But, taken altogether, Voltaire's life was a great success. He got on in the world, was rich, was fortunate, was famous, was gay, if he was not happy. He had his friendship with the great Frederick of Prussia, who filled for his false French flatterer a return cup of sweetness, cunningly mixed with exceeding bitterness. His death was an appropriate _coup de theatre_, a felicity of finish to such a life quite beyond the reach of art. He came back to Paris, whence he had been an exile, welcomed with a triumph transcending the triumph of a conqueror. They made a great feast for him, a feast of flattery, in the theater. The old man was drunk with delight. The delight was too much for him. It literally killed him. It was as if a favorite actress should be quite smothered to death on the stage under flowers thrown in excessive profusion at her feet. Let Carlyle's sentence be our epigraph on Voltaire: "No great Man.... Found always at the top, less by power in swimming than by lightness in floating." XVII ROUSSEAU: 1712-1778; St. Pierre: 1737-1814. There are two Rousseaus in French literature. At least there was a first, until the second effaced him, and became the only. We speak, of course, in comparison, and hyperbolically. J. B. Rousseau is still named as a lyric poet of the time of Louis XIV. But when Rousseau, without initials, is spoken of, it is always Jean Jacques Rousseau that is meant. Jean Jacques Rousseau is perhaps the most squalid, as it certainly is one of the most splendid, among French literary names. The squalor belongs chiefly to the man, but the splendor is wholly the writer's. There is hardly another example in the world's literature of a union so striking of these opposites. Rousseau's life he has himself told, in the best, the worst, and the most imperishable of his books, the "Confessions." This book is one to which the adjective charming attaches, in a peculiarly literal sense of the word. The spell, however, is repellent as well as attractive. But the attraction of the style asserts and pronounces itself only the more, in triumph over the much there is in the matter to disgust and revolt. It is quite the most offensive, and it is well-nigh the most fascinating, book that we know. The "Confessions" begin as follows: I purpose an undertaking that never had an example, and whose execution never will have an imitator. I would exhibit to my fellows a man, in all the truth of nature, and that man--myself. Myself alone. I know my own heart, and I am acquainted with men. I am made unlike any one I have ever seen--I dare believe unlike any living being. If no better than, I am at least different from, others. Whether nature did well or ill in breaking the mold wherein I was cast, can be determined only after having read me.