Dissertations:--mockery getting ever wilder with him; the
satirical vein, in prose and verse, amazingly copious, and growing
more and more heterodox, as we can perceive. His troubles from the
ecclesiastical or Lion kind in the Literary forest, still more
from the rabid Doggery in it, are manifold, incessant. And it is
pleasantly notable,--during these first ten years,--with what
desperate intensity, vigilance and fierceness, Madame watches over
all his interests and liabilities and casualties great and small;
leaping with her whole force into M. de Voltaire's scale of the
balance, careless of antecedences and consequences alike;
flying, with the spirit of an angry brood-hen, at the face of
mastiffs, in defence of any feather that is M. de Voltaire's.
To which Voltaire replies, as he well may, with eloquent
gratitude; with Verses to the divine Emilie, with Gifts to her,
verses and gifts the prettiest in the world;--and industriously
celebrates the divine Emilie to herself and all third parties.

"An ardent, aerial, gracefully predominant, and in the end
somewhat termagant female figure, this divine Emilie. Her temper,
radiant rather than bland, was none of the patientest on occasion;
nor was M. de Voltaire the least of a Job, if you came athwart him
the wrong way. I have heard, their domestic symphony was liable to
furious flaws,--let us hope at great distances apart:--that
'plates' in presence of the lackeys, actual crockery or metal,
have been known to fly from end to end of the dinner-table;
nay they mention 'knives' (though only in the way of oratorical
action); and Voltaire has been heard to exclaim, the sombre and
majestic voice of him risen to a very high pitch: 'Ne me
regardez tant de ces yeux hagards et louches, Don't
fix those haggard sidelong eyes on me in that way!'--mere