ITALY 137 



author was as famous and admired at Naples as in Paris. This 

 was written in February 1773. Some weeks previously, probably 

 in December, on a day when Judith had been invited to Ferney, 

 Voltaire, feeling unequal to entertain a large house -party, left, 

 as he frequently did, his niece, Madame Denis, to take his place, 

 while he dined tete-a-tete with Judith. The host was seventy- 

 eight ; his guest twenty-seven, and there should have been no 

 excuse for scandal. But no doubt the other guests were not 

 dumb in their disappointment, and in a town at that date much 

 addicted to ill-natured gossip, Voltaire afforded a tempting and 

 provoking subject. 



A version of the incident, coloured and exaggerated by malicious 

 tongues, was spread abroad and reported in Paris, and even reached 

 the ears of Louis Quinze, who through the Due de Richelieu sent a 

 ribald message to the Patriarch of Ferney. Voltaire replied as 

 his years doubly justified him in doing by a repetition of the 

 Horatian /w<7e suspicari which would have been in better taste 

 had he shown more resentment of an unmannerly insult to his 

 guest. The serious annoyance caused to its victim is shown in 

 the bitter comments on the bad manners of the Genevese we find 

 in letters written by Judith to her brother and sister-in-law many 

 years afterwards. 1 That she had ample grounds for her resent- 

 ment, one at least of the contemporary journals that has survived 

 offers conclusive evidence. Grimm's comment on the affair is 

 to the point : ' See how calumny with its venomous tongue pursues 

 innocence and beauty ! ' Since one of the first acts of the de 

 Saussures on their return from Italy was to call on Voltaire to 

 thank him for the introduction to the Vatican he had given them, 

 it is obvious that the family treated the town talk with the 

 contempt it deserved. 



It will be convenient to conclude this chapter by the story 

 of the subsequent career of Horace Benedict's only sister, who 

 sympathised with his pursuits and appears to have shared his 

 inherited weakness of constitution. 



In 1768 we already hear of her suffering from eye trouble ; 



1 Judith evidently shared her brother's power of expressing resentment of any 

 groundless and impertinent criticism or comment. She wrote to her brother : 

 ' Nous sommes furieusement mechants dans notre charmante Republique. Je suia 

 persuad6e qu'on poijrrait parcourir le monde entier sans trouver une ville oh la 

 mechancete soit poussee aussi loin.' 



