Jura, my right on the Alps, and I have the beautiful lake of Geneva in front of my camp, a beautiful castle on the borders of France, the hermitage of Délices in the territory of Geneva, a good house at Lausanne; crawling thus from one burrow to another, I escape from kings. Philosophers should always have two or three holes underground against the hounds that run them down." From now until the end of his long life he lived like a feudal lord, a landed proprietor and an entertaining host. He kept horses, carriages, coachmen, postilions, lackeys, a valet, a French cook, a secretary and a boy, besides pet and domestic animals. Nearly every day he entertained at dinner from five to twenty friends.
1756—On November 1st, All Saints' Day, at 9:40 a. m., occurred the Lisbon earthquake, when half the people of that city were in church. In six minutes the city was in ruins and 30,000 people dead or dying. This was food for the thought of Europe and inspired one of Voltaire's best poems. This was followed by "Candide," the most celebrated of his prose burlesques, on Rousseau's "best of all possible worlds," and Dr. Johnson's "Rasselas." At this time the surreptitious publication of "La Pucelle" offended the French Calvinists of Geneva, and Voltaire thought it well in 1756 to go to Lausanne, where he inaugurated private theatricals in his own house. Here Gibbon had the pleasure of hearing a great poet declaim his own production on the stage. In this year his admirable Italian secretary, Collini, left him, and his place was filled by a Genevan named Wagnière, who continued to be his factotum for the remainder of his life. When scarcely three years in Geneva, Voltaire, finding the Genevans—who built their first theatre ten years later—averse to his theatrical performances, bought on French soil the estate of Ferney and built a theatre there.
1757-1758—Voltaire never became indifferent to the disfavor in which he was held at the French court under the dominion of the Jesuits. Fortunately for him, he had for a friend the brilliant and powerful Pompadour, who at this time made him again safe on French soil, restored his pen-