than the lady herself could ever say in her whole life." Such harmless little hits the _philosophe_ had now and then to put up with; but for serious fighting few besides Menoux had any stomach. Devaux (Panpan), however "dévot," was disarmed by being--quite on the sly, but no less ardently--one of Madame de Boufflers' chosen admirers. Galaizière was taken up with other things. Solignac was too much of a dependent. "Mon Dieu" Choiseul did not carry sufficient weight. There was, indeed, another Abbé at Court, who might have been expected to help: Porquet, who became the Duke's almoner, a most amusing person in a passive way. But he was by no means cut out for a champion. Besides, being tutor to the young de Boufflers, he was scarcely a free agent. He himself describes himself as an "homme empaillé." When first appointed almoner, and called upon to say grace, he found that he had quite forgotten his Benedicite. Stanislas made him occasionally read to him out of the Bible, with the result that, half-dozing over the sacred page, he fell into mis-readings such as this: "Dieu apparut en singe à Jacob." "Comment," interrupted the Duke, "c'est 'en songe' que vous voulez dire!" "Eh, Sire, tout n'est-il pas possible à la puissance de Dieu?" There was one sturdy supporter of Catholicism, however, who never flinched from the fight: that was Alliot, the Duke's _intendant_, who, by virtue of his office, had it in his power to make his dislike sharply felt. With what abhorrence he regarded the infidel guest, for whom he had to cater, we may learn from the contemporary records of his clerical allies, narratives which do not ordinarily come under the notice of persons reading about Voltaire. One can scarcely help drawing the inference that King Stanislas, with all his goodness and all his affected devotion to _periculosa libertas_, was a little bit of a "Mr. Facing-both-ways," using very different arguments in different companies--a Pharisee to the Pharisees, a _philosophe_ to the _philosophes_. Only thus could it come about that we have such extraordinary stories, altogether inconsistent with known facts, vouched for on the authority of reverend divines like Abbé Aubert and Abbé Proyart. "On vit quelquefois," says Abbé Proyart, "à la Cour du roi de Pologne certains sujets peu dignes de sa confiance, et le Prince les connoissoit; mais il trouvoit dans sa religion même des motifs de ne pas les éloigner." It was represented to him (by Alliot) that Voltaire "faisoit l'hypocrite." "C'est lui même, et non pas moi qu'il fait dupe," replied the king. "Son hypocrisie du moins est un hommage qu'il rend à la vertu. Et ne vaut-il pas mieux que nous le voyions hypocrite ici que scandaleux ailleurs?" But "le vrai sage," the Abbé goes on, found himself compelled at last to dismiss "le faux philosphe, qui commençoit à répandre à sa Cour le poison de ses dangereuses maximes." Under this clerical gloss the well-known story of Alliot stopping Voltaire's supply