Another notable man--more notable as a man than a poet--was Petit-Senn, who lived to a patriarchal age and was a member of all the literary groups in succession. He is sometimes spoken of as a Genevan Voltaire; and he resembled Voltaire in living a little way out of the town, yet in touch with its intellectual life, and receiving the homage of a constant stream of admiring pilgrims; but he is even better entitled to be styled the Genevan Mæcænas. Possessed of something more than a modest competence, he opened his purse freely to the poorer poets, not only relieving their necessities, but paying for the publication of their works. His ‘Miliciade’--a satire on the amateurishness of the Genevan army--had an immense success when he gave a reading of it in a concert-hall; and his ‘Bluettes et Boutades’ are short sentences generally worthy of being ranked with epigrams. We may cull a few of them: ‘In the eyes of the world, however one may have made one’s money, one has done better than if one had lost it. ‘The egoist weeps over the story of a shipwreck at the reflection that he might himself have been on board. ‘We are more ready to do justice to the dead than to the absent. ‘Some of the sins of youth are so agreeable that age repents of them only in order to have an excuse for recalling them. ‘When a friend asks you for money, consider which of the two you would rather lose. ‘The most lucrative kind of commerce would be to buy men at their real value, and sell them at their own valuation. ‘If hypocrisy were to die, modesty would, at least, have to go into half-mourning. ‘Let us respect white hairs ... especially our own.’