Son esprit est très philosophe,Mais son cœur aime les pompons
Son esprit est très philosophe,Mais son cœur aime les pompons
Son esprit est très philosophe,Mais son cœur aime les pompons
her lover had written of her to Sade in 1733, in perhaps the most apt and descriptive couplet ever made. She was enjoying thepomponsnow. Paris wasen fêtefor the marriage of Louis XV.’s eldest daughter to a prince of Spain. Madame was as energetic in her amusements as she was energetic in acquiring knowledge. She gratified her tastes for dress, talk, and gaiety and her taste for mathematics all together. Koenig had come to Paris with them. Poor Voltaire wrote of her, not a little dolorously and enviously, “Madame du Châtelet is quite different;shecan always think—has always power over her mind.” But to compose plays in this tumult!—it was impossible to the man at this time at any rate. His health was really as wretched as Madame said. It is not a littlecharacteristic of him to find him ill in bed being copiously bled and doctored on Sunday, and gaily arranging a supper party on Thursday. But even his versatility and courage, even the good-humoured patience with which he watched Émilie enjoying herself, were not inexhaustible. He had two plays to be produced in Paris. He did not wait to see either of them even rehearsed. Early in November, 1739, he and Madame du Châtelet were spending a week or two at Cirey on their way back to Brussels.
Sincethat first letter of the August of 1736 the correspondence and friendship between Voltaire and Prince Frederick of Prussia had grown more and more enthusiastic. The devoted pair had from the first interspersed abstract considerations on the soul and “the right divine of kings to govern wrong” with the most flattering personalities and hero-worship. Each letter grew more fervent and more adoring than the last. By 1740 Voltaire was Frederick’s “dearest friend,” “charming divine Voltaire,” “sublime spirit, first of thinking beings.” In Voltaire’s vocabulary Frederick was Marcus Aurelius, the Star of the North, not a king among kings but a king among men. Voltaire dreamt of his prince “as one dreams of a mistress,” and found his hero’s Prussian-French so beautiful “that you must surely have been born in the Versailles of Louis XIV., had Bossuet and Fénelon for schoolmasters, and Madame de Sévigné for nurse.”
Not to be outdone, Frederick announced that his whole creed was one God and one Voltaire.
There was indeed no extravagance of language which this Teutonic heir-apparent of six or seven and twenty and the brilliant withered Frenchman of six-and-forty did not commit. Theydidadore each other. For Voltaire, Frederick was Concordia, the goddess of Peace—the lightbringer—the hope of the world—veiled in the golden mist of imagination, unseen, unknown, and so of infinite possibility and capable of all things. While heir-apparent Frederick was quite shrewd enough to know that a Voltaire might add lustre even to a king’s glory, and be as valuable a friend as he was a dangerous foe.
By 1740 and the return of Voltaire and the Marquise from Paris to Brussels, Frederick had begun compiling the most sumptuous and beautifulédition de luxeof the “Henriade” ever seen. He counselled his author friend to omit a too daring couplet here and there, and his author would have none of such prudence. Then Frederick must turn writer himself, and sent his Voltaire a prose work called “Anti-Machiavelli” and an “Ode on Flattery.”
“A prince who writes against flattery is as singular as a pope who writes against infallibility,” said Voltaire. The “Anti-Machiavelli” is a refutation in twenty-six prosy chapters of the entire Machiavellian system. Voltaire called it “the only book worthy of a king for fifteen hundred years,” and declared it should be “the catechism of kings and their ministers.” He wept tears of admiration over it. He had it bound and printed. He wrote a preface for it. His transports of delight were sincere enough, no doubt. He was also sincere enough to criticise it to Frederick pretty freely, and to recommend “almost a king” to be a little less verbose, and to cut out unnecessary explanations. It must be confessed that the “Anti-Machiavelli” appears a very dull and trite composition to-day, and that the beautiful moral sentiments on the iniquities of war and the kingly duty of keeping peace lose a good deal of their weight when one knows that a very few months after they were written their author invaded Silesia and plunged Europe into one of the most bloody wars in history.
But when Voltaire waxed enthusiastic over the princely periods at Brussels in the January of 1740 he had no premonition of that future. Compared with other royal compositions “Anti-Machiavelli”isa masterpiece. Even to one of the shrewdest men who ever breathed it might well have given hopes that its author would be a king not as other kings, a benefactor and not an oppressor of humanity, a defender of all liberal arts, a safeguard of justice, freedom, and civilisation. Old Frederick William was dying. The time was at hand when his son might make promise, practice. On June 6, 1740, he wrote to Voltaire: “My dear friend, my fate is changed, and I have been present at the last moments of aking, at his agony and at his death”; and prayed friend Voltaire to regard him not as king but as man. And Voltaire replied to him as “Your Humanity” instead of “Your Majesty,” and saw in the heavens the dawn of a golden day, and on earth all things made new.
On July 19th, Voltaire arrived at The Hague to see about recasting and correcting a new edition of the “Anti-Machiavelli,” now being printed there. There were certain things in it safe enough for a crown prince to have written anonymously, but hardly prudent to appear as the utterances of a king.
Voltaire was quite as active and thorough on that King’s behalf as on his own. He wasted a whole fortnight of his precious time on Frederick’s business in Holland. He had infinite trouble with the printer, Van Duren, and stooped to trickery (to be sure, Voltaire thought it no abasement) to get the necessary alterations made in the royal manuscript. At length this most indefatigable of beings himself brought out an authorised version of the “Anti-Machiavelli.” Voltaire’s corrected edition and Frederick’s original version both appear in a Berlin issue of the Works of King Frederick the Great. A comparison of the two shows the versatile Voltaire to be the most slashing and daring of editors. He cut out, as imprudent, as much as thirty-two printed pages of the royal composition. The time had not yet come when Frederick was grateful for such a hewing and a hacking as that. But the time was very soon to come when he would have been but too glad if Voltaire had flung into the fire the whole of “Anti-Machiavelli,” and the memory thereof.
