In this May of 1722, he further sought to improve his monetary position by running to earth, for Cardinal Dubois--the first, greatest, and vilest of the Regent’s Prime Ministers--a spy, one Salamon Levi. Voltaire does not appear to have thought the occupation a derogatory one. Nor did it hurt his cynic and elastic conscience to flatter “Iscariot” Dubois to the top of his bent both in verse and prose, and declare that he (Voltaire) would be eternally grateful if Dubois would employ him somehow, in something. The pension from the King--very irregularly paid at first, and soon not paid at all--was not taken by him as the authorities must have hoped it would be, and neither shut his mouth nor quenched his spirit. It was nominally a tribute to a talented young playwriter. He took it virtually as such. His old talent for getting into mischief was as lively as ever; and spies at this period seem to have had an unlucky fascination for him. One night in July, 1722, at the house of the Minister of War he met Beauregard, the spy who had been the instrument of putting him into the Bastille. “I knew spies were paid,” he said, “but I did not know that it was by eating at the minister’s table.” Beauregard bided his time, and fell on the poet one night on the Bridge of Sèvres as he was crossing it in his sedan chair, beating him severely. To give blows with a cane was thereafter translated “_Voltairiser_” in the mouth of Voltaire’s enemies. He had many of them. He had made so many _mots_! They denied him his proper share of physical courage. D’Argenson, his friend, though he said he had in his soul a strength worthy of Turenne, of Moses, and of Gustavus Adolphus, yet added that he feared the least dangers for his body and was “a proven coward.” He was certainly, now and ever, a most nervously organised creature. When he was at fever heat he could be plucky [Illustration: J. B. ROUSSEAU _From an Engraving after a Picture by J. Aved_] enough. But there is as little doubt that he dearly loved his safety as that he spent his whole life in endangering it. He pursued Beauregard with a most nimble, passionate, vivid intensity. He must have had an extraordinary persistence to get that unwieldy mass of muddle and jobbery which called itself French law to administer any kind of justice; but he did it. It took him more than fifteen months to compass his revenge, and cost him immense sums of money as well as immense labour. The game was not worth the candle. But Voltaire was never the person to think of that. To him the game was everything while he pursued it. It was to this characteristic he owed some of his success in life. The affair of the Bridge of Sèvres was, not the less, one of the most unfortunate incidents of his experience. To the day of his death it was a whip in the hands of his enemies which they used without mercy and without ceasing.