in his eyes: you cannot love glory, and not feel
gratefully the prize attached to it,"--attained as here. "I lost sight
of him in few instants," as he approached his Box "the place where I was
not permitting farther view." [Collini,--Mon Sejour,--p. 21.]
This was Collini's first sight of that great man (DE CE GRAND HOMME).
With whom, thanks to Barberina, he had, in a day or two, the honor of an
Interview (judgment favorable, he could hope); and before many months,
Accident also favoring, the inexpressible honor of seeing himself the
great man's Secretary,--how far beyond hope or aspiration, in these
Carrousel days!
Voltaire had now been here some Seven Weeks,--arrived 10th July, as
we often note;--after (on his own part) a great deal of haggling,
hesitating and negotiating; which we spare our readers. The poor man
having now become a Quasi-Widower; painfully rallying, with his whole
strength, towards new arrangements,--now was the time for Friedrich to
urge him: "Come to me! Away from all that dismal imbroglio; hither, I
say!" To which Voltaire is not inattentive; though he hesitates; cannot,
in any case, come without delay;--lingers in Paris, readjusting many
things, the poor shipwrecked being, among kind D'Argentals and friends.
Poor Ishmael, getting gray; and his tent in the desert suddenly carried
off by a blast of wind!
To the legal Widower, M. le Marquis, he behaves in money matters like
a Prince; takes that Paris Domicile, in the Rue Traversiere, all to
himself; institutes a new household there,--Niece Denis to be female
president. Niece Denis, widow without encumbrances; whom in her married
state, wife to some kind of Commissariat-Officer at Lille, we have seen
transiently in that City, her Uncle lodging with her as he passed. A
gadding, flaunting, unreasonable, would-be fashionable female--(a Du
Chatelet without the grace or genius, and who never was in love with
you!)--with whom poor Uncle had a baddish life in time coming. All which
settled, he still lingers. Widowed, grown old and less adventurous!
'That House in the Rue Traversiere, once his and Another's, now his
alone,--for the time being, it is probably more like a Mausoleum than
a House to him. And Versailles, with its sulky Trajans, its Crebillon
cabals, what charm is in Versailles? He thinks of going to Italy for a
while; has never seen that fine Country: of going to Berlin for a while:
of going to--In fact, Berlin is clearly the place where he
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