136 LIFE OF HORACE BENEDICT DE SAUSSURE 



occasion to moralise on the frequency of suicides at Geneva, of 

 which, he says, there had been a ' multiplicity of instances ' 

 during his stay. Having pointed out that the climate and 

 coal fogs, commonly alleged as the causes of suicide in England, 

 cannot here be held responsible, he falls back on the safe 

 conclusion that melancholia is an illness ! How far frequent 

 intermarriages and a depressing creed may have been responsible 

 for the tragedies recorded he does not pause to inquire. 



During de Saussure's absence in Italy another incident had 

 occurred which is recorded in several of the Memoirs of the time. 

 While he was in England in 1768 his sister Judith, then twenty- 

 three, had sent him a lively account of an agreeable evening with 

 Voltaire. She wrote : 



* We have had a very pleasant summer one of the most brilliant 

 on record in our poor Geneva. Comedies were played at Pregny. 

 The Demoiselles Sales have plenty of talent and are really charming 

 girls, to whom the public, often unfair, has done great injustice. The 

 Enfant Prodigue was played. M. de Voltaire came from Ferney to 

 enjoy the success of his piece. I was enchanted to find myself sitting 

 next him. He talked of you, and charged me to write and tell you 

 " he had had the happiness to pass two hours at my side." He asked 

 me to dinner. I think we shall go one of these days. How does your 

 wife amuse herself in London ? One hears it is not a place where 

 women much enjoy themselves.' l 



The two households were already on friendly terms, and the 

 expected invitation soon came and led to others. It is evident 

 that. the old wit found the young lady good company, and their 

 acquaintanceship ripened and led to some correspondence, for 

 on Voltaire's death, Judith wrote to ask that the ' one or two 

 letters ' she had written to him might, if found, be returned to her. 



Four years later her brother, in a letter from Naples, charged his 

 father to transmit through Judith, when next she visited Voltaire, 

 news of the performance of his plays L'Ecossaise and Tancrede. 

 She was to tell him that they had been played at Naples by a French 

 company, the best ever seen out of Paris, and had had an astonish- 

 ing success, so that stalls were selling at a louis : the King had 

 sent for the company to Caserta to give the pieces there, and their 



1 Englishmen at this date were generally believed to bo too much absorbed 

 in business or sport to pay the other sex the attention they were accustomed to 

 on the Continent. 



