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 built at his cost, and tenanted by skilful workmen, whose branch of industry he encouraged and rendered prosperous. "Fifteen years ago," says a guest, writing when Voltaire was eighty-four, "there were barely at Ferney three or four cottages, and forty inhabitants; now it is astonishing to see a numerous and civilised colony, a theatre, and more than a hundred pretty houses." His charities were munificent. When the order of Jesuits was suppressed he took one of the body, Father Adam, into his house, and made him his almoner, a post which was far from being a sinecure. He also received into his family Mademoiselle Corneille, the grandniece of the poet, whom he thus rescued from poverty: "It is giving," he said, "to an old soldier the opportunity of being useful to the daughter of his general." He welcomed her warmly, always spoke of her with praise, treated her like a young relation, and gave her for a marriage portion the profits of his "Commentaries on Corneille."

A description is given of him in his last days at Ferney, seated under a vine, on the occasion of a fête, and receiving the congratulations and complimentary gifts of his tenantry and neighbours, when a young lady, whom he had adopted, brought him in a basket a pair of white doves with pink beaks, as her offering. He afterwards entertained about 200 guests at a splendid repast, followed by illuminations, songs, and dances, and was himself so carried away in an access of gaiety as to throw his hat into the air. But his merriment ended in a tempest of wrath; for learning, in the course of the evening, that the two doves which had figured so prettily in the fête had been killed for the table, his indignation at the stolid cruelty which could shed the