The friendship between editor and author grew apace, meanwhile, daily. They sent each other presents of wine and infallible medicines. Voltaire had an escritoire, designed by Martin, specially made in Paris for Frederick’s acceptance. But they had long discovered that the handsomest of presents and the most adoring of letters were but a feeble bridge to span the space that separated them, and the question of a meeting, long and repeatedly urged by Frederick, became imminent.
Since Frederick’s first letter it had been therôleof Madame du Châtelet to stand by and watch a comedy in which she wasnot offered a part. To be a passive spectator was little to the taste of her supremely energetic temperament. It was not long before she learnt to be jealous. She was a great deal too clever not to know from very early times that, but for her, Voltaire would have been a satellite to the Star of the North, instead of to any woman in the world. When his friendship with Frederick began he was no doubt true to her because he wished to be true. But how short a time was it before he was true only from a sense of duty! Madame du Châtelet, with her vigorous passions, was not the woman to be satisfied with a cold, conscientious affection like that. She must be first—everything! Her woman’s instinct told her to mistrust Frederick, and she did mistrust him. Then the mistrust grew to dislike; dislike to hate; and hate, war to the knife.
Oh what beautiful compliments that pair exchanged through Voltaire, or directly in the most flattering letters to each other—in those four years between 1736 and 1740! Frederick said the most charming things about Émilie. She was always the goddess, the sublime, the divine. Flattery costs so little and may buy so much.
When he read her “Essay on the Propagation of Fire,” he wrote to Voltaire that it had given him “an idea of her vast genius, her learning—and of your happiness.”
Did Madame look over her lover’s shoulder and smile not a little grimly with compressed lips at those last words? “Of your happiness”! Very well. Leave him to it then. What can your court or kingship give him better than happiness, after all? It is to be feared that if Émilie had rendered Voltaire’s life “un peu dure” in the time of Madame de Graffigny she rendered it much harder now, and that there was not much question of real happiness between them. To be fought over was a much more trying position for a nature like Voltaire’s than to be one of the fighters. And there is no hell on earth like that made by a jealous woman.
Within easy reach too, in tempting sight, were the pleasures of a king’s congenial society, honours to which a worldly-wise Voltaire could be by no means insensible. Yet in almost all his letters to Frederick he reiterates his decision that he willnot leave his mistress; that he is bound to her in honour and gratitude; that he has chosen his fate and must abide by it.
In the spring of 1740 she had published her “Institutions Physiques,” in which she now championed Leibnitz against Newton, as Voltaire had championed Newton against Leibnitz. Frederick went into ecstasies over it—to its authoress; and damned it with very faint praise indeed to his confidant, Jordan. Madame may have suspected that perfidy. King Frederick, when he became king in that May of 1740, guessed he had met his match in that resolute woman whom he addressed variously as “Venus Newton” and the “Queen of Sheba.” If Frederick wanted to see Voltaire—well, then, he must have Venus too. Of that, Venus was determined. Voltaire returned to Brussels from The Hague in the early days of August, 1740. It was not the slightest use Frederick’s writing to him on the 5th of that month from Berlin: “To be frank ... it is Voltaire, it is you, it is my friend whom I desire to see, and the divine Émilie with all her divinity is only an accessory to the Newtonian Apollo”; and more plainly still the next day, “If Émiliemustcome with Apollo, I agree; although I would much rather see you alone.” Madame du Châtelet was for Voltaire a sovereign far more absolute than any on earth. He pulled a very wry face, shrugged his shoulders, and resigned himself to her determination with as much good-humour and nonchalance as he could compass. It was arranged that Frederick should meet Voltaire and Venus at Antwerp on September 14th, and should return with them for a brief visit,incognito, to the du Châtelet’s hired house in Brussels.
One can fancy the baffled rage of the Marquise when at the very last moment the news arrived that that subtle Frederick had artfully developed an attack of ague which would quite prevent him meeting Émilie at Antwerp and Brussels, but need be no obstacle in the way of Voltaire, alone, coming to see his sick friend for two or three days at the Château of Moyland, near Cleves. Even Madame du Châtelet’s jealousy and resource could find no excuse to keep her lover now. He went—feeling no doubt rather guilty and very glad to get away—the precise sensations of a schoolboy who has escaped for a day’s holiday from a very exacting master. He was not going to play truant for long! After all, Madamehadbeen dreadfullyexigeante! One thinks of her with pity somehow—Voltaire thought of her with something very like pity too—left alone in Brussels, beaten, angry, and restless, and adding daily to an already magnificent capital of hatred for Frederick.
That meeting at Moyland is one of the greattableauxof history. Voltaire himself painted it in letters to his friends when its memory was green and delightful; and twenty years after, with his brush dipped in darker colours. The ague, though convenient, was not a sham. Voltaire found Solomon, Marcus Aurelius, the Star of the North, huddled up in a blue dressing-gown in a wretched little bed in an unfurnished room, shivering and shaking and most profoundly miserable. “The sublime spirit and the first of thinking beings” sat down at once on the edge of the royal pallet, felt the King’s pulse and suggested remedies. The day was Sunday, September 11, 1740: very cold and gloomy, as was the disused château itself. It is said Voltaire recommended quinine. Any how, the fit passed, and by the evening Frederick was well enough to join a supper of the gods.
