Volume 42, Number 19 · November 30, 1995
Voltaire's Grin
By Richard Holmes
His enemies said he had the 'most hideous' smile in Europe. It was a thin, skull-like smile that sneered at everything sacred: religion, love, patriotism, censorship, and the harmony of the spheres. It was a smile of mockery, cynicism, and lechery. It was the sort of smile, said Coleridge, that you would find on the face of 'a French hairdresser.'
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