tated by his parting shots at Maupertius. An order was given, and carried out, by which Voltaire was arrested and detained at Frankfort while his boxes were searched for the cross and key, and the more important manuscript of verses by the king, entitled "Palladion," in which his majesty had burlesqued the Christian faith. The king got his papers and chuckled over the humiliation of the man he had idolized, who took a poet's revenge in this roughly paraphrased epigram on the great Frederick:
"Of incongruities a monstrous pile,
Calling men brothers, crushing them the while;
With air humane, a misanthropic brute;
Ofttimes impulsive, ofttimes too astute;
Weakest when angry, modest in his pride;
Yearning for virtue, lust personified;
Statesman and author, of the slippery crew;
My patron, pupil, persecutor too."
In November of this year he visited his old friend, the duke de Richelieu, in Lyons, a city of great commercial importance about 200 miles from Colmar. Here he was enthusiastically welcomed by his few friends and the public, but the Church made it plain to him that he was not welcome to the governing class in France; so that, after a month in Lyons, he loaded his big carriage once more and sought an asylum in Geneva, ninety miles distant. He would have gone to America had he not feared the long sea journey, and in Switzerland he found the best possible European substitute for the new world of freedom so attractive to him.
1755—In February Voltaire bought a life-lease of a commodious house, with beautiful gardens, on a splendid eminence overlooking Geneva, the lake and rivers; and giving an enchanting view of Jura and the Alps. This place he named "Les Délices," the name it still bears. Here, he was in Geneva. Ten minutes' walk placed him in Sardinia. He was only half an hour from France and one hour from the Swiss canton of Vaud. The situation pleased Voltaire, and he bought property and houses under four governments, and all within a circuit of a day's ride. Voltaire describes his retreat thus: "I lean my left on Mount