Three men, who had been visitors at Cirey and were all renowned for learning or brilliancy, were of it—Maupertuis, Algarotti, and Kaiserling. Frederick forgot his ague, and Voltaire his Marquise. They discussed the Immortality of the Soul, Liberty, Fate, Platonics. On the two following nights the suppers were repeated. At one of them Voltaire declaimed his new tragedy “Mahomet.” Frederick wrote of him just after as having the eloquence of Cicero, the smoothness of Pliny, the wisdom of Agrippa, and spoke, with a more literal truth, of the astounding brilliancy of his conversation. As for Voltaire, he found for a brief space the realisation of his dream—the incarnation of his ideal. Here was the philosopher without austerity and with every charm of manner, forgetting he was a king to be more perfectly a friend. Writing after twenty years—after strife and bitterness—Voltaire still spoke of Frederick as being at that day witty, delightful,flattering—aye, still felt in some measure what he felt in fullest measure at the Château of Moyland in 1740, the siren seduction of the King’s “blue eyes, sweet voice, charming smile, love of retirement and occupation, of prose and of verse.” With a mind keenly acute and searching, Voltaire was youthfully susceptible to fascination. He had to the end a sort of boyish vanity, and Frederick greatly admired him. But that alone would not account for the fond pride and affection with which he regarded this young King—and which might have been almost the partial and sanguine love of a father for a promising son. No man ever wore better than Frederick the Great that fine coat called Culture. He fitted it so well that even a shrewd Voltaire thought it his skin, not his covering; and when he flung it on the ground and trampled on it, still regretfully loved him—not for what he had been, but for what he had seemed.
The three days came to an end. On September 14th, Frederick took Maupertuis to Paradise, or Potsdam, with him, and condemned Voltaire to Hell, or Holland (this is how Voltaire put it), where he was to stay at The Hague in an old palace belonging to the King of Prussia and complete his arrangements for the publication of his edition of the “Anti-Machiavelli.” The Marquise was at Fontainebleau paving the way for Voltaire’s return to Paris, and writing to Frederick to ask him to use his influence to win Cardinal Fleury, the Prime Minister’s, favour, for “our friend.” Fleury had formerly met Voltaire at the Villars’, “where he liked me very much”; but that liking had since turned to dislike. Madame worked at once with enthusiasm and with wisdom—that rare combination of qualities which can accomplish everything. She said herself, not a little bitterly, that she gave her lover back in three weeks all he had laboriously lost in six years: opened to him the doors of the Academy; restored to him ministerial favour. He sent a presentation copy of the “Anti-Machiavelli” to Cardinal Fleury presently, and the powerful Cardinal, now that Voltaire was a great King’s friend and the active Marquise was at Court, suddenly discovered that he never had had any fault but youth. “You have been young; perhaps youwere young a little too long”—but nothing worse than that; really nothing. The two exchanged flattering letters. Then came events which changed the face of Europe. On October 20, 1740, died the Emperor Charles VI. He was succeeded by Maria Theresa of three-and-twenty. The Powers were looking hard into each other’s faces to see if peace or war were written there. “The slightest twinkle of Fleury’s eyelashes” was hint sufficient for this daring and versatile Voltaire to try a newrôle. When he started off to Remusberg on November 4 or 5, 1740, to pay another little visit, already arranged, to friend Frederick, he went not only as a visitor, but to discover the pacific or bellicose disposition of Anti-Machiavelli who had already written, a little oddly, that the Emperor’s death upset all his peaceful ideas.
The journey from The Hague to Remusberg took a fortnight. Voltaire had as companion a man called Dumolard, whom Theriot had recommended for the post of Frederick’s librarian. Their travelling carriage broke down outside Herford, and Voltaire entered that town in the highly picturesque and unpractical costume of his day on one of the carriage horses. “Who goes there?” cried the sentinel. “Don Quixote,” answered Voltaire.
Remusberg wasen fêtewhen they reached it. There were suppers, dances, and conversation, a little gambling, delightful concerts—the gayest Court in the world. Frederick played on the flute and was infinitely agreeable. The Margravine of Bayreuth, his sister, was of the party. Voltaire showed Frederick Cardinal Fleury’s complimentary letter on the “Anti-Machiavelli.” There was no change on the King’s face as he read it; or if there was a change, it escaped even a Voltaire. If Voltaire had been brilliant at Moyland he was twice as brilliant here—in spite of the fact that he could only describe himself to Theriot as “ill, active, poet, philosopher, and always your very sincere friend.” He busied himself in procuring for that faithless person a pension from Frederick, for having been the King’s agent in Paris. All the time, through the suppers and the talk and the parties, he was watching, watching, watching. The visit lasted six days.Voltaire had never in his life tried to find out anything for so long without finding it. But when he parted from Frederick at Potsdam he had not the faintest suspicion that that invasion of Silesia upon which the King was to start in twelve days’ time was even a possibility.
Frederick pressed his guest to prolong his stay. He went to Berlin for a brief visit to pay his respects to the King’s mother, brother, and sisters; but left there on December 2 or 3, 1740, and then returned to Potsdam to say good-bye to his royal host—and to look into the royal heart, if that might be. But it was not to be.
Voltaire was anxious to be back in Brussels in time to receive Madame du Châtelet on her return from Paris, where her husband had just bought a fine new house. He wrote a little epigram to his host before he left, in which he gaily reproached the King as a coquette who conquers hearts but never gives her own. He had been at least astute enough to divine that there was Something his master hid from him. And his master responded with a littlebadinageon that other coquette who was drawing Voltaire to Brussels.
