"My satisfaction grows as I write to tell you of it," he writes to his friend Cideville in the fulness of joy: "never was a piece so well played as _Zaire_ at the fourth appearance.
I very much wished you had been there; you would have seen that the public does not hate your friend.

I appeared in a box, and the whole pit clapped their hands at me.

I blushed, I hid myself; but I should be a humbug if I did not confess to you that I was sensibly affected.

It is pleasant not to be dishonored in one's own country." Voltaire had just inaugurated the great national tragedy of his country, as he had likewise given it the only national epopee attempted in France since the _Chansons de Geste;_ by one of those equally sudden and imprudent reactions to which he was always subject, it was not long before he himself damaged his own success by the publication of his _Lettres philosophiques sur les Anglais_.
The light and mocking tone of these letters, the constant comparison between the two peoples, with many a gibe at the English, but always turning to their advantage, the preference given to the philosophical system of Newton over that of Descartes, lastly the attacks upon religion concealed beneath the cloak of banter--all this was more than enough to ruffle the tranquillity of Cardinal Fleury.

The book was brought before Parliament; Voltaire was disquieted.