Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 134.djvu/111

Rh  nor to Paris. He was sent in 1748 as ambassador to Brussels, where he died in 1768.

Voltaire left the Hague on the 22nd August 1743, for Berlin, and he does not seem to have kept up any correspondence with Van Haren, or indeed with any other Dutchman, if we except some purely scientific letters to ‘s Gravesande. He visited the Hague once more in October 1745, but the war soon afterwards broke out, and as far as we have been able to ascertain, he never again made a stay there. One more edition of all his works appeared at Amsterdam in 1764.

We know that Voltaire stayed, in 1713, at the French Embassy, Boschkant, and in 1740 and 1743 at the Old Court in the Noordeinde, but of the place of his residence during his earlier visits to the Hague, in 1722, 1736, and 1737, little or nothing is known, except that he once stayed with Mr. Pailleret, wine-merchant in the Hoogstraat, whose wife spent a great deal of money on her dress. Pailleret asked him for a few lines of remembrance at parting, and Voltaire wrote down the following: —


 * Que Pailleret aime sa femme, je n'en doute,
 * Puisque pour l'habiller il a fait trois banque-routes.

It will probably always remain a riddle whether or not Voltaire, on leaving Holland, pronounced the famous words, "Adieu canaux, canards, canaille." Some attribute them to Boileau, others to a French banished general, who suffered much from the gout in Holland, and was extremely glad to return to France. It scarcely agrees with the enthusiasm Voltaire was accustomed to express for the character, manners, and customs of the Dutch, but it must not be forgotten that he was very versatile and impressionable by nature, and that he left Holland after a violent quarrel with Dutch booksellers.

 

 

woman does not fly from the dinner-table, while yet the second course is circling round, without provoking comment; and many and varied were the interpretations put upon Pauline's behavior.

What a pity that she should be so delicate! What an unfortunate thing nervousness was! The weather was trying. Lady Finch brought forward a headache on her own account; and Mrs. Wyndham, not to be outdone, averred that she had felt unequal to being out of her room the whole afternoon.

To Mr. Fennel, however, was due the happy suggestion of the evening.

It was wholly, entirely, and gloriously his own: and it was acknowledged at once, and by universal consent, to be the most rational explanation that had been given of the unfortunate contretemps. No wonder he was proud of it. No wonder he repeated it, with increased faith in his own genius, and glory in his success, when he rode over to the Grange on the following morning, to make the proper inquiries.

Mrs. Wyndham was alone in the drawing-room, and accordingly to her he addressed himself.

"It was the venison now, wasn't it?" said he. "I know lots of ladies can't stand a haunch. It is so — so — not unpleasant, you know, because venison can't be unpleasant. And what a haunch it was! Splendid! But then there is something peculiar, you know, something unlike anything else about a haunch, and it was carried past just the moment before. So, then, I made up my mind it was at the bottom of the mischief."

"It might have been, Mr. Fennel. My dear niece is certainly excessively susceptible. So am I; and so are all our family. We are quite foolishly particular; it really becomes a misfortune. I am surprised, I own," apologetically, "that Miss La Sarte was the only sufferer last night. I am most thankful, I assure you, that I was too far off to be endangered. With good kind Sir John sitting by my side — the donor, you understand; the haunch came from him — it would really have been awkward. And over little accidents of this kind, over faintness, one has no manner of control. It is all nerves, you know, nerves. There can be nothing disagreeable, nothing in any way offensive, about venison, park venison, too," continued the lady, feeling as if she must emphasize the difference; "but unfortunately it is not a question of argument — it is an effect on the imagination too subtle to be analyzed."