Recollections of Republican France

Author: J. G. Millingen  | Date: 1848

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J. G. Millingen 1848

Voltaire Joins the Immortals

[1791]

II.

My father took me, on the preceding evening, to the place of the Bastille, where the remains of this illustrious writer were placed on a pedestal raised on the ruins of the very prison in which he had once been confined. The following day, the procession that accompanied his sarcophagus to the Pantheon, was as numerous as the mass of mourners who followed the mortal remains of Mirabeau. The whole was got up in theatrical style. All the actors and actresses, singers and dancers, of the different theatres, were grouped round a statue of the philosopher, in the various costumes of his dramatis personae. Zaïre was walking next to Mohammed, Julius Caesar arm-in-arm with Oedipus, and Brutus with the widow of Malabar; while another group represented Calas and his family.1 One of the most singular objects in the procession was a portable press, which worked off various hand-bills, as the cortège proceeded, which were scattered amongst the people.

1The rehabilitation of the Huguenot, Jean Calas, a victim of religious prejudice, was considered to be one of Voltaire’s greatest strokes against intolerance.

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Chicago: J. G. Millingen, Recollections of Republican France, ed. J. G. Millingen in History in the First Person: Eyewitnesses of Great Events: They Saw It Happen, ed. Louis Leo Snyder and Richard B. Morris (Harrisburg, Pa.: Stackpole Co., 1951), Original Sources, accessed March 28, 2024, http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=QFR6Y2TVECJBNJW.

MLA: Millingen, J. G. Recollections of Republican France, edited by J. G. Millingen, in History in the First Person: Eyewitnesses of Great Events: They Saw It Happen, edited by Louis Leo Snyder and Richard B. Morris, Harrisburg, Pa., Stackpole Co., 1951, Original Sources. 28 Mar. 2024. http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=QFR6Y2TVECJBNJW.

Harvard: Millingen, JG, Recollections of Republican France, ed. . cited in 1951, History in the First Person: Eyewitnesses of Great Events: They Saw It Happen, ed. , Stackpole Co., Harrisburg, Pa.. Original Sources, retrieved 28 March 2024, from http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=QFR6Y2TVECJBNJW.