It is said, and it was said first by one who lived with them for some time, and has left a graphic account of the interior of Cirey, that she made Voltaire’s life a little hard to him.[73] There were many occasional storms and short sullen fits even in these high regions of science and the finer tastes. Yet such stormful scenes, with great actors as with small, are perhaps more painful in description than they were in reality; and Voltaire was less discomposed by the lively impetuosity of a companion like Madame du Châtelet, than he would have been by the orderly calm of a more precise and perfectly well-regulated person. A man follows the conditions of his temperament, and Voltaire’s unresting animation and fire might make him feel a certain joy of life and freedom in the occasional contentiousness of a slightly shrewish temper. We cannot think of him as ever shrinking, ever craving for repose, as some men do as for a very necessity of existence. The health of your friend, wrote Madame du Châtelet to D’Argental in 1739, is in so deplorable a state that the only hope I have left of restoring it is in the turmoil of a journey[74]. A tolerably frequent agitation was a condition of even such health as he had, to one of Voltaire’s nervous and feverish habit. Let it be said that his restlessness never took a form which involved a sacrifice of the happiness of other people. It was never tyrannical and exigent. There are many, too many, instances of his angry impatience with persons against whom he thought he had cause of offence. There is not a single instance in which any shadow of implacableness lurked for an enemy who had repented or fallen into misfortune; and if his resentment was constantly aflame against the ignoble, it instantly expired and changed into warm-hearted pity, when the ignoble became either penitent or miserable. There are many tales of the readiness with which his anger was appeased. Any one will suffice as a type. On some occasion when Voltaire was harassed by a storm of libels, and happened to be on good terms with the police, a distributor of the libels was arrested. The father, an old man of eighty, hastened to Voltaire to pray for pardon. All Voltaire’s fury instantly vanished at the first appeal; he wept with the old man, embraced him, consoled him, and straightway ran to procure the liberation of the offender[75]. An eye-witness related to Grimm how he happened to be present at Ferney when Voltaire received Rousseau’s Lettres de la Montagne, and read the apostrophe relating to himself. His face seemed to take fire, his eyes sparkled with fury, his whole frame trembled, and he cried in terrible tones—‘The miscreant! the monster! I must have him cudgelled—yes, I will have him cudgelled in his mountains at the knees of his nurse.’ ‘Pray, calm yourself,’ said the bystander, ‘for I know that Rousseau means to pay you a visit, and will very shortly be at Ferney.’ ‘Ah, only let him come,’ replied Voltaire.