her learning, and not destitute of allusions to her wit and beauty; he replied in highly-finished rhymes, in her name, to illustrious correspondents. But the inevitable time came when all this changed: the poet was growing old; notwithstanding the astonishing vitality which preserved his mental energy in perfection to eighty-four, he aged physically, perhaps, before his time. He was thinner than ever; he lost his teeth, henceforward assuming that profile to which his busts, made in extreme old age, accustom us; he was often an invalid; and he began to regard the fair sex as to be turned to account chiefly for literary purposes. Thus it was not so much that he gave up love as that love gave him up. Nevertheless they parted friends, and Voltaire
