He established round his castle a small industrial colony, for whose produce he strove to get a market everywhere.

"Our design," he used to say, "is to ruin the trade of Geneva in a pious spirit." Ferney, moreover, held grand and numerously attended receptions; Madame Denis played her uncle's pieces on a stage which the latter had ordered to be built, and which caused as much disquietude to the austere Genevese as to Jean Jacques Rousseau.

It was on account of Voltaire's theatrical representations that Rousseau wrote his _Lettre centre les Spectacles_.

"I love you not, sir," wrote Rousseau to Voltaire: "you have done me such wrongs as were calculated to touch me most deeply.

You have ruined Geneva in requital of the asylum you have found there." Geneva was about to banish Rousseau before long, and Voltaire had his own share of responsibility in this act of severity so opposed to his general and avowed principles.