Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 4.djvu/371

Rh also without a sword. The chamberlain stood aghast, but all France applauded, and Europe echoed. Thus the first recognized envoy of the American republic appeared in the diplomacy of the world in the simple garb of an American gentleman.

Soon afterward there was another presentation, of less practical significance, but no less picturesque. Voltaire, eighty-four years old, visited Paris once more, to receive the last homage of his country and age, and then to die. The American envoys waited upon him. Voltaire, feeble and emaciated, raised himself from his couch and spoke to them in English. “I beg your pardon,” he said to a French lady present, “I have for a moment yielded to the vanity of showing that I can speak in the language of a Franklin.” A short time afterward they met again at a session of the Academy of Sciences in the presence of a large concourse of scientific and literary men. The vast audience called upon them to rise and would not be satisfied until they had embraced and kissed. The cry went forth: “How charming to see Solon and Sophocles embrace!” A thoroughly French comparison.

Franklin and Voltaire had indeed something in common, and yet we can scarcely imagine two human beings in their mental and moral natures more different. Both enemies of superstition, bigotry and despotism; both champions of enlightenment and progress. But Voltaire the outgrowth of those fanaticisms and tyrannies, those systems of oppression, mental, moral and physical, which had enthralled Europe for centuries; he the soul of an avenger, filled with the spirit of destruction; pouncing upon wrongs and abuses, upon traditions and authorities, to slay them with his fierce wit and to hold up their mangled remains to universal hatred, contempt and ridicule; the intellectual precursor of the great revolution, that terrible upheaving which buried the past in blood and