A Day in the Life of Voltaire

Theodore Besterman describes everyday life for “the polymorphic chameleon, the omniscient polymath.”

It is a desperately difficult thing to display any man as he really was, and impossibly difficult in the case of the polymorphic chameleon, the omniscient polymath Voltaire. Yet the material is so abundant that it would be unforgiveable not to make the effort. Let us try to put a single day in Voltaire’s life under the microscope.1

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