Many were the comments upon this adventure, and many the discussions upon the possible contents of the phial, which it would be absurd to suppose consisted of nought but pure water. Some defended Cagliostro, others were loud against him, when the dear Duchess de V——, fearing that the time might be lost in dissertations on mesmerism, suddenly exclaimed, “Dear prince, you who have seen so many great men in your time, did you ever see Voltaire?” “Yes, indeed, fair lady, I _did_ once behold M. de Voltaire,” (the prince always called him so to the last day of his life,) “and my interview with him is connected in my mind with a curious fact. The narrative of my adventure may perhaps amuse you. It was in 1778, the year before his death, that I had the singular good fortune to obtain an audience of the great philosopher. He lived at the corner of the Rue de Beaune and the quai which has since been called by his name. He had intimated to my friend, Champfort, his great desire to become acquainted with me, and I, who all my life had been tormented with the wish to behold this greatest genius of the age, the master spirit of his own time, the guide of that which was to follow, did not need a second bidding. “The philosopher received us with great urbanity. He had been prepared for our visit in the morning, for he still loved dearly all kinds of form and ceremony, and, to the very last day of his life, set a higher price upon his title of M. _de_ Voltaire (which, by the by, was usurped) than on the popular and honourable abbreviation of ‘Voltaire,’ _tout court_, by which he was designated long before his death. M. de Voltaire was seated on the edge of his bed, attired in one of those short loose dressing-gowns much worn at the time, and which displayed his spindle legs and shrunken feet in all their unveiled ugliness. Never have I beheld a form so withered, so diminished; every vein in his whole frame was visible and defined, like those in an anatomical study. The later portraits of M. de Voltaire give a very just idea of his appearance, but they generally fail in expressing the singular look of the eyes—an expression which I never have seen in any one since that time—an anxious, unquiet, restless look—a hungry, thirsty, keenly-searching glance (hunger and thirst of praise), and searching with avidity for admiration, which, such was the Voltairian fever of the time, he never failed to obtain, and yet, as ‘_l’appétit vient en mangeant_,’ never wholly satisfied his craving.