which was not an irrelevant commentary. He came home greatly agitated from this interview. "I am returning," he said, "from one bank of the Styx to the other." The next day the Marquise sent back his portrait;[1] and the day after his death she, too, descended to the grave.
A fortnight after he came to Paris the unwonted excitement he had undergone brought on a dangerous attack of hæmorrhage from the lungs. Mindful of the fate of his friend Adrienne le Couvreur, he expressed piteously his wish that his body should not be cast into the highway; and, in the hope of averting that doom, confessed to a priest, and signed a paper asking pardon if he had offended the Church. A day or two afterwards his secretary, being alone with him, begged him to state exactly what his views still continued to be at a time when he believed himself dying; and received this written declaration: "I die adoring God, loving my friends, not hating my enemies, and detesting superstition.—Voltaire."
From this attack, however, he so far recovered that, a month later, he was present at the representation of his new tragedy "Irène," when his costume was well calculated to do honour to that or any other occasion, rivalling in splendour that which he wore at Ferney:—
"He had made a grand toilet; he wore a red velvet coat trimmed with ermine, a large perruque of the time of Louis XIV., black and unpowdered, and in which his meagre face was so buried that only his eyes could be seen, which seemed
- ↑ It came, with Ferney, into the possession of the Marquis de Villette; and at the death of the last possessor of that title was sold, some years ago, for about £250.
