Voltaire wrote his tragedies as a means of gaining public favour. He knew his countrymen. As a sovereign of the French must gather popularity by leading them to victory and military glory, so must an author, who would acquire their favour, achieve eminent success, at once to raise their enthusiasm, and to gratify their vanity, by making them participate in the greatness of his name. On his return from England, Voltaire determined to acquire the popular favour, by his triumphs in the drama. At first he was not as successful as he wished: his "Brutus" fell coldly on the gay, excitement-hunting Parisians; "Eryphile," on which he spent excessive pains,--remodelling and re-writing different portions again and again,--had faults that the author's quick eye discerned at once to be incurable, and he withdrew it after the first representation. "Zaire" repaid him for these disappointments;--"Zaire," which, whatever its faults may be, is so fresh, so eloquent, so deeply and naturally pathetic. This play was written in twenty-two days. It was a happy thought. [Sidenote: 1732. Ætat. 38.] Voltaire writes concerning it: "I never worked so fast; subject carried me on, and the piece wrote itself. I have tried to depict what has been long in my head,--Turkish manners contrasted with Christian manners; and to unite, in the same picture, all that our religion has of dignified, and even tender, with an affecting and passionate love." Two months afterwards, he writes: "I wish you had witnessed the success of 'Zaire;' allow me to enjoy freely, with you, the pleasure of succeeding. Never was piece played so well as 'Zaire' at the fourth representation. I wish you had been there; you would have seen that the public does not hate your friend. I appeared in a box, and the whole pit clapped. I blushed, and hid myself; but I should be deceitful did I not confess that I was deeply moved;--it is delightful not to be put to shame in one's own country." But, after this triumph, he laboured to correct his piece. He feared, he said, to have owed too much to the large dark eyes of mademoiselle Gaussin, and to the picturesque effect produced by the mingling of plumes and turbans on the stage. He felt, for the moment, that he had arrived at the height of literary renown, and that his task was nearly fulfilled. "What labour and pains I go through," he writes, "or this smoke of vain glory! Yet what should we do without the chimæra? it is as necessary to the soul as food to the body. I shall re-write 'Eryphile,' and the 'Death of Cæsar,'--all for this smoke. Meanwhile I am correcting the 'History of Charles XII.' for an edition in Holland; and when this is done, I shall finish the 'Letters on England,' which you know of,--that will be a month's work; after which I must return to my dramas, and finish, at lastly the 'History of the Age of Louis XIV.' This, dear friend, is the plan of my life."