The Marquise was no whit less enthusiastic. Voltaire’s own mathematical education had been neglected. But not hers. The pupil of Maupertuis could help out her lover’s defects. Metaphysics was her passion. She had the accuracy of Euclid, Voltaire said, and algebra was her amusement. In his dedicatory Epistle to the “Elements,” which was the fruit of their joint labour, he spoke of her in terms which were, at once, high-flown compliment and hard fact. Shehadpenetrated “the depths of transcendent geometry” and “alone among us has read and commented on the great Newton.” Shehad“made her own by indefatigable labour, truths which would intimidate most men,” and had “sounded the depths in her hours of leisure of what the profoundest philosophers study unremittingly.” She had corrected many faults in the Italian “Newtonianism for Ladies” written by their visitor Algarotti, and knew a great deal more about the subject than he did himself. It is not hard to understand how Voltaire came by what he called his “little system”—that women are as clever as men, only more amiable. He had Madame du Châtelet always with him—Madame whose wholeaim in life then was to work, and to please him. Her industry was as great as his own. The word “trouble” was never in her vocabulary. He loved her intellect if he did not love her. They should have been happy. If they ever were, it was over the “Elements of Newton’s Philosophy.”
The book was ready at last. To make the theory of gravitation clear—and entertaining—had been Voltaire’s chief difficulty. If any man was adapted to enlighten obscurity, he was that man. His own mind was not only extraordinarily brilliant, but it was extraordinarily neat. In the “Elements” sequence follows sequence, and effect, cause, as incisively as in a proposition of Euclid.
It has been seen that while Voltaire was in Holland in the spring of 1737 he was superintending the printing of these “Elements.” Before forwarding the last chapters to the printers he sent the whole book for the inspection of the Chancellor of France, full of hope. “The most imbecile fanatic, the most envenomed hypocrite can find nothing in it to object to,” he wrote in his vigorous fashion. Six months passed, and no answer. And then the French authorities sent a refusal. “It is dangerous to be right in things in which those in power are wrong,” wrote Voltaire. Very dangerous. And how unmannerly of this presumptuous Voltaire to dare to treat the beloved Descartes with cool logic and relentless scrutiny just as if he were not sealed, signed, and stamped by the infallible decree of fashion!
But, though it was not permitted, as Voltaire said, to a poor Frenchman to say that attraction is possible and proved, and vacuum demonstrated, yet, as usual, the pirate publishers would by no means miss their chance.
The printers of Amsterdam produced an edition of the work which they called the “Elements of Newton’s Philosophy Adapted to Every Capacity” (Mis à la Portée de Tout le Monde). Of course there was not wanting to Voltaire an enemy to say the title should have been writtenMis à la Porte de Tout le Monde—shown the door by everybody. The author raged and fumed not a little over the printers’ blunders and incorrectness.
The usual host of calumnies attacked him again. Society and the gutter press united in feeling that a person who dared to doubt their darling Cartesian systemmustbe of shameful birth and the most abandoned morals. They insulted him with all “the intrepidity of ignorance.” He was accused of intrigues with persons he had never seen or who had never existed. The vile licence of that strictly licensed press is the finest argument for a free press to be found: the freest is less scurrilous than those much watched and prohibited journals of old France.
Not the less, the storm which heralded its birth thundered the “Elements of Newton’s Philosophy” into fame. It is forbidden: so wemustread it! If Fontenelle had made the system of Descartes intelligible, Voltaire made the system of Newton amusing. In 1741, he brought out an authorised edition. In ten years, as has been said, there were hardly so many Cartesians in France.
To this same year 1738 belongs a Prize Essay which Voltaire wrote for the Academy of Sciences on the “Nature and Propagation of Fire.” There were plenty of foundries near Cirey, where he could make practical observations on the subject. So he went and observed. Time? The man had on his hands, to be sure, a lawsuit, a tragedy, a history, an enormous correspondence, a “Pucelle,” a love affair, an estate, and a couple of chattering lady visitors who had to be amused in the evenings with music, with readings, and charades. He had nearly finished writing the essay when Madame du Châtelet, whose opinions differed from his and who always had the courage of them, must needs write, in secret, a rival essay on the same subject.
She began to work on it but a month before it had to be sent in. She could only write at night, since Voltaire did not know she was doing it. Her husband—strange confidant!—was the only person in the secret. For eight nights, she only slept one hour in each. Every now and then she thrust her hands into iced water to refresh herself, and paced her room rapidly. The idea possessed her. “I combated almost all Voltaire’s ideas,” she said herself.
He once very happily defined their connection as “an unalterable friendship and a taste for study.” Itwasfriendship and would have been happier for both if no softer feeling had entered it. They were friends who could intellectually differ and be friends still: who never sacrificed truth to sentiment, and whose bond of union was not a passion for each other, but for knowledge.
