124 VOLTAIRE. 



teignant, in the same measure in which he had. written 

 some verses to Voltaire, attest the extraordinary vigour 

 in which his faculties remained to the last.* 



While in his last illness the clergy had come round 

 him ; and as all the philosophers of that period appear 

 to have felt particularly anxious that no public stigma 

 should be cast upon them by a refusal of Christian 

 burial, they persuaded him to undergo confession and 

 absolution. He had a few weeks before submitted to 

 this ceremony, and professed to die in the Catholic 

 faith, in which he was born a ceremony which M. 

 Condorcet may well say gave less edification to the 

 devout than it did scandal to the free-thinkers. The 

 cure (rector) of St. Sulpice had, on this being related, 

 made inquiry, and found the formula too general ; he 

 required the Abbe Gauthier, who had performed the 

 office, to insist upon a more detailed profession of faith, 

 else he should withhold the burial certificate. While 

 this dispute was going on, the dying man recovered, 

 and put an end to it. On what proved his real death- 

 bed, the cure came and insisted on a full confession. 

 When the dying man had gone a certain length, he 

 was required to subscribe to the doctrine of our Sa- 

 viour's divinity. This roused his indignation, and he 

 gave vent to it in an exclamation which at once put 

 to flight all the doubts of the pious, and reconciled the 

 infidels to their patriarch. The certificate was refused, 

 and he was buried in a somewhat clandestine, certainly 

 a hasty manner, at the monastery of Scellieres, of 



* Cor. Gen., xi. 627, 628. 