They parted friends—and warm friends. But there was a highly practical side to both their characters which came to the fore when Frederick bade Voltaire send him the bill of his expenses at The Hague, and Voltaire added to that bill the expenses of the journey to Remusberg, taken at Frederick’s request. It was a large total—thirteen hundred écus—but it was not an unjust one. It has been happily suggested that it at least contained no charge for Man’s Time, and this man’s time was of quite exceptional value. “Five hundred and fifty crowns a day” grumbled Frederick to Jordan; “that is good pay for the King’s jester, with a vengeance.” But when the King’s jester is a Voltaire, the King must expect to pay for him. That was Voltaire’s view of the question, no doubt.
A series of accidents befell him on his journey home. He was a whole month getting from Berlin to Brussels, and twelve days of the time ice-bound in a miserable little boat after leaving The Hague. In a wretched ship’s cabin he worked hard on “Mahomet” and wrote voluminous letters.
One of them, dated “this last of December,” 1740, was to Frederick—cordial, flattering, and expansive. Having been dutiful enough to tear himself away from “a monarch who cultivates and honours an art which I idolise” for a woman “who reads nothing but Christianus Wolffius,” Voltaire was a little disposed to grudge that act of virtue, and to make the most of it. He was anxious, too, to prove to Frederick that he had left him chiefly to finish the du Châtelet lawsuit—not merely “to sigh like an idiot at a woman’s knees.” “But, Sire ... there is no obligation I do not owe her. The head-dresses and the petticoats she wears do not make the duty of gratitude less sacred.” The last cloud of illusion must have been dispelled long before the Marquise du Châtelet’s ex-lover could have written those words.
He saw her now not only as she was, but at her worst. “Men serve women kneeling: when they get on their feet they go away.” Shall it not be accounted for righteousness to a Voltaire that he got on his feet and went back to her?
BeforeVoltaire reached Brussels—nay, before he had written to Frederick that letter from the ice-bound boat off the coasts of Zealand—he had received one of the greatest mental shocks of his life. The news of the invasion of Silesia came upon him like a thunderclap. This—after the “Anti-Machiavelli”! This—after all they had hoped, planned, dreamed! Where was that smiling kingdom, Arcadia, wherein all liberal arts were to flourish, where were to be for ever peace, tolerance, plenty? Where indeed? But Voltaire was nothing if not recuperative. There is not a single instance in his life when he sat down and cried over spilt milk. He was disillusioned now—and bitterly disillusioned. “After all, he is only a King,” he wrote; and again, “He is a King, that makes one tremble. Time will show”; and to English Falkener, in English, “My good friend the King of Prussia, who wrote so well against Machiavelli and acted immediately like the heroes of Machiavelli ... fiddles and fights as well as any man in Christendom.” Fiddles and fights! Well, since it was impossible to adore Frederick as Concordia, one might as well admire him as Mars. Making the best of it was part of Voltaire’s creed. He did what he could to live up to it now. He congratulated Frederick on his victories. The pair continued to write each other long letters, much interspersed with facile rhymes. They were still friends. But it was no longer the boy-hero, the Messiah of the North, the youthful benefactor of human kind whom Voltaire adored: it was a far cleverer and a far less lovable person—the real Frederick the Great.
Voltaire’s interminable journey did near its end at last. By January 3, 1741, he was in Brussels. Did he feel a little bit like the truant schoolboy returning in the evening expecting a whipping, and all his excuses for so long an absence disbelieved? Of course Madame du Châtelet disbelieved them! A month getting back from Berlin to Brussels! That was a very likely story indeed, and quite on a par with friend Frederick’s artful ague at Moyland! Had quite planned to be back in Brussels before I arrived from Paris! Had you indeed? And you expect me to believe that too?
The unhappy Marquise had been eating her heart out in suspicion and impatience, waiting for him. “I have been cruelly repaid for all I have done for him,” she wrote to d’Argental out of this angry solitude; and again, “I know the King of Prussia hates me, but I defy him to hate me as much as I have hated him these two months.” She overwhelmed Voltaire with reproaches directly she saw him. Her tongue was dreadfully voluble and clever. The Marquis was away, as usual. There was nothing to distract her attention, and Voltaire’s excusesdidsound very lame indeed. He had a very bad quarter of an hour; but, after all, it was only a quarter of an hour. They were reconciled—and tenderly. If Madame was scolding and exacting, devoted to the metaphysics of Christianus Wolffius, extraordinarily clad and with a painful taste in headgear, she loved her lover and had done much for him. And Frederick the Great had invaded Silesia. If that invasion was a triumph for him, it was also a triumph for one of the bitterest foes he had, Madame du Châtelet.
At Brussels, in that January of the year 1741, there was then, for a time, some sort of renewal of the brief honeymoon days of Cirey, before the Prussian heir-apparent’s earliest letter, when the chains that bound the first man in Europe to his Marquise were forged of warm admiration and not barren duty.
Voltaire was soon writing that it was not Frederick’s perfidy that had hastened his return—that if he had been offered Silesia itself he would have come back to his mistress just the same. She had never seemed so far above kings as she did now. Her unjust reproaches even were sweeter than the flatteries of all courts. He had left her once for a monarch,but he would not leave her again for a prophet. And she—a true woman after all—wrote that Frederick could take as many provinces as he pleased, provided he did not rob her of the happiness of her life.
Voltaire was busy in these early months of 1741 with his play “Mahomet,” for which he had a quite fatherly love and admiration. The English Lord Chesterfield, with whom he had dined in London, was a visitor at Madame du Châtelet’s Brussels establishment, and to him Voltaire read selections from the new drama. It would have been immediately produced in Paris; but the best actors were unable to take part in it, and it was judged better to postpone its appearance there.