Both of them sent in their efforts. Madame’s was chiefly remarkable for the statement that different-coloured rays do not give an equal degree of heat: since proved indisputably correct by repeated experiments. Voltaire’s paper, as well as Émilie’s, contained many new ideas. That of itself was sufficient to disqualify their efforts for the prize. It did do so. It was divided between three other competitors, who were correctly orthodox and anti-Newtonian.
Then Madame told her secret, and Voltaire wrote a favourable anonymous review of that essay which contradicted his own, and should have made Madame du Châtelet famous in a better way than as his mistress.
Both of them were as disappointed as two children might have been at their failure. “Our Essays reallywerethe best!” they wrote and told Maupertuis, almost in so many words. They were, although neither of them is now worth much as science. Some of their theories have been superseded; or proved absolutely wrong. But they were wise for their age, and brilliantly expressed. That may be said, but not much more than that, for all Voltaire’s scientific works. They were the alphabet of the language—to teach a scientific childhood to think for itself. It is because they accomplished that aim to the full that they are forgotten to-day.
OnDecember 4, 1738, there arrived at Cirey, having been almost upset out of her post-chaise, and actually compelled to wade through the midwinter mud of the worst roads in France, a visitor, Madame de Graffigny.
Fat and forty was Madame: a vulgar, cheerful, gossiping old nurse, already an ardent hero-worshipper of Voltaire, whom she had met at Lunéville, and with something of literary taste on her own account. The Graffigny had, in fact, caught that eighteenth-century epidemic which showed itself in easy wit, easy writing, and easy morals. She had a brute of a husband from whom she had just obtained a divorce. She had no money. She had any number of friends. Voltaire seems to have liked her because she was poor, good-natured, and adored him. He came to meet his guest in her room when she arrived at two o’clock on that December morning, with a flat candlestick in his hand, and looking for all the world, said the effusive lady, like a monk. Émilie was there, too. Her greetings were only a shade less warm than her lover’s. Madame de Graffigny was left alone: so that she could then and there sit down to her writing-table and for the benefit of a dear confidant, called Panpan, ring up the curtain on one of the most intimate and minute of domestic comedies ever given to the public.
Some years later Madame de Graffigny obtained some contemporary celebrity by her “Letters of a Peruvian.” They are altogether forgotten. But her “Vie Privée de Voltaire et de Madame du Châtelet” will live as long as the fame of that strange pair and the popularity of gossiping memoirs.
Since their arrival there in 1734, both Voltaire and Émilie had been busy in improving, not only the outside, but the inside of their thirteenth-century château. Voltaire had a little wing to himself which, by the irony of fate or choice, adjoined the chapel. He could open his bedroom door and sacrifice to theconvenancesby seeing mass performed, while he went on with his own occupations. Sometimes the visitors fulfilled their religious duties in this way too. They were all very particular not to miss the attendance on Sundays andfêtedays. Their religion was a concession to social laws, like powdering the hair. When Voltaire was ill in bed, which was pretty often, he had his door opened so that he could hear the penitential litanies being recited, and had a screen drawn round him to exclude draughts. His rooms were very simply furnished, for use not show, spotlessly clean, so that you could kiss the floor, said Madame de Graffigny, in the enthusiastic hyperbole of her early letters. There was very little tapestry and a good deal of panelling which formed an admirable background to a few good pictures. There was a small hall, where their guests took their morning coffee sometimes, where a stove made the air like spring, and where there were books and scientific apparatus, a single sofa, and no luxurious armchairs at all. The dark room—still unfinished—led out of the hall, and there was a door into the garden.
The Goddess’s apartments were far more gorgeous. The lady visitor went into ecstasies over that bedroom and boudoir upholstered in pale blue and yellow—even to the basket for the dog—the pictures by Watteau and the fireplace by Martin, the window looking on the terrace, and the amber writing-case, a present from the politic Prince Frederick.
The rest of the castle was ill-cared for enough, she said. The thirty-six fires which blazed in it daily could not keep it warm. In her own room, in spite of a fire “like the fire of Troy,” she sat and shivered. On Christmas Eve the draught from the windows blew out the candles—although the visitor had solemnly vowed those draughts should be stopped with canvas bags, “if God gives me life.” It may not unfairly be surmised that most of the guests suffered as she did. Voltaire was avery good host—hospitable, kind, warm-hearted, very anxious they should not be bored, and indefatigable in amusing them with entertainments in the evenings and talking to them at meals. But their comfort in their rooms was naturally not his province. He did not think of it, and Émilie did not care. She did not object to visitors so long as they left her plenty of time and solitude to work: and then was ready enough to be charming in the evenings. Experimental science and good housekeeping are not necessarily incompatible: but each must have its own hours. Science had all Madame du Châtelet’s. She seems to have been the sort of mistress who provided a liberal table for her friends because it is much less trouble to be liberal than economical, and had occasional fits of frugality which took the form of feeding her servants very meanly. She was sublimely inconsiderate towards them, as she was, in a lesser degree, inconsiderate towards her own friends. She was of her age! Thenoblesseof that time treated their dependents exactly as if they were animals, and animals who were at once dumb, deaf, blind, and stupid. Behind their masters’ chairs, the valets listened to theories on which the masters talked and the servants acted. Longchamp, who was later half secretary, half valet to Voltaire, and before that in Madame du Châtelet’s service, has left on record how he assisted at her toilet as if he had been her maid. For her, he was not a human creature but a thing—not a man, but a machine.
