He had a quarrel at the Opera with Chevalier Rohan-Chabot, a court libertine, of little repute; the scene took place in the presence of Mdlle.

Adrienne Lecouvreur; the great actress fainted they were separated.

Two days afterwards, when Voltaire was dining at the Duke of Sully's, a servant came to tell him that he was wanted at the door of the hotel; the poet went out without any suspicion, though he had already been the victim of several ambuscades.

A coach was standing in the street, and he was requested to get in; at that instant two men, throwing themselves upon him and holding him back by his clothes, showered upon him a hailstorm of blows with their sticks.

The Chevalier de Rohan, prudently ensconced in a second vehicle, and superintending the--execution of his cowardly vengeance, shouted to his servants, "Don't hit him on the head; something good may come out of it." When Voltaire at last succeeded in escaping from these miscreants to take refuge in Sully's house, he was half dead.
Blows with a stick were not at that time an unheard-of procedure in social relations.