rederick, suggesting
reconciliation. But Frederick promptly reminded him that he had
repeatedly broken promises by writing about Frederick's personal
friends, and "Voltaire and Frederick had better keep apart, that their
love for each other might not grow cold"--a subtle bit of sarcasm.

At Geneva, where Calvin had instituted a little tyranny of his own,
Voltaire was made welcome. Nominally no Catholics were allowed in
Geneva, and when Voltaire wrote to the authorities, explaining that he
was a good Catholic, the matter was taken as a great joke. He bought a
beautiful little farm a few miles away, on the banks of the river Rhone,
overlooking the city of Geneva and the lake. It was an ideal spot, and
rightly he called it "Delices." Here he was going to end his days amid
flowers and birds and books and bees, an onlooker and possibly a
commentator on the times, but not a doer. His days of work were over. Of
the world of strife he had had enough--thus he wrote to Frederick.

Visitors of a literary turn of mind at Geneva began to come his way. He
established an inn, and later built a theater out of the ruins of an old
church that he had bought and dismantled. "This is what I am going to
do with all the churches in France," he explained with a smile.

His pen was never idle. He wrote plays that were presented at his own
little theater, and on such occasions he would send word to his Geneva
friends not to come, as they could not be accommodated. Of course they
came.

He wrote a history of Peter the Great, and this brought him into
communication with Queen Catherine of Russia, with whom he carried on
quite an animated correspondence. This worthy widow invited him to Saint
Petersburg, and he slyly wrote to Frederick for advice as to whether he
should go or not. It is said that Frederick advised him to go, pay court
to the Queen, marry her, seize the throne, and get his head cut off for
his pains, thus achieving immortality and benefiting the world at one
stroke.

Voltaire had no intention of going to Saint Petersburg; he had created a
little Court of Letters, of which he himself was the Czar, and for the
first time in his life he was experiencing a degree of genuine content.
His flowers, bees, manuscripts and theater filled every moment of the
day from six in the morning until ten at night. He had arrived in
Switzerland broken in health, with mind dazed, his frail body undone.
There at the little farm at Delices, overlookin