When Madame de Graffigny arrived she found two fellow-visitors also at Cirey—Madame de Champbonin, Voltaire’s near neighbour and distant relative, and her son. Madame de Champbonin was variously and elegantly known as the “fat lady” or the “great tomcat.” Voltaire made her in some sort a confidante. Perhaps the stout placidity of her disposition was restful after the tumultuous emotions of the “effervescent Émilie.” The son was employed as Émilie’s amanuensis, and copied for hours and hours manuscripts of which he did not understand a single word. The two lady visitors seem to have walked about the castle a good deal and admired its beauties, sympathised with each other concerningthe draughts and the hostess’s sublime indifference to such trifles, and hugged themselves with delight at the thought that half France was dying to be in their position as guests at Cirey. To be sure, there were drawbacks even in this earthly Paradise: but half France did not know that, and the daily journal addressed to Panpan was still rapturous.
Presently the Abbé de Breteuil, Madame du Châtelet’s brother, also came to stay. He wasgrand vicaireat Sens. He was in every sense a typical abbé of the period—not much pretending to believe in the religion he professed—with a pronounced taste for broad stories—and “assez bon conteur” himself. The connection between his sister and Voltaire seemed to him only a thing to be proud of. He had countenanced it by his presence here before. The Marquis countenanced it too. Why should anyone else be particular? The abbé had come to enjoy himself, and he did.
While he was there the day began with coffee in Voltaire’s hall between 10.30 and 11.30. Even Madame du Châtelet seems to have roused herself dimly to the sense that she had visitors and that something might be expected of her in the way of entertaining them. Both she and Voltaire tore themselves away a little oftener and for a little longer time from their beloved Newton, during Breteuil’s visit. Everybody stayed with them in the hall till noon, when the Marquis and the two Champbonins went off to theirdéjeuner. The Marquis was always threatening to go to Brussels to see about an endless lawsuit he was concerned in there, and putting off his departure; which was a pity, as no one wanted him. After coffee, Voltaire, the abbé, Émilie, and Madame de Graffigny talked on all things in heaven and on earth for a while, and then separated.
The Marquise drove her great horses in hercalèchesometimes in the morning. Once she would have insisted on nervous Madame de Graffigny going with her, but Voltaire interfered and said people must be happy in their own way. So Émilie, who had herself no time for nerves, went out alone.
Sometimes the party met again forgoûterat four—sometimes not till the nine o’clock supper. That was the appointedhour for relaxation. Who would not have been of those evenings? Voltaire was inimitably gay, brilliant, and amusing. Madame de Graffigny had him on one side of her, and that pitiless bore, the unfortunate Marquis, on the other.Hesaid nothing, fell asleep, and “went out with the tray.”
The supper was elegant and sufficient, without being profuse. Voltaire had his valet always behind his chair to look after him, besides two other lackeys also in attendance. Émilie was geometrical no more. She was a woman of the world, trained in the first Court in Europe, witty, easy, charming, delightful. The stories had been broad at previous suppers; but they were broader than ever now, for the especial benefit of Breteuil. He told some of the same kind himself which entertained everybody immensely and which Madame de Graffigny, who had laughed at them fit “to split her spleen,” retailed for Panpan’s benefit the next day. The company drank Rhine wine or champagne which loosened their tongues and brightened their wits, though they were a temperate little gathering, by nature as well as from prudence. Voltaire improvised verses over the dessert, or read something aloud, or quoted from memory. The bare mention of J. B. Rousseau or Jore or any other enemy drew from him a quick torrent of vivacious indignation. One night, after dessert and the perfume handed after the dessert, there was a magic-lantern. Voltaire showed it with “proposto make you die of laughing,” said Madame de Graffigny. Another night there were charades. A third, there was a reading of the “Mondain.” A fourth, the entire party migrated to the bathroom—an exquisite room with porcelain tiles, marble pavement, pictures, engravings, andbric-à-brac—where Voltaire read aloud a canto of the “Pucelle.” Panpan’s correspondent avowedly enjoyedthatimmensely. So did everyone else. To hear something really shocking and dangerous read aloud in a bathroom with closed doors—howpiquant! Madame de Graffigny gave Panpan epitomes of the cantos she heard, and lived to wish she had not. After the cantos they amused themselves by making punch.
