Voltaire treated Christianity so lightly that he confessed and took the sacrament for a joke. Is it wonderful if he did the same thing on his death-bed to secure the decent burial for his corpse? He remembered his own bitter sorrow and indignation, which he expressed in burning verse, when the remains of poor Adrienne Lecouvreur were refused sepulture because she died outside the pale of the Church. Fearing similar treatment himself, he arranged to cheat the Church again. By the agency of his nephew, the Abbé Mignot, the Abbé Gautier was brought to his bedside, and according to Condorcet he “confessed Voltaire, receiving from him a profession of faith, by which he declared that he died in the Catholic religion, wherein he was born.” This story is generally credited, but its truth is by no means indisputable; for in the Abbé Gautier’s declaration to the Prior of the Abbey of Scellieres, where Voltaire’s remains were interred, he says that when he visited M. de Voltaire, he found him “_unfit to be confessed_.” The curate of St. Sulpice was annoyed at being forestalled by the Abbé Gautier, and as Voltaire was his parishioner he demanded “a detailed profession of faith and a disavowal of all heretical doctrines.” He paid the dying Freethinker many unwelcome visits, in the vain hope of obtaining a full recantation, which would be a fine feather in his hat. The last of these visits is thus described by Wagnière, who was an eye-witness to the scene. I take Carlyle’s translation: “Two days before that mournful death, M. l’Abbé Mignot, his nephew, went to seek the Curé of St. Sulpice and the Abbé Gautier, and brought them into his uncle’s sick room; who, on being informed that the Abbé Gautier was there, ‘Ah, well!’ said he, ‘give him my compliments and my thanks.’ The Abbé spoke some words to him, exhorting him to patience. The Curé of St. Sulpice then came forward, having announced himself, and asked of M. de Voltaire, elevating his voice, if he acknowledged the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ? The sick man pushed one of his hands against the Curé’s calotte (coif), shoving him back, and cried, turning abruptly to the other side, ‘Let me die in peace (Laissez-moi mourir en paix).’ The Curé seemingly considered his person soiled, and his coif dishonored, by the touch of the philosopher. He made the sick-nurse give him a little brushing, and then went out with the Abbé Gautier.” A further proof that Voltaire made no real recantation lies in the fact that the Bishop of Troyes sent a peremptory dispatch to the Prior of Scellieres, which lay in his diocese, forbidding him to inter the heretic’s remains. The dispatch, however, arrived too late, and Voltaire’s ashes remained there until 1791, when they were removed to Paris and placed in the Pantheon, by order of the National Assembly. Voltaire’s last moments are described by Wagnière. I again take Carlyle’s translation: