a hundred years ago today a man died. he died immortal. he departed laden with years, laden with works, laden with the most illustrious and the most fearful or responsibilities, the responsibility of the human conscience informed and rectifies. he went cursed and blessed, cursed by the past, blessed by the future; and these are two super forms of glory. on the deathbed he had, on the one hand, the acclaim of contemporaries and of posterity; on the other, that triumph of hooting and of hating which the implacable past bestows on those who have combated it. he was more than a man was; he was an age. he had exercised functions and fulfilled a mission. he had been evidently chosen for the work, which he had done by the supreme will, which manifests itself as visibly in the laws of destiny as in the laws of nature.
the eighty-four years, which this man lived, span the interval between the monarchy at its apogee and the revolution at its dawn. whence was born, luis xiv still reigned; when he died, louis of xvi already wore crown; so that his cradle saw the last rays of the great throne, and his coffin the first gleams from the great abyss.
in the presence of this society, frivolous and dismal, voltaire alone, having before his eyes those united forces, the court, the nobility, capital; that unconscious power, the blind multitude ...