grapher, while allowed to retain that of gentleman-in-ordinary. And now, while Frenchmen, in reading these brilliant annals, felt a new pride in their nationality, the sullen dislike of the apathetic king kept the annalist excluded from the country the glory of which he had so worthily celebrated. Halting on the Rhine to wait for that permission which never came, he made Colmar his headquarters, where he spent nearly six months on a sick-bed. The disordered health of which he so frequently complained while in Prussia was due to a scorbutic affection, which, besides general injury to the system, deprived him of nearly all the remainder of his teeth—and from this disease he had not yet recovered. It was while on his way to drink the waters of Plombières that he halted at the Abbey of Sénones, as already mentioned. The Abbot, Calmet, was himself a man of letters—the library was almost the finest in France, and especially rich in rare medieval literature; and here, for a month, Voltaire led the life of a veritable Benedictine, spending his days in making extracts from these old books, and sharing the meals of the monks in their refectory, while the old Abbot constantly pleased himself with the thought that he was on the point of making a convert of his sceptical guest.
