Still, he gathered together the strength he had left him and the pluck that never failed him, rejoined his regiment in Germany in 1743, fought nobly for his fallen cause at Dettingen, and returned to the garrison of Arras at the end of the year, an invalid for life. It was now obvious he could no longer pursue his calling. Though he wrote with a keen and bitter truth that courage had come to be regarded as a popular delusion, patriotism as a prejudice, and that ‘one sees in the army only disgust, _ennui_, neglect, murmuring; luxury and effeminacy have produced the same effrontery as peace; and those who should, from their position, arrest the progress of the evil, encourage it by their example,’ yet still he would, if he could, have been soldier to the end. For a time he thought of diplomacy. ‘Great positions soon teach great minds,’ was one of his axioms. He would have been well fitted. But merit was not of the slightest help to advancement. To fawn on the King and the Mistress, to prostitute one’s life and one’s talents to a Court--here was the way to promotion. Vauvenargues wrote to the King and corresponded with Amelot the Minister, who answered most amiably and affably--and did nothing at all. ‘Permit me, sir,’ wrote Vauvenargues to him at last, with the directness taught in camps, ‘to assure you that it is a moral impossibility for a gentleman, with nothing but zeal to commend him, ever to reach the King.’ Amelot, stung a little, promised the next vacant post, and this time promised sincerely. Vauvenargues retired to Provence and to quiet, to learn his new business. There he was attacked by confluent small-pox, which left him nearly blind and wholly disfigured: a misfortune he felt painfully as ‘one of those accidents which prevent the soul from showing itself.’ But worse than any disfigurement, the partial blindness made, of course, a diplomatic career an impossibility for ever. Before the campaign of 1743, Vauvenargues had introduced himself to Arouet de Voltaire, by a letter in which the obscure soldier-critic compared Corneille disadvantageously with Racine. Nothing is so delightful in Voltaire’s own genius as his generous recognition of other men’s. Nothing is more to his honour than his high admiration for the moral gifts of a Vauvenargues who was young enough to be his son, who was poor, forlorn, a nobody, and whose fine qualities of lofty highmindedness, delicacy, patience and serenity found, alas! no counterpart in Voltaire’s own nature. It is so much the more to his credit that he could admire what he could never imitate, and appreciate what was wholly foreign to his temperament. He rejoiced in the thoughtful ability of that letter. ‘It is the part of such a man as you,’ he replied, ‘to have preferences but no exclusions.’ The campaign of 1743 had interrupted their relationship. But they resumed it now, and, behold! it had turned into friendship.