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CHAPTER XVI.
HE TRIES COURTIERSHIP.
Voltaire's attempt to gain a secure position by diplomacy had therefore failed. But he had yet another resource. His confidence, his manners, his powers of pleasing, and his ambition—all rendered courtiership a most promising career for him. He had already become a candidate for Court favour, not without some success, in the time of the Regent. Now his pretensions were far higher—the most celebrated man of letters existing could confer on the Court more lustre than he could possibly derive from it. And it would certainly appear that a Court with no great merits of its own to rest upon, could scarcely strengthen itself upon cheaper terms than by attaching to its interests the chief literary power of the nation. Fortifying himself with such sound reasoning, Voltaire opened his campaign for the conquest of the Court with an ode. Louis XV. was, in 1744, in the camp of the army which was besieging Fribourg. Thither Voltaire repaired, bearing with him his "Ode to the King." It begins, "Thou whose justice all Europe loves or fears;… king necessary to the world"—and so on. But notwithstanding this un-