In this April Voltaire and Madame du Châtelet went to Lille, to stay with Madame Denis and her husband. At Lille, “Mahomet” was performed by a company of French players, who had been half engaged by Voltaire to go to Prussia in the employ of Frederick, and then thrown over by that busy monarch. The audience, each of the three nights the play was performed, was numerous and passionately enthusiastic. The clergy of Lille were powerfully represented and entirely approving. M. Denis and his plump three years’ bride of course came to clap the latest effort of Uncle Voltaire. Uncle Voltaire had a keen eye on the face, and a lean forefinger on the pulse of that audience to see how certain daring passages affected it. What Lille applauded, Paris might pass. On the first night, at the end of the second act, a despatch from the King of Prussia was handed to M. de Voltaire in his box. He read it aloud. “It is said the Austrians are retreating, and I believe it.” It was the declaration of the victory of Mollwitz. Lille had its own reasons for being passionately Prussian, and received the news with shouts of delight. If anything had been needed to complete the success of “Mahomet,” that despatch would have done it. The bearer of good news is always a popular person. But nothing was needed. The clergy of Lille begged, and were granted, an extra performance of the play for their especial benefit at the house of one of the chief magistrates. Orthodoxy seemed to be taking this Voltaire under her strong wing at last, and Voltaire accepted the situation with a very cynic grimace and a great deal of satisfaction. He and Madame du Châtelet left Lille with the most sanguine hopes of seeing “Mahomet” shortly and successfully produced in Paris. Until November, 1741, they were mostly in Brussels, watching the progress of the du Châtelet lawsuit. Madame had a little quarrel on hand with her tutor Koenig, in which Maupertuis joined.
In November they went to Paris and stayed, not in that splendid Palais Lambert which the Marquis du Châtelet had bought, but which was not yet completely furnished, but in Voltaire’s old quarters—the house which had belonged to Madame de Fontaine Martel. In December they returned to Cirey for a month; and in the January of the new year 1742 were again in Brussels. The lawsuit was positively progressing, and so favourably that they felt justified in spending the rest of the winter in Paris. Immediately on their arrival in the capital they were plunged into that “disordered life” which the Marquise loved and Voltaire loathed. “Supping when I ought to be in bed, going to bed and not sleeping, getting up to race about, not doing any work, deprived of real pleasures and surrounded by imaginary ones”—as a description of fashionable life the words hold good to this day. “Farewell the court,” he wrote again; “I have not a courtier’s health.” He spoke of himself as being always at the tail of that lawsuit—which the indefatigable and persistent Marquisemustpursue to the bitter end.
They lingered in Paris through May, June, July—in their fine Palais Lambert now—and all the time no “Mahomet.” Voltaire should have been used to disappointments and delays, if any man should. He brought out everything he ever wrote at the point of the sword. There were always anxiously waiting to take offence the acutely susceptible feelings of a Church, a king, a court, a nobility, and a press censor. This time, first of all, it was the Turkish envoy who was beingfêtedin Paris, “and it would not be proper to defame the Prophet while entertaining his ambassador,” said the polite Voltaire. The second cause of delay was much more serious.Exactly at a moment when the policy of Frederick the Great appeared peculiarly anti-French and that monarch was enjoying the brief but vivid hatred of Paris, there crept out one of Voltaire’s rhyming letters to the Prussian King, in which the courtly writer lavishly praised and flattered his correspondent. M. de Voltaire had to be alert and active in a moment. He pursued his old line of policy. First of all, I did not write the letter. Secondly, if I did, it has been miscopied. Thirdly, if I did write it and it has not been miscopied, the reigning favourite of Louis XV., Madame de Mailly, must help me out of my dilemma. Voltaire wrote and asked her assistance. She could not do much. But Cardinal Fleury still looked upon Voltaire as a person to be conciliated as an influence on Prussia. He read the play, and approved. The censor did likewise. The murmur of the streets and thecaféswas still against the too Prussian Voltaire. But for once the authorities actually seemed to be with him.
On August 19, 1742, “Fanaticism, or Mahomet the Prophet” was performed to a house crammed with the rank, wit, and fashion of Paris, who applauded it to the echo. D’Alembert appeared for literature. The Bar and the Church were generously represented. The author himself was in the pit. This might be another “Zaire,” only a “Zaire” written in the plenitude of a man’s mental powers—stern, not tender—grand, not pathetic—the expression of matured and passionate convictions, instead of vivid, impulsive feelings. Voltaire was eight-and-thirty when he produced “Zaire,” and eight-and-forty when he produced “Mahomet.” How fully he had lived in those ten years! Then he felt: now he knew. He had often dared greatly in his plays: in “Mahomet” he dared all.
Lord Chesterfield had regarded the tragedy as a covert attack on Christianity. It must have been the sceptical reputation of M. de Voltaire which made Lord Chesterfield so think. No impartial person reading it now could find an anti-Christian word in it. It is a covert attack on nothing. It is an open attack on the fanaticism, bigotry, intolerance, which degrade any religion. It is a battle against the “shameful superstition which debases humanity.” Worth, not birth,is its motto. “All men are equal: worth, not birth, makes the difference between them,” says Omar, one of the characters. In this play is found that famous and scornful line, “Impostor at Mecca and prophet at Medina.” There is scarcely a sentence in it which is not a quivering and passionate protest against the crafty rule of any priesthood which would keep from the laity light, knowledge, and progress. “I wished to show in it,” said Voltaire to M. César de Missy, “to what horrible excess fanaticism can bring feeble souls, led by a knave.”
