of food and candles assumes a totally new shape. "Ce ne fut pas une petite affaire que d'obliger Voltaire à sortir du château de Lunéville." In vain did the king treat his guest with marked coldness; the philosopher would not take the hint. In his predicament Stanislas appealed to the _intendant_ for advice. "Sire," replies Alliot, "_hoc genus dæmoniorum non ejicitur nisi in oratione et jejunio_," which means, he explains, that "pour se débarrasser de pareilles pestes," having "prayed" them to go without avail, he should now enforce a "fast," which would certainly drive them out of the place. Stanislas is alleged to have fallen in with the Jesuit's counsels; hence that open tiff with Alliot over the stoppage of provisions, which made Voltaire complain that he had not been allowed "bread, wine and candles." In truth, of course, all this clerical story is pure invention. Of the stopping of the provisions Stanislas knew nothing till advised by Voltaire, when he quickly set the matter right. What with feasting, working, acting, dancing, travelling, the time passed most pleasantly. "En vérité," writes Voltaire to the Countess D'Argental, "ce séjourci est délicieux; c'est un château enchanté dont le maître fait les honneurs. Je crois que Madame du Châtelet passerait ici sa vie." Sometimes at Commercy, sometimes at the Malgrange, most generally at Lunéville, with visitors coming and going, discussions raised, attentions being paid this side and that, gallantry, billiards, _tric-trac_, _lansquenet_, _comète_ (which was a great favourite), marionettes, fancy balls, time could hang heavily on no one's hands. "On a de tout ici, hors du temps." Madame du Châtelet, writing till five o'clock in the morning, though she rose not later than nine, worked hard at her translation of _Newton_, which Voltaire cried up as a masterpiece--more particularly the preface. Whenever she found herself at fault, she had a splendidly fitted-up astronomical cabinet, kept up by Stanislas, to fall back upon, a cabinet which, says Voltaire, "n'a pas son pareil en France." Voltaire himself carried on a brisk correspondence with the Argentals, with Frederick the Great, with his friend Falkener in Wandsworth, and with many more, and worked at his history "de cette maudite guerre," at the _Siècle de Louis XIV._, at _Catilina_, and so on, with the easy industry which comes from comfort and absolute absence of restraint amid agreeable surroundings. To ingratiate himself the more with Madame de Boufflers, he wrote _La Femme qui a raison_. He acted and he criticized. He performed with a magic lantern, to the great amusement of the Court; and at masked balls he got himself up, sometimes as a "wild man," sometimes as an ancient augur. He was sorely troubled when threatened with a performance in Paris of a travesty of _Semiramis_. Then he lost some manuscripts. Then, again, Menoux frightened him with a tale that _Le Mondain_ and _Le