Life of Voltaire Volume 2 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1881 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XLII. VOLTAIRE AT THE COURT OF FRANCE. After this interesting experience of court life in a foreign country, where the king was king, he was to become a courtier at Versailles, where the man who governed the king's mistress was king. Again it was the Duke de Richelieu, First Gentleman of the Chamber, who broke in upon the jeleated.pursuits of Cirey, and called him to lower tasks and less congenial scenes. The royal children were coming of age. The marriage of the Dauphin to the Infanta of Spain, long ago agreed upon, was soon to be celebrated, the prince having passed his sixteenth year, and it devolved upon the First Gentleman to arrange the marriage festival. This was no light task; for Louis XIV. had accustomed France to the most elaborate and magnificent fetes. Not content with such splendors as mere wealth can everywhere procure, that gorgeous monarch loved to enlist all the arts and all the talents, exhibiting to his guests divertisements written by Molidre, performed with original music, and with scenery painted by artists. Several of his festivals have to this day a certain celebrity in France, and have left traces still noticeable. There is a public ground in Paris, opposite the Tuileries, which is called the Place of the Carousal. It was so named because it was the scene of one of this king's fetes, in which five bodies of horsemen, or quadrilles, as they were called, took part. One of these bodies were dressed and equipped as Roman knights, and they were led by the king in person. His brother, the Duke of Orleans, commanded a body of Persian cavalry; the Prince of Conde a splendid band of Turks; the Duke of Guise, a company of Peruvian horse; and a son of Conde" shone at the head of East Indian horsemen in gorgeous...