g the lake, health came
back and youth seemed to return to this man of three-score.

Some of the nobility in Paris, to whom he had loaned money, took
advantage of his exile to withhold payments, but Voltaire secured an
agent to look after his affairs, so his losses were not great.

He bought the tumbledown chateau of Tournay, near at hand, which carried
with it the right to call himself Count Tournay. Frederick, with mock
respect, so addressed his letters.

His next financial venture, begun when he was sixty-eight, might well
have tested the strength of a much younger man. A few miles from Geneva,
at Ferney, just over the border from Switzerland, Voltaire had bought a
large tract of waste land, intending to use it for pasturage. Here he
built a cottage and lived a part of the time when visitors were too
persistent at Delices. Ferney was on French soil, Delices in
Switzerland. Voltaire had criticized the Protestants of Geneva, and
given it as his opinion that a Calvinistic tyranny was in no wise
preferable to one built on Catholicism. Some then said, "This man is
really what he professes--a Catholic." There had also been a
demonstration to drive him out of Switzerland, since it was pretty well
known that Voltaire's crowds of visitors were neither Catholic nor
Protestant. "Delices is infidelic," was the cry, and this doubtless had
something to do with Voltaire's establishing himself at Ferney. If
Protestant Switzerland drove this Catholic over to France, why, Catholic
France would not molest him.

Every country, no matter how tyrannical its government, prides itself on
being the home of the exile, just as every man thinks of himself as
being sincere and without prejudice.

It is now believed that Voltaire had much to do with inciting the civil
riots in Geneva against the Catholics. He had circulated pamphlets
purporting to be written by a Catholic, upholding the Pope, and
ridiculing most unmercifully the pretenses of Protestantism, declaring
it a compromise with the devil, made up of the scum of the Catholic
Church. This pamphlet declared Calvin a monster, and arraigned him for
burning Servetus, and hinted that all Calvinists would soon be paid back
in their own coin. No one else could have penned this vitriolic pamphlet
but Voltaire--he knew both sides. But since Geneva regarded Voltaire as
an infidel, it never occurred to the authorities that he would take up
the cudgel of the Catholic Church that had burned his bo