Another evening they rehearsed “The Prodigal Son” and a farce Voltaire had written, “Boursouffle.” Private theatricalswere one of the Cirey manias. The little theatre was reopened for Breteuil’s benefit. Pauline du Châtelet of twelve was interrupted in her education at Joinville to play the part of “Marthe,” which she learnt in the post-chaise coming home. One night they danced in the theatre. Another, Voltaire read one of the “Discourses on Man.” Yet another they discussed Newtonianism. Once, Voltaire showed them the scientific apparatus—which still stood in the hall awaiting the completion of the dark room—and they looked at globes and through telescopes. Twice he read his new play “Mérope” to them, and on the second occasion the effusive Graffigny “wept to sobs.” She had also told them her own melancholy family history, when it had been Voltaire’s turn to weep, and Madame du Châtelet was unable to pursue her geometrical studies for the evening.
Breteuil did not stay more than a week or so in all. The fun had been fast and furious while it lasted. It may be surmised that Voltaire and Émilie were not sorry to relax their efforts to keep the social ball rolling. They plunged deeper than ever into hard work. Madame worked all day as well as all night—and never left her room except for the morning coffee and the evening supper. Voltaire often could not tear himself from his desk until that supper was half over, and directly it was finished could hardly be prevented from returning to his writing. He did his best—he had the true Frenchpolitesseall his life long—to talk and tell stories and amuse his guests; but his thoughts were far away. He was shut up in his own room the whole day too, now, except for a few minutes when he called on his two lady guests. He would not even sit down. “The time people waste in talking is frightful,” he said on one of these brief visits. “One should not lose a minute. The greatest waste possible is waste of time.” Madame de Graffigny was thrown on the stout lady for all companionship, and was in the melancholy position of the person who has to pretend she likes quiet, solitude, and reflection, and does not. After a very little while her graphic and garrulous pen goes much less easily and gaily over the paper.
Voltaire and Madame du Châtelet had troubles of which their guest did not know the cause, but of which she felt the effect. The Christmas Day of 1738 was one of the darkest of both their lives. To be unhappy is seldom to be very amiable. This Graffigny too was, on her own showing, something of a fool. Voltaire and Madame lived in a Paradise about which a serpent, called the French authorities, was for ever lurking, ready to spoil. Voltaire was always writing something he should not have written. And Madame de Graffigny was always writing those voluminous, gushing, confidential, imprudent epistles to Panpan. Whatdidshe say in them? On December 29, 1738, a tempest which had long been gathering in petty mistrusts, small jealousies, opened or kept back letters, suspicions, fears, hatreds—burst in a clap of thunder. There was a constrained and silent supper. Then Voltaire came to Madame de Graffigny’s rooms and accused her of having betrayed his trust and endangered his safety by having copied cantos of the “Pucelle” and sent them to Panpan. She denied the accusationin toto. Voltaire, beside himself with fury, made her sit down and write and ask Panpan and Desmarets, her lover, both for the original canto she had sent and the copies which had been made of it. The unfortunate lady entirely lost her head. Then enter Madame du Châtelet in a rage royal, besides which Voltaire’s was calmness, temperance, and reason. She produced a certain letter from her pocket as a proof of infamy and flung it, very nearly literally, in her guest’s face. She accused her of having stolen a canto of the “Pucelle” from her desk. She reminded her that she had never liked her, and had only invited her to Cirey because she had nowhere else to go. The Graffigny was a monster, the mostindigneof creatures—all the opprobrious things in the du Châtelet dictionary, which was a very full one. Voltaire put his arm round his furious mistress and dragged her away at last. The quarrel was so loud that the Graffigny’s maid, two rooms off, heard every word of it. Madame de Champbonin came in, in the middle, but very prudently retired at once. When Madame de Graffigny was calm enough to read the letter which Emilie had flung at her,she discovered it was one of Panpan’s which Emilie had intercepted and read and wherein was the remark “The canto of ‘Jeanne’ is charming.” Madame de Graffigny was able to explain to Voltaire in a very few words that this sentence referred to her description of the pleasure one of those readings of the “Pucelle” had given to herself, and that there had been no question of stealing, copying, and sending a canto to anybody in the world.
Cannot one fancy how that little, sensitive,vif, angry Voltaire was on his knees to his offended guest at once, begging her a thousand pardons, kissing her hands, apologising, furious with Émilie and ashamed of himself? It was already five o’clock in the morning. But Émilie was recalled not the less (Megæra, poor Graffigny named her now). Voltaire argued long with her, in English, to bring her to reason, and was so far successful that the next day she coldly apologised to her guest. She was too much in the wrong to forgive easily or thoroughly. As for Voltaire,heasked pardon again and again with tears in his eyes. He could not do too much to make up for his suspicions and mistake. Émilie was diabolically cold and haughty. The unfortunate visitor was “in hell,” she said. But she had no money and nowhere to go to. There were silent uncomfortable suppers. Voltaire’s “pathetic” excuses and nervous anxiety for her comfort and well-being, when he came to see her in her rooms, did not make her position much easier.
