h much wit and learning, but always concluding with a false
judgment. I let him talk on. He spoke of Homer, Dante, and Petrarch, and
everybody knows what he thought of these great geniuses, but he did
himself wrong in writing what he thought. I contented myself with saying
that if these great men did not merit the esteem of those who studied
them; it would at all events be a long time before they had to come down
from the high place in which the praise of centuries, had placed them.

The Duc de Villars and the famous Tronchin came and joined us. The
doctor, a tall fine man, polite, eloquent without being a
conversationalist, a learned physician, a man of wit, a favourite pupil
of Boerhaeve, without scientific jargon, or charlatanism, or
self-sufficiency, enchanted me. His system of medicine was based on
regimen, and to make rules he had to be a man of profound science. I have
been assured, but can scarcely believe it, that he cured a consumptive
patient of a secret disease by means of the milk of an ass, which he had
submitted to thirty strong frictions of mercury by four sturdy porters.

As to Villars he also attracted my attention, but in quite a different
way to Tronchin. On examining his face and manner I thought I saw before
me a woman of seventy dressed as a man, thin and emaciated, but still
proud of her looks, and with claims to past beauty. His cheeks and lips
were painted, his eyebrows blackened, and his teeth were false; he wore a
huge wig, which, exhaled amber, and at his buttonhole was an enormous
bunch of flowers, which touched his chin. He affected a gracious manner,
and he spoke so softly that it was often impossible to hear what he said.
He was excessively polite and affable, and his manners were those of the
Regency. His whole appearance was supremely ridiculous. I was told that
in his youth he was a lover of the fair sex, but now that he was no
longer good for anything he had modestly made himself into a woman, and
had four pretty pets in his employ, who took turns in the disgusting duty
of warming his old carcase at night.

Villars was governor of Provence, and had his back eaten up with cancer.
In the course of nature he should have been buried ten years ago, but
Tronchin kept him alive with his regimen and by feeding the wounds on
slices of veal. Without this the cancer would have killed him. His life
might well be called an artificial one.

I accompanied M. de Voltaire to his bedroom, where he c