Voltaire, however, remained a Frenchman and a Parisian. However much he enjoyed the sojourn in England, he yearned to return home. In the spring of 1729, he secured permission to do so. But not too much time passed before Voltaire again experienced difficulties. In 1733, the publication of the English letters and the satirical poem Temple du Goût enraged many people of influence. The first, while lauding the English, attacked the French government and the Church; the second satirized contemporary writers, especially J. B. Rousseau, the man who had once predicted that Voltaire was to make a great name for himself. The government issued a warrant for Voltaire's arrest, and his house was searched. By that time, however, the author of the two offensive works was at Cirey in Lorraine, an independent duchy, the guest of Emilie de Breteuil, Marquise du Châtelet, with whom he had been intimate during the previous year. The relationship between her and Voltaire was to last for some sixteen years and marks the next important stage in his long career.
Mme. du Châtelet, twelve years Voltaire's junior, was in many ways a remarkable woman. Short of temper, often difficult, persona non grata in fashionable society, she nevertheless had her attractions. A woman of keen intellect, she was devoted to mathematics, science, and philosophy. Particularly was she dedicated to the optimistic philosophy of Leibnitz; assisted by Voltaire, she spent much of her time writing an exposition of the German's conclusions. She shared Voltaire's enthusiasm for Newton, and while her companion worked on an exposition of the Newtonian system, she translated the Principia into French, adding a commentary.
These were indeed productive years for Voltaire. Among other works, he completed a treatise on metaphysics, wrote six plays, completed two poems — Le Mondain, a satire against the Jansenists, whose doctrine had much in common with Calvinism, and the philosophical Discours sur l'homme. He also labored on the Siècle de Louis XIV and his universal history, Essai sur moeurs.