After waiting three weeks Madame de Graffigny obtained confirmation of her story from Desmarets and Panpan.
Émilie at last relented so far as to give her guest the very doubtful pleasure of driving her out in thatcalècheof hers, and talking to her more freely and amicably. But though such wounds as Madame de Graffigny had received may heal, the scars remain for ever.
On January 12, 1739, the mathematical Maupertuis, Madame du Châtelet’s tutor, came to stay a few days. The unlucky Graffigny suffered a good deal from her eyes about this time, and stayed much in her room. Voltaire himself was in wretched health; so there was no play-acting. Madamede Champbonin left for Paris on a mission of whose nature the Graffigny was ignorant. On January 18th the Marquis du Châtelet went to Seineville bearing with him many letters and messages for dear Panpan. Early in the next month, Desmarets, the lover of Madame de Graffigny, came to stay and Cirey roused itself to another burst of gaiety. It acted “Zaire” and “The Prodigal Son” and a play called “The Spirit of Contradiction.” One rehearsal lasted till three o’clock in the morning. Once the party spent the whole day in Émilie’s room where she was “in bed without being ill.” The next, she was singing to the clavecin, accompanying herself. Another, she sang through a whole opera after supper. She and Desmarets went out riding. In one twenty-four hours the company had rehearsed and played thirty-three acts of tragedies, operas, and comedies. Desmarets read Panpan’s letters to the Graffigny while she was at her toilette, as she had no time herself. Desmarets was “transported, intoxicated”—enjoying himself immensely.
His mistress may be presumed to have been more unhappy than ever, since the first thing he had done on his arrival at Cirey was to tell her he no longer felt for her the feelings of a lover. He went away.
About the middle of February, 1739, Madame de Graffigny herself left Cirey, having been there less than three months—not six, as the title-page of her book declares. For the rest of her life Voltaire was one of the most staunch and generous friends she had in the world.
Nothing in Madame de Graffigny’s “Vie Privée de Voltaire et de Madame du Châtelet” is so interesting as the light she throws on their relationship to each other. The golden chains had begun to eat into the flesh. Voltaire and Madame du Châtelet, like lesser persons, had to pay the inexorable penalty of a breach of moral law. “Wrong committed—suffering insured.” Their punishment was the severest of all—it came, not from outward circumstances, but from themselves. The very relationship which had been a sin and a delight, was now at once sin and torment. The gods are just.
The visitor was not long in discovering clouds in the blueheavens of Voltaire’s “Cirey-en-félicité.” There was the “eternal cackle” of Émilie’s tongue, and her sublime indifference to trifles like the hours of meals. Did not she love power too? Not only to have power but, womanlike, to show she had it. One day her lover’s coat does not please her. He shall change it! He agrees—for peace, one may suppose, since the coat is good enough and he does not wish to catch cold by putting on another—and his valet is sent for; but cannot be found. Let the matter rest! Not Madame. She persists. They quarrel with a great deal of vivacity, in English. They always quarrel in English. Voltaire goes out of the room in a rage, and sends word to say he has the colic. They are very like two children. Presently they are reconciled—also in English and tenderly. “Mais elle lui rend la vie un peu dure.”
Another time the quarrel is about a glass of Rhine wine. Rhine wine disagrees with this imprudent Voltaire! The imprudent Voltaire, is, not to put too fine a point upon it, very much out of temper with Émilie’s interference in the matter. And it takes the united and warmest persuasions of Breteuil and Graffigny to make him read “Jeanne” after supper as he has promised.
At one of the readings of “Mérope,” Madame du Châtelet, with her abominably clever tongue, turns it into ridicule and laughs at it. She knows her vain and sensitive Voltaire’s tender places, it seems, and for the life of her cannot help putting her finger on them just to see if he will wince. He always winces. He will not speak all supper time. After supper it is the nymph’s turn to be cross, and Voltaire shows the visitors his globes while she sits sulking in a chair, pretending to be asleep.
What an old, old story it is! What a weary, dull, aggravating old story! and what a happy world it might be still if all the miseries men carefully manufacture for themselves were taken out of it!
Yet another day, and there is a very bitter quarrel about some verses. Émilie says she has written them. Voltaire does not believe it. They both lose their tempers, and it is even said Voltaire takes a knife from the table and threatensher with it, crying, “Do not look at me with your squinting, haggard eyes!” Perhaps the story is exaggerated. It is to be hoped so. Madame de Graffigny speaks too of Voltaire’s wretched health; of his system of doctoring and starving himself; of his disposition at once kind, nervous, and petulant. He told her one day, she says, that Émilie was a terrible woman who had no “flexibilité dans le cœur” although that heart was good. The Graffigny adds on her own account that it was not possible to be more “spied” than Voltaire was, or to have less liberty. It must indeed be remembered that the Graffigny was speaking of a woman of whose superior powers she was always jealous, and whom she had learnt to hate. Émilie had at least one great good quality: she never abused other women behind their backs.
