VOLTAIRE. 51 



return, and lie soon after accompanied Madame de 

 Rupelmonde to the Low Countries. To her he ad- 

 dressed in that year, 1 722, the ' Epitre a Uranie,' a 

 sceptical rather than a plainly deistical ode, which 

 possessed some poetical merit, but was forgotten 

 among his subsequent successes. At Brussels he made 

 the acquaintance of J. B. Rousseau, and laid the 

 foundation of the unrelenting animosity with which 

 that middling writer and irritable personage pursued 

 him ever after. This he owed to a jest ; having told 

 him, on reading his ' Ode to Posterity,' " that it would 

 never reach its destination." Rousseau, himself the 

 author of many licentious epigrams against the clergy, 

 hypocritically affected to take offence at the ' Epitre a 

 Uranie,' and at Voltaire's irreverent demeanour during 

 mass. Had he but spared the truth which he spoke 

 in jest on the bad ode, he might have scoffed with 

 Lucian and blasphemed with Borgia. 



He now endeavoured in vain to regain the enjoy- 

 ment he most loved the society of Paris. An 

 unfortunate quarrel with the Chevalier de Rohan 

 exposed him to the resentment of the Court, and the 

 risk of again inhabiting the Bastille. Some epigram 

 or jest at the Chevalier's expense had been reported 

 to him, and he basely set his servants on the wit, 

 whom they severely beat. A challenge was the con- 

 sequence ; but as the poet's rank did not authorize this 

 liberty, he was on the point of being handed over to 

 the police, or secured by a lettre de cachet, and he 

 resolved to fly. His plan was to visit England, at- 

 tracted by her liberty, and above all, by that which ho 

 seems ever to have valued most the spirit of toler- 



E 2 