If there were dissentient voices—and there were—the applause of that brilliant first night drowned them. The play was repeated a second time and a third. Voltaire may have begun to feel safe: to congratulate himself that at last free thought uttered freely was permissible even in France. He was always hopeful. But his enemies were too mighty for him. Working against him always, untiring, subtle, malicious, was the whole envious Grub Street of Paris led by beaten Desfontaines and jealous Piron. The man in the street was now bitterly against him too. The Solicitor-General, who, on his own confession, had not read a word of the play, much less seen it acted, was soon writing to the Lieutenant of Police that he “believed it necessary to forbid its performances.” On the valuable evidence of hearsay, he found “Mahomet” “infamous, wicked, irreligious, blasphemous,” and “everybody saysthat to have written it the author must be a scoundrel only fit for burning.” It was still in the power of this remarkable officer of most remarkable justice to prosecute Voltaire for the “Philosophic Letters,” which he threatened to do, if “Mahomet” were not removed. Feeling ran so high that friend Fleury himself was compelled to advise the withdrawal of the play. It was performed once more—that is, in all four times—and then withdrawn.
A man of much more placid disposition might have been roused now. But this time Voltaire was too disgusted, too sick at heart with men and life, to have even the strength to be angry. He and Madame du Châtelet left for Brussels on August 22d. He was ill in bed by August 29th—ten days afterthat first brilliant performance—trying to sit up and make a fair copy of the real “Mahomet” to send to Frederick the Great.
The spurious editions, shamefully incorrect, which were appearing all over Paris, must have been the overflow of the invalid’s cup of bitterness.
“It is only what happened to ‘Tartuffe,’”he wrote from that sick bed to Frederick. “The hypocrites persecuted Molière, and the fanatics are risen up against me. I have yielded to the torrent without uttering a word.... If I had but the King of Prussia for a master and the English for fellow-citizens! The French are nothing but great children; only the few thinkers we have among us are so splendid as to make up for all the rest.” And a day or two later to another friend: “This tragedy is suitable rather for English heads than French hearts. It was found too daring in Paris because it was powerful, and dangerous because it was truthful.... It is only in London that poets are allowed to be philosophers.”
The words sound as if the writer were weary,las, at the end of his tether. On September 2, 1742, he went for a very few days’ rest and refreshment to Aix-la-Chapelle to see Frederick the Great, who had just signed a treaty of peace. Madame du Châtelet did not object to that brief holiday, and entertained no idea of making a third person thereat herself. She was more confident of her Voltaire now—hopeful that he was hers, body and soul, for ever. When he was at Aix, Frederick offered him a house in Berlin and a charming estate—peace, freedom, and honour for the rest of his life. And Voltaire said he preferred a second storey in the house of his Marquise—slavery and persecution in Paris, to liberty and a king’s friendship in Berlin. “I courageously resisted all his propositions,” was his own phrase. For this man when he was virtuous always knew it, and keenly felt how much pleasanter it would have been to be wicked instead. Fleury approved of the little visit, and though itwasa holiday and Frederickwashis friend, Voltaire did still his best to subtly find out the royal disposition towards France.
On September 7th he returned to Brussels, not having beenabsent a week. Madame du Châtelet longed to get back to the gaieties of Paris, though Voltaire, who was ill enough to be able to write nothing but verses, said Madame, was well content in Brussels.
He went back to the capital, however, in this November of 1742, and was not a littlevifand active in getting imprisoned certain publishers who had produced “the most infamous satire” on himself and Madame du Châtelet.
He was soon also busy on a scheme which he had tried successfully ten years before. When “Êriphyle” failed he brought out “Zaire.” When the authorities damned “Mahomet” he produced “Mérope. “ Ten years—ten years of battles and disappointments, of wretched health and domestic vicissitudes—had not robbed him of one iota of his pluck, energy, and enterprise. He flung off that lassitude and despair of life which came upon him in those few dismal days in Brussels: searched among his manuscripts: discovered “Mérope,” and went out to meet the enemy with that weapon in his hand. It had been written in the early days at Cirey, between 1736 and 1738. It was the play over which Madame de Graffigny had “wept to sobs.” Voltaire had wept over it himself. He felt what he wrote when he wrote it, so acutely that there was no wonder his readers were moved too. His own wit and pathos always retained their power to touch him to tears or laughter whenever he read them, which is more unusual.
“Mérope” is a classic tragedy—“a tragedy without love in it and only the more tender for that,” wrote Voltaire to Cideville. It turns on maternal affection. The idea is uncommon and daring enough. Would the venture be successful? Madame de Graffigny had wept indeed; but then Graffignys weep and laugh easily, especially when the author is also the host. Mademoiselle Quinault and d’Argental had told him that “Mérope” was unactable to a Frenchparterre.
The Marquise had mocked at it; but then the Marquise had happened to be in a very bad temper with the playwright. Who could tell? If taking pains could make it succeed, a success it would be. The author, himself no mean actor,attended the rehearsal and coached the players. When Mademoiselle Dumesnil, who was cast for “Mérope,” failed to rise to the height of tragedy demanded in the fourth act where she has to throw herself between her son and the guards leading him to execution, crying “Barbare! il est mon fils!”—she complained she would have to have the devil in her to simulate such a passion as Voltaire required. “That is just it, Mademoiselle,” cried he. “Youmusthave the devil in you to succeed in any of the arts!” There was never a truer word. He did manage to put a good deal of the devil into Mademoiselle. She became a famous actress. His own fervour was infectious. The players, who had disliked the play at first, caught his own enthusiasm for it at last. On February 20, 1743, it was first represented to a house crowded with persons who had admired “Mahomet” and sympathised with the treatment of “Mahomet’s” author. It was the best first night on record. Mademoiselle Dumesnil kept the house in tears throughout three acts, it is said. For the first time in any theatre the enthusiastic audience demanded the appearance of the author. He was in a box with the Duchesse de Boufflers and the Duchesse de Luxembourg and entirely declined to present himself on the stage. His Duchesses tried to persuade him, with no better success than the audience. He kissed the Duchesse de Luxembourg’s hand and left the box, “with a resigned air,” and tried to hide himself in another part of the house. But he was discovered, and drawn into the box of the Maréchale de Villars for whom he had once felt something more than the feelings of a friend. How long ago that was—Villars and its white nights—a young man of five-and-twenty, and Madame, gracious,svelte, and woman of the world to the tips of her fingers! She had becomedévotesince. “She was made to lead us all to Heaven or Hell, whichever she chooses,” wrote Voltaire airily. As for himself,hehad his Marquise du Châtelet. The moment was not one for reminiscences in any case. Theparterrewas not to be silenced. The story runs that it vociferously insisted that Madame de Villars, the young daughter-in-law of his old love, should kiss M. de Voltaire. The Maréchale ordered her to do so, andVoltaire wrote after that he was like Alain Chartier and the Princess Margaret of Scotland—“only he was asleep and I was awake.”
