"It shall live," cried the king, "and we will each one honor this, our first sitting, by showing our confidence in each other. Every one shall relate something piquant and strange of his past life, some lively anecdote, or some sweet little mystery which we dare trust to our friends, but not to our wives. The oldest begins first." "I am afraid I am that," said Voltaire, "but your majesty must confess that my heart has neither white hair nor wrinkles. Old age is a terrible old woman who slides quietly, grinning and threatening, behind every man, and watches the moment when she dares lay upon him the mask of weary years through which he has lived and suffered. She has, alas! fastened her wrinkled mask upon my face, but my heart is young and green, and if the women were not so short- sighted as to look only upon my outward visage, if they would condescend to look within, they would no longer call me the old Voltaire, but would love and adore me, even as they did in my youth." "Listen well, friends, he will no doubt tell us of some duchess who placed him upon an altar and bowed down and worshipped him." "No, sire, I will tell you of an injury, the bitterest I ever experienced, and which I can never forget." "As if he had ever forgotten an injury, unless he had revenged it threefold!" cried D'Argens. "And chopped up his enemy for pastry and eaten him," said La Mettrie. "Truly, if I should eat all my enemies, I should suffer from an everlasting indigestion, and, in my despair, I might fly to La Mettrie for help. It is well known that when you suffer from incurable diseases, you seek, at last, counsel of the quack." "You forget that La Mettrie is a regular physician," said the king, with seeming earnestness. "On the contrary, he remembered it well," said La Mettrie, smiling. "The best physician is the greatest quack, or the most active grave- digger, if you prefer it." "Silence!" said the king. "Voltaire has the floor; he will tell us of the greatest offence he ever received. Give attention." "Alas! my heart is sad, sire; of all other pain, the pain of looking back into the past is the most bitter. I see myself again a young man, the Arouet to whom Ninon de l'Enclos gave her library and a pension, and who was confined for twenty years to the Bastile because he loved God and the king too little, and the charming Marquise de Villiers and some other ladies of the court too much. Besides these exalted ladies, there was a beautiful young maiden whom I loved--perhaps because she had one quality which I had never remarked in the possession of my more noble mistresses--she was innocent! Ah, friends, you should have seen Phillis, and you would have confessed that no rose-bud was lovelier, no lily purer, than she. Phillis was the daughter of a gypsy and a mouse-catcher, and danced on the tight-rope in the city-gardens."