Voltaire and the Chevalier met again, at the Comédie, in Adrienne
Lecouvreur's dressing-room. Rohan repeated his sneering question, and
'the Chevalier has had his answer' was Voltaire's reply. Furious, Rohan
lifted his stick, but at that moment Adrienne very properly fainted, and
the company dispersed. A few days more and Rohan had perfected the
arrangements for his revenge. Voltaire, dining at the Duc de Sully's,
where, we are told, he was on the footing of a son of the house,
received a message that he was wanted outside in the street. He went
out, was seized by a gang of lackeys, and beaten before the eyes of
Rohan, who directed operations from a cab. 'Epargnez la tête,' he
shouted, 'elle est encore bonne pour faire rire le public'; upon which,
according to one account, there were exclamations from the crowd which
had gathered round of 'Ah! le bon seigneur!' The sequel is known to
everyone: how Voltaire rushed back, dishevelled and agonised, into
Sully's dining-room, how he poured out his story in an agitated flood of
words, and how that high-born company, with whom he had been living up
to that moment on terms of the closest intimacy, now only displayed the
signs of a frigid indifference. The caste-feeling had suddenly asserted
itself. Poets, no doubt, were all very well in their way, but really, if
they began squabbling with noblemen, what could they expect? And then
the callous and stupid convention of that still half-barbarous age--the
convention which made misfortune the proper object of ridicule--came
into play no less powerfully. One might take a poet seriously,
perhaps--until he was whipped; then, of course, one could only laugh at
him. For the next few days, wherever Voltaire went he was received with
icy looks, covert smiles, or exaggerated politeness. The Prince de
Conti, who, a month or two before, had written an ode in which he placed
the author of _Oedipe_ side by side with the authors of _Le Cid_ and
_Phèdre_, now remarked, with a shrug of the shoulders, that 'ces coups
de bâtons étaient bien reçus et mal donnés.' 'Nous serions bien