otnote 47: See vol. i. p. 31.]

There is something almost tragic in the joy with which Turgot's
dismissal was received on all sides. 'I seem,' said Marmontel, 'to be
looking at a band of brigands in the forest of Bondy, who have just
heard that the provost-marshal has been discharged.' Voltaire and
Condorcet were not more dismayed by the fall of the minister, than by
the insensate delight which greeted the catastrophe. 'This event,' wrote
Condorcet, 'has changed all nature in my eyes. I have no longer the same
pleasure in looking at those fair landscapes over which he would have
shed happiness and contentment. The sight of the gaiety of the people
wrings my heart. They dance and sport, as if they had lost nothing. Ah,
we have had a delicious dream, but it has been all too short.' Voltaire
was equally inconsolable, and still more violent in the expression of
his grief. When he had become somewhat calmer, he composed those
admirable verses,--_To a Man_:

Philosophe indulgent, ministre citoyen,
Qui ne cherchas le vrai que pour faire le bien,
Qui d'un peuple leger et trop ingrat peut-etre
Preparais le bonheur et celui de son maitre,
Ce qu'on nomme disgrace a paye tes bienfaits.
Le vrai prix de travail n'est que de vivre en paix.

Turgot at first showed some just and natural resentment at the levity
with which he had been banished from power, and he put on no airs of
theatrical philosophy. He would have been untrue to the sincerity of his
character, if he had affected indifference or satisfaction at seeing his
beneficent hopes for ever destroyed. But chagrin did not numb his
industry or his wide interests. Condorcet went to visit him some months
after his fall. He describes Turgot as reading Ariosto, as making
experiments in physics, and as having forgotten all that had passed
within the last two years, save when the sight of evils that he would
have mitigated or removed, happened to remind him of it. He occupied
himself busily with chemistry and optics, with astronomy and mechanics,
and above all with meteorology, which was a new science in those days,
and the value of which to the study of the conditions of human health,
of the productions of the earth, of navigation, excited his most ardent
anticipations. Turgot also was so moved by the necessity for a new
synthesis of life and knowledge as to frame a plan for a great work 'on
the human soul, the order of the universe, the Supreme Being, the