It has been said that lovers’ quarrels are but the renewal of love. There was never a falser word. Every quarrel is a blot on a fair page; forgiveness may erase it, but, at the best, the mark of the erasure is there for ever and the page wears thin. Perhaps Voltaire and Madame du Châtelet acted on the dangerous assumption that, since they could be reconciled to-morrow, it was no matter if they quarrelled to-day. Their attachment had now lasted not quite five years. It lingered nearly another ten. Every day Émilie drew the cords by which her lover was bound to her tighter—and a little tighter still; until that dramatic moment when she cut them for ever. As for Voltaire, he still warmly admired her genius; wrote her verses; forgave her temper, and held himself unalterably hers.
The life at Cirey—already the subject of a burlesque in Paris—was not what he had dreamed it might be. He was himself hasty, capricious, not easy to live with. But he was also most generous, most affectionate, and most forgiving. And faithful to the end.
In1724, when Voltaire was thirty years old and in Paris, Theriot had introduced to him Desfontaines, then a journalist, and an ex-abbé. Their acquaintance was of the slightest. It had lasted only a few weeks when Desfontaines was accused of an abominable crime (then punished by burning), arrested, and cast into the Bicêtre. The impulsive Voltaire must needs get up off a sick bed, travel to Fontainebleau, and throw himself at the feet of the influential Madame de Prie and obtain Desfontaines’s discharge—on the sole condition that he should not live in Paris. Not content with this good office, he obtained from his friend Madame de Bernières the permission for Desfontaines to reside on her estates. Finally, he procured the revocation of the edict of banishment. Desfontaines could live in Paris and pursue his calling as before. All this for a man he hardly knew, who was an ex-priest, and a very bad writer, if not a very bad man. It was generous, unnecessary and imprudent. In brief, it was Voltaire.
He might have expected gratitude. He did expect it. Desfontaines wrote him a letter of warm thanks. Eleven years later he was scoffing in a weekly Parisian paper at Newtonianism, as revealed to the French in Voltaire’s “English Letters.” Then he must translate the “Essay on Epic Poetry,” which Voltaire had written in English, into French, very badly, so that the tireless author felt the necessity of re-translating it himself. Then, forsooth, M. l’Abbé must damn with faint praise “Charles XII.” and the “Henriade.” Even a sensitive Voltaire could only laugh at bites from such a miserable gnat. “I am sorry I saved him,” he wrote lightlyin 1735. “It is better to burn a priest than to bore the public. If I had left him to roast I should have spared the world many imbecilities.” But even a gnat may hurt if it sting often and long enough. The early bliss of Cirey was disturbed by that petty malice. Now in one way, now in another, Desfontaines showed the truth of the shrewd saying that the offender never pardons. The gnat bites grew feverish and swollen. Voltaire had reason to believe, though he still found it hard to believe, that Desfontaines was in league with those other enemies of his, Jore and J. B. Rousseau. Was it possible? Could there be such ingratitude in the vilest thing that lived? It is to the credit of Voltaire’s character, that he gave his abbé the benefit of the doubt till there was doubt no longer. It was in 1736 he wrote that memorable “I hear that Desfontaines is unhappy, and from that moment I forgive him.” And the Thing stung again in a criticism on Voltaire’s “Elements of Newton”—meant to be offensive. He was again forgiven. Then he stung once more, and turned his benefactor into the liveliest, keenest, deadliest foe that ever man had.
When Algarotti was at Cirey in the November of 1735, Voltaire had addressed to him a few gay and graceful lines, meant only for his own eye, and in which the real nature of the relationship between the poet and Madame du Châtelet was plainly acknowledged. The verses fell into the hands of Desfontaines. He wrote to ask permission to publish them in his journal. Publish them! If all the world knew that Voltaire was Émilie’s lover, all the world had at least the decency of feeling to pretend that it knew nothing of the kind. Publish them! Voltaire, Émilie—nay, the dullbonhommehimself—protested passionately. Publish them! Not for a kingdom! But they were published. And Voltaire woke to revenge.
He would have been a worse man than he was if every bitter feeling in his soul had not been stirred now. He was always acutely sensitive to any slight put on his mistress’s name, honour, intellect—on anything that belonged to her. If he was a good fighter when he was roused on his own account,he was a ten times better fighter when he was roused on hers. He was roused now. And he wrote the “Préservatif.”
It begins by a collection of all the slips, mistakes, misstatements, printers’ errors and illiteracies which he was able to find in two hundred numbers of Desfontaines’s weekly paper which was called “Observations on New Books.” They were grouped together with all a Voltaire’s ability—never a point missed, and so arranged as to make M. l’Abbé supremely ridiculous. The “Préservatif” purported to be by a Chevalier de Mouhy, a real person. At the end, the Chevalier presents to the public a letter he has received from M. de Voltaire giving the whole history of the Desfontaines affair in 1724—only not mentioning the nature of the crime of which the abbé had been accused.
