[See (whosoever is curious) Madame de Grafigny, _Vie Privee de Voltaire et de Madame du Chatelet_ (Paris, 1820).

A six months of actual Letters written by poor Grafigny, while sheltering at Cirey, Winter and Spring, 1738-1739; straitened there in various respects,--extremely ill off for fuel, among other things.
Rugged practical Letters, shadowing out to us, unconsciously oftenest, and like a very mirror, the splendid and the sordid, the seamy side and the smooth, of Life at Cirey, in her experience of it.

Published, fourscore years after, under the above title.] For the Ten Commandments are at a singular pass in cultivated France at this epoch.

Such illicit-idyllic form of life has been the form of Voltaire's since 1733,"-- for some three years now, when Friedrich and we first make acquaintance with him.

"It lasted above a dozen years more: an illicit marriage after its sort, and subject only to the liabilities of such.
Perhaps we may look in upon the Cirey Household, ourselves, at some future time; and"-- This Editor hopes not! "Madame admits that for the first ten years it was, on the whole, sublime; a perfect Eden on Earth, though stormy now and then.