Voltaire gave up the
foundation of a colony at Cleves, to devote all his energy to that at
Ferney. There he exercised signorial rights with an active and restless
guardianship which left him no illusions and but little sympathy in
respect of that people whose sacred rights he had so often proclaimed.
"The people will always be sottish and barbarous," he wrote to M. Bordes;
"they are oxen needing a yoke, a goad, and a bit of hay." That was the
sum and substance of what he thought; he was a stern judge of the French
character, the genuine and deep-lying resources of which he sounded
imperfectly, but the infinite varieties of which he recognized. "I
always find it difficult to conceive," he wrote to M. de Constant, "how
so agreeable a nation can at the same time be so ferocious, how it can so
easily pass from the opera to the St. Bartholomew, be at one time made up
of dancing apes and at another of howling bears, be so ingenious and so
idiotic both together, at one time so brave and at another so dastardly."
Voltaire fancied himself at a comedy still; the hour of tragedy was at
hand. He and his friends were day by day weakening the foundations of
the edifice; for eighty years past the greatest minds and the noblest
souls have been toiling to restore it on new and strong bases; the work
is not finished, revolution is still agitating the depths of French
society, which has not yet recovered the only proper foundation-stones
for greatness and order amongst a free people.

Henceforth Voltaire reigned peacefully over his little empire at Ferney,
courted from afar by all the sovereigns of Europe who made any profession
of philosophy. "I have a sequence of four kings" (_brelan de roi
quatrieme_), he would say with a laugh when he counted his letters from
royal personages. The Empress of Russia, Catherine II., had dethroned,
in his mind, the Great Frederick. Voltaire had not lived in her
dominions and at her court; he had no grievance against her; his vanity
was flattered by the eagerness and the magnificent attentions of the
Semiramis of the North, as he called her. He even forgave her the most
odious features of resemblance to the Assyrian princess. "I am her
knight in the sight and in the teeth of everybody," he wrote to Madame du
Deffand; "I am quite aware that people bring up against her a few trifles
on the score of her husband; but these are family matters with which I do
not meddle, and besides it is not a bad thi