One other curious piece of sportiveness in his dealings with the church deserves to be noticed. In the year 1770 the post of temporal father of the order of Capucins for the district of Gex became vacant. Voltaire applied for it, and the general at Rome, perhaps listening to a word from Ganganelli, or else from the Duchess of Choiseul, sent to Ferney the letters patent conferring upon its patriarch this strange dignity, and also affiliating him to the order. What were Voltaire’s motives in so odd a transaction, it is not very hard to divine. Probably, he thought even this humble office would be some protection against persecution. Then it gave him an opportunity of harassing his enemy, the bishop of Annecy. Thirdly, it amused that whimsical element of farce and mischief which was always so irrepressible in him, from the early days when he is said to have nearly damned his own play by appearing on the stage as the high-priest’s train-bearer, and burlesquing that august person’s solemn gait. Voltaire filled his letters with infinite pleasantries about the new Capucin, and seemed as much pleased at the idea of wearing the cord of Saint Francis, as he had been with the gold key of a Prussian chamberlain.[288] One of his first enjoyments was to write letters to his episcopal foe, signed with a cross and his name: ‘✠ _Voltaire, Capucin indigne._’[289] A story is told by Grimm of a visitor arriving at Ferney, and being greeted by the patriarch with the news that he would find his host a changed man. ‘One grows a bigot in one’s old age; I have a habit of having some pious work read to me when I sit down at table.’ And in fact, some one began to read a sermon of Massillon, Voltaire throwing in exclamations on the beauty, eloquence, imagination of the preacher. Suddenly after three or four pages, he called out ‘Off with Massillon!’ and launched forth during the rest of the meal with his usual verve and fanciful extravagance of imagination.[290] It is profoundly unedifying, but not the less characteristic.