He enjoyed that evening as only a Frenchman can enjoy. He was all his life intensely susceptible to the emotions of the moment; vain with the light-hearted vanity of a very young man; loving show and glitter, applause and flattery—a true child of France, though one of the greatest of her great family. Was it not a triumph over his enemies too? What might not follow from it? Voltaire said thereafter that the distinction between himself and Jean Jacques Rousseau was that Jean Jacques wrote in order to write, and he wrote in order to act. Of what use was the dazzling success of “Mérope” if it could not buy him a place he had long coveted and gratify one of the darling desires of his soul?
On January 29th of this same year 1743 had died Voltaire’s friend, Cardinal Fleury. He left vacant one of the forty coveted chairs in the French Academy. Who should aspire to it if not the man who had written the “Henriade” and the “English Letters,” “Zaire,” “Alzire,” “Mahomet,” and “Mérope”? It would be no empty honour, but a safeguard against his enemies: the hall-mark of the King’s favour.
The King was for his election; so was the King’s mistress, Madame de Châteauroux; but against it, and bitterly against it, were Maurepas, Secretary of State, and Boyer, Bishop of Mirepoix, and tutor of the Dauphin. Voltaire always called Boyer the “âne de Mirepoix” from the fact that he signed himself “anc: de Mirepoix,” meaning that he was formerly bishop of that place—and it must be conceded that, if conscientious, he was one of the most narrow-minded old prelates who ever fattened at a court. He has been well summed up as a man who “reaped all the honours and sowed none.”Hisargument was that it would offend Heaven for a profane person like M. de Voltaire to succeed a cardinal in any office. To be sure, the chairs in the Academy were designed to reward literary, not ecclesiastical, merit. But what was that to a Boyer?
Voltaire wrote long letters which are masterpieces of subtlety and special pleading to prove what a good Christian and Churchman he was, and how suited in character, as well as ability, to be the successor of a prelate. He did not stop at a lie. In a letter to Boyer written at the end of February he declared himself a sincere Catholic, and added that he had never written a page which did not breathe humanity (which was true enough) and many sanctified by religion (which was very untrue indeed). He conclusively proved (cannot one fancy the twinkle in his eager eyes as he penned the words?) that “the ‘Henriade’ from one end to the other is nothing but anélogeof a virtue which submits to Providence,” and that most of the “English Letters,” current in Paris, were not written by him at all. The mixture of the false and the true is so clever that itmighthave deceived anybody. Voltaire may have argued with himself that since he knew itwoulddeceive nobody, the lying was very venial indeed. What did it matter what he said now? It was the master motives which had ruled his life, the passion for freedom of thought and action, the sceptical temper, the burning longing for light and knowledge which panted in every page of every play, in every line almost of his graver works, which counted against him. He was excluded from the Academy. The Ass of Mirepoix won M. de Voltaire’s seat for a bishop—of very slender literary capacity indeed. Voltaire wrote lightly that it was according to the canons of the Church that a prelate should succeed a prelate, and that “a profane person like myself must renounce the Academy for ever.”
But he was bitterly disappointed not the less. Frederick the Great, in a kingly pun, said that he believed that France was now the only country in Europe where “âncs” and fools could make their fortunes. In 1743 England elected Voltaire a member of her Royal Society. During the year four other chairs fell vacant at the French Academy. But the greatest literary genius of the age, perhaps of any age, was not even mooted as a candidate. It was Montesquieu, the famous author of “L’Esprit des Lois,” who said scornfully of the occasion and of Voltaire:
“Voltaire n’est pas beau, il n’est que joli. It would beshameful for the Academy to admit him, and it will one day be shameful for it not to have admitted him.”
In what a far different and far larger spirit it was that Voltaire criticised his critic—“Humanity had lost its title-deeds. Montesquieu found them and gave them back.”
Voltairehad a little distraction from his disappointment about the Academy in the April of this 1743 in the marriage of Pauline du Châtelet, the vivacious little amateur actress of Cirey. Pauline was fresh from a convent and aged exactly sixteen. The Italian Duc de Montenero-Caraff, the bridegroom, was distinctly elderly, and, as sketched in a few lively touches by Voltaire, very unprepossessing. The Marquise maintainedshehad not arranged the alliance. Butmariages de convenancewere the established custom of the day. Who knows? Voltaire had been for freedom of choice in the case of niece Denis, it is certain. Pauline was not his to dispose of. He would appear to have shrugged his shoulders and given her his blessing. With it, she disappears out of the history of his life.
