Barring his rather unnecessary grief over the threatened production of a travestied _Semiramis_, there were for Voltaire no happier two years than those which saw him, with one or two interruptions, King Stanislas' guest. And to Stanislas, eager as he was to attach the great writer to his bright little court, there could have been no more welcome rigour than that which, at his daughter's instance, drove the leading spirit of the age into temporary exile. Voltaire had paid his court a little too openly to the powerful favourite. After that _cavagnole_ scandal at Fontainebleau, neither he nor Madame du Châtelet stood for the time in the best of odours at Court. Therefore, it probably required little persuasion on the part of the two royal princesses, prompted by their revengeful mother, to prevail upon Louis XV. in that one little square-rod of hallowed ground, over which the power of the mighty Circe did not extend, their nursery, to decree the banishment of the poet. Madame de Pompadour might have reversed the judgment had she been given the chance; but she was not given it, and, after all, Voltaire's exile did not make much difference to her. So the philosopher and Emilie were allowed to pursue their cold winter's journey, amid sundry break-downs and accidents, and prolonged involuntary star-gazing in a frosty night, to that pretty little oasis in ugly Champagne--a Lorrain _enclave_--in which stood the du Châtelets' castle. Stanislas did not allow the brilliant couple to remain long in their uncongenial retirement. He was anxious not to be forestalled by Prussian Frederick, who made wry faces enough on finding the preference over himself and his famous Sans-souci given to the _prince bourgeois_ and his _tabagie de Lunéville_. Stanislas' great ambition was, to make his Court a favoured seat of learning and letters. In his own, rather too complimentary opinion, he was himself something of a _littérateur_. Voltaire laughed pretty freely--behind the king's back--at his uncouth and incorrect prose and at those long and limping verses _de onze à quatorze pieds_, which the world has long since forgotten, as well it might. There are some well-put thoughts to be found in the king's _Réflexions sur divers sujets de morale_--for instance: "l'esprit est bien peu de chose quand ce n'est que de l'esprit," to say nothing of his oft-quoted motto: "malo periculosam libertatem quam quietam servitutem." But, at best his writings, however carefully revised by Solignac--his answer to Rousseau, and his _Oeuvres d'un Philosophe Bienfaisant_--are but ephemeral trash. Really, Stanislas could not even speak or write French correctly. But though he was nothing of a writer, and not much more of a wit, he knew thoroughly how to appreciate talent and genius in others. And in a man occupying nominally royal rank, placed at the head of a brilliant Court, having a civil list corresponding in value to at least 6,000,000 francs in