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Voltaire had no intention of going to Saint Petersburg; he had created a little Court of Letters, of which he himself was the Czar, and for the first time in his life he was experiencing a degree of genuine content. His flowers, bees, manuscripts and theater filled every moment of the day from six in the morning until ten at night. He had arrived in Switzerland broken in health, with mind dazed, his frail body undone. There at the little farm at Delices, overlooking the lake, health came back and youth seemed to return to this man of three-score.

Some of the nobility in Paris, to whom he had loaned money, took advantage of his exile to withhold payments, but Voltaire secured an agent to look after his affairs, so his losses were not great.

He bought the tumbledown chateau of Tournay, near at hand, which carried with it the right to call himself Count Tournay. Frederick, with mock respect, so addressed his letters.

His next financial venture, begun when he was sixty-eight, might well have tested the strength of a much younger man. A few miles from Geneva, at Ferney, just over the border from Switzerland, Voltaire had bought a large tract of waste land, intending to use it for pasturage. Here he built a cottage and lived a part of the time when visitors were too persistent at Delices. Ferney was on French soil, Delices in Switzerland. Voltaire had criticized the Protestants of Geneva, and given it as his opinion that a Calvinistic tyranny was in no wise preferable to one built on Catholicism. Some then said, “This man is really what he professes–a Catholic.” There had also been a demonstration to drive him out of Switzerland, since it was pretty well known that Voltaire’s crowds of visitors were neither Catholic nor Protestant. “Delices is infidelic,” was the cry, and this doubtless had something to do with Voltaire’s establishing himself at Ferney. If Protestant Switzerland drove this Catholic over to France, why, Catholic France would not molest him.

Every country, no matter how tyrannical its government, prides itself on being the home of the exile, just as every man thinks of himself as being sincere and without prejudice.

It is now believed that Voltaire had much to do with inciting the civil riots in Geneva against the Catholics. He had circulated pamphlets purporting to be written by a Catholic, upholding the Pope, and ridiculing most unmercifully the pretenses of Protestantism, declaring it a compromise with the devil, made up of the scum of the Catholic Church. This pamphlet declared Calvin a monster, and arraigned him for burning Servetus, and hinted that all Calvinists would soon be paid back in their own coin. No one else could have penned this vitriolic pamphlet but Voltaire–he knew both sides. But since Geneva regarded Voltaire as an infidel, it never occurred to the authorities that he would take up the cudgel of the Catholic Church that had burned his books. The real fact was, the pamphlet wasn’t a defense of Catholicism–it was only a drubbing of Calvinism, and the wit was too subtle for the Presbyterians to digest.

Very soon another pamphlet appeared, answering the first. It arraigned the Catholics in scathing phrase, suggested that they were getting ready to burn the city–hinted at a repetition of Saint Bartholomew, and declared the order had gone forth from Rome to scourge and kill. It was as choice an A.P.A. document as was ever issued by a relentless joker. The result was that the workers in the watch-factory and silk-mills who were Catholics found themselves ostracized by the Protestant workmen. I do not find that the authorities drove the Catholics out of Geneva, it was simply a species of labor trouble–Protestants would not work with Catholics.

At this juncture Voltaire comes in, and invites all persecuted Catholic watch-workers and silk-weavers to move to Ferney. Here Voltaire laid out a town–erected houses, factories, churches and schools. In two years he had built up a town of twelve hundred people, and had a watch-factory and silk-mill in full and paying operation.