“Don’t trouble yourself; I hate Protestants equally with Catholics! This terrible Calvin burnt his friend Servetus in Geneva, because he did not believe in the Trinity. And had Jean Calas in Toulouse been a Catholic, and his son a Protestant, I would still have attacked the judges, although I am nothing. I am nothing; only, what I write is something.” “Then some day we will raise a monument to Monsieur Voltaire’s writings--not to Voltaire.” “You have no need; I have already raised my monument myself in the hundred volumes of my collected works. The world has nothing to do with how the old ass looked; there is nothing to see in that. We know my weaknesses; I have lied, I have stolen, I have been ungrateful; something of a scoundrel, something of a brute! That is the dirty part of me, and I bequeath it to Jesuits, pettifoggers, hair-splitters and collectors of anecdotes;--but my spirit to God who gave it, and to men an honest purpose to understand their Monsieur Voltaire.” He rose, for the sun had descended. “Good-night, Mont Blanc; you have a white head like myself, and stand with your feet in cold water, as I do! Now I go and lie down! Tomorrow I travel to Paris, where I will die.” DAYS OF JUDGMENT In the northern tower of the Church of Notre Dame de Paris was the tower-watchman’s chamber. But it had been arranged like a bookbinder’s workshop, for the watchman’s day-duty was not particularly heavy, and the hours of the night passed with sleep or without sleep, no one troubling themselves to oversee this now superfluous church servant. Nobody entered the church, which had been damaged in various ways, and no one ascended the northern tower, for the bells hung in the southern one. There the watchman’s duty was regarded more seriously, for on all extraordinary occasions the alarm-bell had to sound. The watchman kept up a sort of telegraphic communication with the bellringer in the southern tower. In calm weather they could chat with each other, but when it was windy, they had to use speaking trumpets. The workshop had, in the course of years, developed into a very comfortable room. Its southern side was occupied by a single large bookcase. There the first edition of the _Encyclopédie_ in five and thirty volumes, shone resplendent in red morocco with gilt letters. There stood Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu, Locke, Hume--all the authors who ought to have been present. There were also periodicals, the _Moniteur_, Père Duchesne and Marat’s _L’Ami du Peuple_. This last was bound in somewhat greasy leather, which resembled pig’s-skin, and had curled up at the corners.