"TO HIS EMINENCE CARDINAL DUBOIS (from Arouet Junior).

"CAMBRAI, July, 1722.

". . . We are just arrived in your City, Monseigneur; where, I
think, all the Ambassadors and all the Cooks in Europe have given
one another rendezvous. It seems as if all the Ministers of
Germany had assembled here for the purpose of getting their
Emperor's health drunk. As to Messieurs the Ambassadors of Spain,
one of them hears two masses a day, and the other manages the
troop of players. The English Ministers [a LORD POLWARTH and a
LORD WHITWORTH] send many couriers to Champagne, and few to
London. For the rest, nobody expects your Eminence here; it is not
thought you will quit the Palais-Royal to visit the sheep of your
flock in these parts [no!], it would be too bad for your Eminence
and for us all. . . . Think sometimes, Monseigneur, of a man who
[regards your goat-faced Eminence as a beautiful ingenious
creature; and such a hand in conversation as never was).
The one thing I will ask [of your goat-faced Eminence] at Paris
will be, to have the goodness to talk to me." [ OEuvres
de Voltaire, 97 vols. (Paris, l825-1834),
lxviii. 95, 96.]

Alas, alas!--The more despicable portions of this Letter we omit,
as they are not history of the Congress, but of Arouet Junior on
the shady side. So much will testify that this Congress did exist;
that its wiggeries and it were not always, what they now are, part
of a nightmare-vision in Human History.--