It was as the champion of freedom of thought that Voltaire stood before the French people; he, with his wealth and fame, was able to do what they did not dare to do. From his mountain retreat he sent his ideas all over Europe; and meantime the blind, deluded rulers of France did all they could to plow the soil for his sowing. The great-grandson of the “grand monarch,” who ascended the throne as a child in 1715, ruled for almost sixty years. Beginning with the name of “the well-beloved,” he squandered the revenues of the state upon his mistresses, and led his country to a series of disasters, including the loss of the American colonies and India. He left the nation bankrupt, and died with the famous phrase, “After us the deluge.” Four years later, the old Voltaire, made bold by all his honors, came down from his mountain fortress and entered Paris. He had a pageant like a conquering hero; his plays were produced to enormous audiences, and even the Academy of Richelieu welcomed him--strange irony of history! It was like Tolstoi in Russia; the authorities would have liked to chop off his head, but they could only gnash their teeth in impotence. However, what their hatred could not do, the love of the people accomplished; Voltaire was literally killed by kindness, and died amid the excitements of this holiday. It is interesting to us to note that among those he met in Paris was Benjamin Franklin, fellow skeptic, scientist, and revolutionary propagandist from the new world. This was in 1778, two years after the Declaration of Independence, and less than ten years before the French revolution. In the case of Voltaire we see a man of letters who ranks as one of the great world forces, and purely and simply because of his propaganda. If he had written nothing but heroic tragedies and sublime epics, he would be a forgotten name today; it was only because he took upon himself the task of setting free the mind of his country, and labored at it incessantly for the greater part of his life, that we know of him and honor him as one of the glories of France. Great as were his faults, no one can deny that he stood to all the world for the fundamental idea of freedom of thought. CHAPTER XLIV THE TRUMPETER OF REVOLUTION We have seen that Voltaire was a Tory as to art; his revolution was of the intellect. There was needed a revolutionist of the feelings, and he appeared in the person of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a stormy, embittered, unhappy man, the object of endless controversy, continuing to our own day; a character full of contradictions, difficult to cover within the limits of a chapter.