At Ferney, the old church obstructing his view of the Alps, he built a new one, and got into trouble for doing so. He had inscribed on it, “Deo erexit Voltaire, 1761,” a phrase which betrayed rather patronage than devotion. “It is,” he remarked, “the only church dedicated to God alone; all the others are dedicated to saints. For my part, I would rather worship the master than the valets.” On another occasion, he said: “Yes, I adore God; but not monsieur his son, and madame his mother.” It was observed of the inscription that he had only a single word between himself and God. From the wall of his church he also built a tomb for himself. “The wicked will say that I am neither inside nor outside,” he remarked. Of the church he remarked: “The wicked will say, no doubt, that I am building this church in order to throw down the one which conceals a beautiful prospect, and to have a grand avenue; but I let the impious talk, and go on working out my salvation.” If the wicked made the remarks predicted, they doubtless spoke the truth. It was even reported that Voltaire personally superintended the removal of the old ruinous one, saying, “Take away that gibbet” when pointing to the crucifix. The _cure_ of Moens, the parish adjoining Ferney, cited Voltaire before the ecclesiastical official of Gex as guilty of impiety and sacrilege, and Wagnière, Voltaire’s secretary, says: “Those gentlemen indulged the confident hope that M. de Voltaire would be burned, or at least hanged, for the greater glory of God and the edification of the faithful. This they said publicly.” Voltaire was enabled to strike terror to his persecutor by producing a royal ordinance of 1627 forbidding a _cure_ to serve either as prosecutor or judge in such cases. The church remains, but the celebrated inscription was effaced during the Restoration of the Monarchy. Ferney became an asylum for the oppressed both from France and Switzerland. Many of these Voltaire located in and about his château, but, as their number increased, he built nice stone houses, and, in a little time, the miserable hamlet which before his arrival had been a wilderness, became a prosperous colony of twelve hundred individuals and a veritable free State. There were both Protestants and Catholics among them, but such was the unanimity in which they lived under his protection, that we are told no one could conceive that different religions existed among them. Among this colony he established the manufacture of weaving and of watches, by means of which his people presently became wealthy; the Empress Catherine II., even when engaged in her Turkish campaigns, paying her _bon ami_ Voltaire the compliment of assisting the Ferney colony by an order for watches to the value of some thousand roubles. He pushed the work of his colonists into repute throughout the world, and was justified in saying to the Duke of Richelieu, “Give me a fair chance, and I am the man to build a city.”