The “Préservatif” ran through Paris at the end of 1738 as such a pamphlet would. With it, there ran a deadly epigram, and then a caricature, with another epigram beneath. Neither epigrams nor caricature would be tolerated by a decent age. They were all from the pen of M. de Voltaire. They told the nature of the abbe’s crime. They were a shameful weapon, shamefully used: and most deadly. Voltaire gave Madame de Graffigny the “Préservatif” to read. To mention the name of Desfontaines to him had soon the same effect as a red flag on a bull. He was beside himself when he thought of the man’s base treachery and ingratitude. He was beside himself when he wrote the epigrams and drew the caricature. It is their only excuse. They need one.
He also wrote against Desfontaines, anonymously, a little comedy called “L’Envieux”: but it was never played.
On that Christmas Day of 1738, Madame du Châtelet received a document by the post. She read it alone and said nothing about it to Voltaire. Whatever else she was, she was a woman of very strong sense and very just judgment. The document she had received was the “Voltairomanie” by Desfontaines—the retort to the “Préservatif”—the blasphemous shriek of a lunatic—“the howl of a mad dog.” She herself wrote a reply to it—still preserved. Voltaire must not see it! His health was wretched as ever. He had just had anaccess of fever. He was acutely sensitive. She did right to hide it from him. He was not less considerate. He had also received a copy of that “gross libel” and was hiding it fromher. There must have been something good in the feeling these two people had for each other—in spite of quarrels and bickerings and the testimony of all the old women visitors in the world—they were so anxious to save each other pain. They discovered their mutual deception on New Year’s Day, 1739, and were the easier for being able to talk over the affair together.
The “Voltairomanie” is too savage to be sane. It brought that old accusation against Voltaire—a lack of personal courage. It recalled the affair of the Bridge of Sèvres and the affair of Rohan in terms which practice had made perfect in falsehood and offensiveness. It declared Voltaire liar as well as coward. In the “Préservatif” he had said that Theriot had shown him a libel Desfontaines had written against his benefactor, while Desfontaines was staying with the Bernières at Rivière Bourdet and only just released, by that benefactor’s efforts, from Bicêtre. “And behold!” says Desfontaines in the “Voltairomanie,” “M. Theriot has been obliged to deny all knowledge of the affair.”
Cirey at first was pretty calm, even under the matchless audacity of this last statement. Theriot had been staying at Cirey last October and had told with his own lips that very story just as Voltaire had told it in the “Préservatif.” Voltaire did not take the matter so much to heart as Madame du Châtelet had feared. He decided at once to treat Desfontaines’s attack as a criminal libel, and to take legal proceedings against him. He had witnesses as to the truth ofhisstory. Madame de Bernières herself was one of them and prepared to write the most violent letters on behalf of a friend. And Theriot—Theriot whom Voltaire had made, loved, and trusted—why, Theriot had nothing to do but tell his tale as he had told it in letters to Voltaire and over the Cirey supper-table last autumn.
And Theriot never uttered a word. How hardly and slowly the conviction of his treachery took possession of Voltaire’s mind, there is evidence in his letters to show. Theriot false! Theriot time-server, coward, frightened of the sting of a Desfontaines—impossible! The softest spot in Voltaire’s heart was for this easy-going ne’er-do-weel who had been the friend of his youth—confidant and intimate for five-and-twenty years. Another man convinced of such a baseness as that, would have shaken the creature off—flung himself free of the traitor who had eaten his bread, accepted his money, lived on his fame, fattened on his benefits—and denied him.
And Voltaire wrote pleading, persuading, imploring: counselling repentance, eager to forgive: as a woman might have written to a scapegrace son whose sin she knows, whose reformation she hopes, and whom she must needs love for ever.
“Will you not have the courage to avow publicly what you have written to me so many times?... My honour, your honour, the public interest demand ... that you should own that this miserable Desfontainesdidwrite an abominable libel called the “Apology of Sieur Voltaire” and had it printed at Rouen, and that you showed it me at Rivière Bourdet.”
“I am your friend of twenty years.... Will it be to your honour to have renounced me and the truth for a Desfontaines?”
“Once again, do not listen to anyone who will counsel you to drink your champagne gaily and forget all else. Drink, but fulfil the sacred duties of friendship.”
“Make reparation, there is still time.”
“Everybody helps me but you. Everyone has done his duty, save you only.” And at last, “All is forgotten, if you know how to love.”
