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HIS OLD AGE.
CHAPTER XX.
LAST VISIT TO FREDERICK.
Bereft of the companion by whose side he had traversed the plateaus of middle age, Voltaire now found himself facing alone those downward slopes of life which always grow more rapid of descent till they disappear over the verge of the world. Far from finding any flattering illusions in the prospect before him, he was prone to exaggerate his feebleness and to anticipate the approaches of age. But though he felt the loss of the Marquise so severely, he was too elastic of nature, had too many sources of interest, and possibly too little depth of heart, to be permanently unsettled by the blow. "I know no more powerful remedy," he has said, "against the ills of the soul, than the strong and serious application of the intellect to other objects." Accordingly, being persuaded by his old friends Richelieu and D'Argental, who, after his arrival in Paris, paid him daily visits in his sorrow, to seek this mode of distraction, he busied himself with completing his two tragedies, "Orestes"
