[ Tallentyre's commentary: The Abbé d'Olivet, to whom this letter is addressed, had been Voltaire's tutor at the School of Louis-le-Grand and remained his friend for more than fifty years.

"The Pucelle" was Voltaire's ribald, versified history of Joan of Arc: "my Jeanne" as he often called it, and at one the plague and pleasure of his life: "the epic he was fitted for," said Edward Fitzgerald, "poor in invention, I think, but wonderful for easy wit." Begun in 1730, it soon became a source of danger: cantos, read aloud to a few delighted driends in the Cirey bathroom, mysteriously found their way into print. In 1755 an incorrect edition was published in Paris, and was publicly burnt there and at Geneva, its printer being rewarded with nine years at the galleys. The author himself--though he often had occasion to allude to it as "that cursed 'Pucelle'"--never suffered anything worse than frights from it. The year 1762 saw its first authorized publication.

"The Century of Louis XIV" was chiefly written at Cirey, the amassing of material taking its author years of joyful labour, but it did not appear till 1751. It was immediately prohibited, "because I have spoken the truth," wrote Voltaire to his English friend Falkener. Its incomparable verve and spirit further offended a government which had not only made up its mind that governments ought never to be criticized, but that histories ought always to be dull. It remains now, as Condorcet declared it to be, the only readable history of the age of the Roi Soleil.

The tragedy "The Death of Caesar" was founded on Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. Voltaire himself, if no one else, considered it to be an improvement on its model. Its absence of love-interest told against it with the male as well as the female part of the audience, and it was unsuccessful.

"The tender Zaïre" was one of the earliest as well as the most moving of Voltaire's tragedies, and still in some measure keeps its popularity. ]

You do not know, my dear Abbé, how sorry I am that I have spent so much of my life without the benefit of your conversation. You are the man of whom I would like to have seen most, and of whom I have seen least. Should I ever emerge from my present happy retirement, I can answer for it I shall make better use of my time. I love the classics, and everything that is good in the moderns, above anything society can offer. Give me the pleasure of a little of your cultivation in your letters until we meet agin. What you call my Ariosto is a trifle, not nearly so long as his. I should have been ashamed to have devoted thirty cantos to such rubbish. There are only ten cantos in my Pucelle. So, you see, I am two-thirds wiser than Ariosto. I regard these trifles as interludes to my work. There is time for everything if one likes to use it.

My chief occupation at present is that grand Century of Louis XIV. Battles and revolutions are the smallest part of the plan: squadrons and battalions conquering or being conquered, towns taken and retaken, are common to all history: the age of Louis XIV, so far as war and politics go, has no advantage over any other. They are, as a matter of fact, less interesting than during the time of the League and Charles V. Take away the arts and the progress of the mind from this age, and you will find nothing remarkable left to attract the attention of posterity. So, my dear Abbé, if you know of any source from which I can get anecdotes of our arts and artists, of any sort or kind, let me know. There will be a place for everything.

I have already accumulated the building materials for this great structure. The Memoirs of Fathers Nicéron and Desmolets are among the briefest of my authorities. I enjoy even sharpening my tools. It is an amusement to collect the materials: I find something useful in every book. You know that a painter sees things differently from other people: he notes effects of light and shade which escape ordinary eyes. That is my case: I have appointed myself painter of the century of Louis XIV, and look at everything from that point of view--like La Flèche, who turned everything to his own advantage.

Did you know that I staged, a little while ago, at the Collège d'Harcourt, a certain Death of Caesar, a tragedy quite after my heart, without a woman in it? It contains some verses such as people wrote sixty years ago. I should much like you to see it. It is of a Roman severity. All the young women think it horrible: and cannot recognise in it the author of the tendre Zaïre.