Ferney, which was only a miserable village when Voltaire first took up his residence there, is now a large flourishing and opulent town.

I found Voltaire’s Chateau occupied by a fat heavy Swiss Officer who was on duty there, Ferney being at this moment occupied by the troops of the Swiss confederation.  He was at breakfast, but on my stating to him that I was come to see the apartments of Voltaire he directed the housekeeper to shew them to me.  On the left hand side after ascending a flight of steps, before you come into the Chateau, is a Chapel built by Voltaire with this simple inscription:  “Deo erexit Voltaire.”  In the apartment usually occupied by him for the purpose of composition, are preserved his chair, table, inkstand and bed as sacred relics; and in the Salon are to be seen the portraits of several public characters, his contemporaries, and which were constantly appended there in his life time.  Among these portraits I distinguished those of Frederick the Great of Prussia, Catherine II of Russia, Lekain, Diderot, Alembert, Franklin, Helvetius, Marmontel and Washington, besides many others.  There is nothing remarkable either in the Chateau, or in the gardens appertaining to it; but as it stands on an elevation, it commands a fine view, which is so well described in that ode which begins: 

  O maison d’Aristippe, o jardins d’Epicure!

I returned to Geneva and dined with my friend M. Picot the banker, who presented me to his brother’s family, which I found a very amiable one, and I was particularly delighted with his father, a fine venerable old man, who is a pastor of the Church of Geneva and a great admirer of our poets Thomson and Milton.

I have made acquaintance at the Ecu de Geneve with a very gallant and accomplished officer, the Chevalier Zadera, a Pole by birth and a Colonel in the French army.[51] He had been on the staff of the Prince d’Eckmuehl at Hamburgh and had served previously in St Domingo, in Germany and in Italy.  He had just quitted the French service, having a great repugnance to serve under the Bourbon dynasty, and he is about to go to Italy on private business.  He seems a very well informed man and well versed in French, Italian and German litterature.  He also understands well to read and write English and speaks it, but not at all fluently.  He acquired his English in the United States of America, whither he went when he escaped from the horrors of St Domingo.  By the Americans he was received with open arms and unbounded hospitality as the compatriot of Pulaski who fell gloriously fighting in their cause, the cause of liberty, at the battle of Savannah.  He was liberally supplied with money by several individuals without the smallest expectation or chance of repayment at the time, and was forwarded in this manner from town to town and from state to state throughout the whole Union; so that the tour he made and the time he passed in that land of liberty, he reckons as far the most agreeable