In June he had another chagrin. The performance of his play, “The Death of Cæsar,” already acted in August, 1735, by the pupils of the Harcourt College, was stopped on the very evening before it was to have been produced in public. Not many days after, M. de Voltaire left Paris on his fourth visit to Frederick the Great. Frederick wanted him socially as the wittiest man in the world, the most daring genius of the age. If the French Academy would have none of him, the Prussian Court knew better. Besides—besides—could not this subtle Solomon of the North rely on himself to find out from his guest something of the temper and the disposition of France toward Prussia? The guest was not less astute. Therôleof amateur diplomatist pleased his fancy and his vanity. What if he had not been successful in it before? A Voltaire couldalways try again. He left Paris then in June pretending that his journey was the outcome of his quarrel with Boyer, but really as the emissary of Richelieu on a secret mission to Frederick to warn him of the danger of allowing King George of Hanover and England to help Maria Theresa to her rights, and meaning to win over the cleverest monarch in Europe to an alliance with France. It was a beautiful scheme. It had first “come into the heads” of friend Richelieu and Madame de Châteauroux; then the King had adopted it, and Amelot, the Minister for Foreign Affairs. It was ambitious enough to particularly appeal to Voltaire’s audacity. The King of France was to pay all expenses: which was not unjust. The Bourbons seldom spent their money so wisely. Madame du Châtelet was the only person intrusted with the secret of the journey’s real object. She felt that it was due to herself to have a fit of hysterics since her Voltaire was leaving her for this Frederick, and she had it. But she kept the secret. If she was a little proud in her heart of the honour such a mission implied, yet her grief at the departure of her “ami” was so unrestrained as to make her and it the laughing-stocks of Paris. Frederick “is a very dangerous rival for me,” she wrote on June 28, 1743. “If I had been in Voltaire’s place I should not have gone!” “I am staying here in the hopes of getting ‘Cæsar’ played and so hastening his return.”
Voltaire set off in very excellent spirits. It would so annoy Boyer to see his enemy protected by the most powerful monarch in Europe—and by a monarch who was not at all above makingmotson an “anc: de Mirepoix”! “I had at once the pleasure of revenging myself on the Bishop ... of taking a very pleasant little trip, and being in the way of rendering services to the King and the state.” In July he was writing to his friends, and to Amelot, from “a palace of the King of Prussia at The Hague”—a little humanly proud of being able to date his letters from such a place, keen for the fray, sick in body as usual, and vividly alert in mind.
On August 31st he arrived at Berlin. The first news he had to communicate to Amelot was the victory of George II. of England at Dettingen. What honours could be too great fora man who, at such a juncture, made Prussia the friend of France? Madame du Châtelet, keeping her counsel at home, must have had high hopes for her Voltaire. And her Voltaire, at Berlin, cherished them for himself.
To all appearances indeed the visit was but afête, and a gorgeousfête. Berlin was gay with balls, operas, and parties. Sometimes there were ballets, and nightly almost those royal suppers where, said the guest, “God was respected, but those who had deceived men in His name were not spared.” Voltaire had a room adjoining Frederick’s, and the King came in and out of the visitor’s apartment familiarly. The old potent charm which these two men had for each other was at work again. But not the less, through the glamour, the wit, the wine, and the laughter, each pursued his secret object, adroit, thorough, and unsleeping.
Voltaire played therôleof diplomatist as he played allrôles—brilliantly. He was delightfully gay and easy. He seemed so volatile and so gullible. He threw himself into the pleasures of the hour with all his French soul. An ulterior motive? The man wasbon enfant,bon conteur,boneverything. He had come to enjoy himself and was doing it to the full.
“Through all,” he wrote, “my secret mission went forward.” He despatched immense diplomatic documents to his countryviaMadame du Châtelet. He drew up a famous series of questions, to which friend Frederick was to append such answers as would bare the secrets of his Prussian soul to France. The diplomatist had immense conversations with the monarch, which he reported. Frederick wrote Voltaire a most beautiful open letter to show in Paris, wherein he complimented France on her Louis XV., and Louis XV. on his Voltaire. He renewed his pressing invitations to Voltaire to come and live at Berlin—nay, did more. He worked behind his back so as to further embroil him with Boyer, and make France too hot to hold him. “That would be the way to have him in Berlin.”
Frederick was his guest’s friend, and his devoted friend. But he thought it no breach of friendship to trick him wherehe could, and kept closed the book of his intentions and his soul.
The fact was that where Voltaire was but a brilliant amateur, Frederick was the sound professional; that what this daring Arouet took upon himself for the nonce, was the business of the King’s life. Voltaire was not above trickery: but Frederick tricked better. His answers to that famous series of questions are evasive, or buffoonery. Voltaire counted that he had not done badly in his mission. But Frederick had done better.
The visit finished with a fortnight at Bayreuth in September, 1743, where Voltaire and the King were the guests of the King’s sisters, where were gaiety, laughter, and wit—“all the pleasures of a court without its formality.” Voltaire distinguished himself by writing three charming madrigals to the three royal ladies. They do not admit of translation. It is only in their original tongue that their grace, ease, and delicacy can be appreciated. But for that kind of versifying they are the model for all time. If Voltaire had not far more splendid titles to fame, he would have gone down the ages as the daintiest and wittiest writer who ever made sonnets on his mistress’s eyebrow, trifled with graceful jests, and flattered with daintiest comparisons.
In the early days of October he was back in Berlin for a few daysen passant. On October 12th he and his King parted there, not without much show of sorrow, and some of the reality of it.
Voltaire had found out “that little treason” whose aim was to keep him in Prussia; but at these parting moments “the King excused himself and told me he would do what I liked to make reparation.” As for Frederick, he, in Voltaire’s own words, had “scented the spy.” They could no longer trust each other. To the misfortune of both, they loved each other still.
On October 12th, then, Voltaire left for Brussels. On the 14th his travelling carriage was upset and he was robbed by the people who came to his assistance. The wretched village in which he hoped for shelter that evening, he found in the process