After eighteen months in Toulouse the party went, we are told, “by a pretty extensive tour, through the south of France to Geneva.” There Smith was able to gratify two of his strongest passions: his admiration for the Republican form of government and for Voltaire. The little Republic was then in a constitutional tumult, for the citizens were pressing for a share in what had till then been a narrow aristocracy. In this they had the support of Voltaire, who lived, the literary potentate of Europe, at Ferney, just outside the city bounds, in the feudal seigniory of Gex. To his château by the lake pilgrims resorted from all parts of Europe to pay their court, and were hospitably received. Smith seems to have visited Ferney five or six times during his short stay, and conversation deepened the admiration which his favourite author had inspired. Samuel Rogers, meeting Smith a year before his death, happened to remark of some writer that he was rather superficial, a Voltaire. “Sir!” cried Smith, incensed by this use of the indefinite article, striking the table with his hand, “there has been but one Voltaire.” Voltaire, on his side, probably thought well of the _Theory of Moral Sentiments_, for his intimate friend, Dr. Tronchin, the famous physician of Geneva, had sent his son to attend Smith’s classes at Glasgow. Rogers’s visit fell in the year of the French Revolution, and the question of king against parliaments was being debated. Smith mentioned that Voltaire had an aversion to the States, and was attached to the royal authority. Voltaire had talked about the Duke of Richelieu, whom the party had met at Toulouse, as a singular character. The duke had slipped down at Versailles, a few years before his death, “the first _faux pas_ he had ever made at Court.” When Saint-Fond, who visited Edinburgh in 1784, called on Adam Smith, he was shown a fine bust of Voltaire; and Smith discoursed upon the incalculable obligations that Reason owed to the Philosopher of Ferney. “The ridicule and sarcasms which he lavished upon fanatics and hypocrites of all sects have enabled the understandings of men to bear the light of truth,” and prepared them for research. “He has done much more for the benefit of mankind than those grave philosophers whose books are read by a few only. The writings of Voltaire are made for all and read by all.” Smith said he could not pardon Joseph the Second of Austria, “who pretended to travel as a philosopher,” for passing Ferney without doing homage to the historian of Peter the Great. He concluded from this circumstance that Joseph “was but a man of inferior mind.”[22]