There are many such letters of the early days of this year 1739—generous and pathetic enough. It was certainly Voltaire’s interest to make Theriot speak the truth. But it may be believed that it was Voltaire’s heart that was hurt by his silence. Émilie wrote to the false friend, imploring: so did the easy-going Marquis, and the fat lady wateredherletter with her tears. The affair would not have been Voltaire’s if he had left a single stone unturned. Madame du Châtelet wrote for him to obtain the influence of his prince—Frederick ofPrussia. And all the wretched Theriot would say was, that if the episode had occurred, he had forgotten all about it. Madame de Graffigny recorded how, when she was at Cirey in that February of 1739, Voltaire received letters which threw him into a sort of convulsions, and Émilie came into her guest’s room (“with tears in her eyes as big as her fist”) to say the comedy they were to have played must be put off. The Graffigny was too graphic a writer to be literally accurate. But there is no wonder if Voltaire and Madame were greatly agitated and harassed as to what course to pursue next. The mission which took Madame de Champbonin, who must certainly have been one of the most good-natured women who ever breathed, to Paris in January, 1739, was to try the weight ofhermoral influence on Theriot. And at last the wretched creature, buffeted on all sides by letters at once heart-breaking, entreating, and indignant,didso far repent of his treachery as to eat his words and consent to appear in some sort as the accuser of Desfontaines.
And now Voltaire, having won his Theriot, must move heaven and earth that in all points his libel suit may be carried to a successful issue. It was the custom of that day for as many of the complainant’s friends as possible to appear before the magistrate when the suit was brought—just to see how they could influence impartial justice. “Nothing produces so great an effect on a judge’s mind,” the plaintiff in the present case wrote off plainly to Moussinot, “as the attendance of a large number of relatives.... Justice is like the kingdom of Heaven. The violent take it by force.” Voltaire had, then, not a friendly acquaintance in Paris who was not to be roused to help him. It was judged best that he himself should remain at Cirey. So Moussinot became his agent, and a very active agent he had to be. He was to hire carriages for the friends. He was to pay their expenses. All other business was to go to the winds. He was to search out nephew Mignot—Madame Denis’s brother—so that he might be useful in stirring uphisrelatives. He was conjured to pursue the affair “avec la dernière vivacité.” “Noifs, nobuts: nothing is difficult to friendship,” the energetic Voltaire wrote cheerfully. The Marquis du Châtelet was sent up to Paris to see whathecould do. Voltaire’s old school friends, the d’Argensons and d’Argental, were not a little active. Prince Frederick wrote influential letters to his Court at home. Paris was in a ferment. Europe itself was interested. It was acause célèbreof quite extraordinary vivacity. Through January, February, and March of 1739, Voltaire himself was working feverishly at Cirey. He rained letters on his friends. He wrote anonymous ones on Desfontaines to be circulated in Paris, not at all decent and very much to the taste of the age. He was certainly a matchless foe. He thought of everything. The resources of his mind were as wonderful as its energy. He had the gift of making other people very nearly as enthusiastic as he was himself. To read his letters of this time, in cold blood one hundred and sixty years after, stirs the pulses still. The most apathetic reader himself feels for the moment Voltaire’s dancing impatience for revenge, his hot anxiety for fear miserable Theriot should be false at the last after all, his throbbing, vivid determination that heshallbe true.
The vigour of the man seems to have worn out at last even the malice of his enemies. Desfontaines was told that he must disavow his “Voltairomanie”—or go to prison. So the honourable magistrate drew out a formula in which the honourable Desfontaines repudiated with horror, and in sufficiently servile terms, all idea of his being the author of that blasphemy and expressed “sentiments of esteem” for M. de Voltaire! The whole case may be said to have rained lies. Everybody lied. Desfontaines’s final lie was “done in Paris, this 4th of April, 1739.” Moussinot was commissioned to give Madame de Champbonin two hundred francs—which, to be sure, she deserved—and one hundred to the needy and complaisant Mouhy, who had been dubbed the author of the “Préservatif,” “telling him you have no more.”
The buffeting of that storm left Voltaire panting, feeble, and exhausted. “There are some men by whom it is glorious to be hated,” was an axiom of his own. Desfontaines was certainly one of them. But Desfontaines’s hatred had power to the end of his life to rouse him to a frenzy of indignation. “Takehonour from me and my life is done,” had not, alas! been the spirit of either defendant or plaintiff in this case. But it had one good thing about it, though only one,—Voltaire’s dealing with Theriot. Theriot was forgiven as if Voltaire had been the Christian he was not.
On May 8, 1739, the two du Châtelets, Koenig (Madame’s mathematical professor—a very good mathematician and a very dull man), M. de Voltaire and suite left Cirey for Brussels. Voltaire had been at Cirey nearly five years. He had learnt to love its solitude, its calm, its facilities for hard work. He had learnt to dread towns if he had not learnt to love Nature. But Émilie wanted a change, so was quite sure that a journey and a different air were the very things for her lover’s deplorable health. The process of reasoning is not unusual. Was there not too a certain du Châtelet lawsuit, of which they were always talking, which was already eighty years old and could only be settled in Brussels? So to Brussels they went.
Voltaire had to be dragged away from a tragedy, from “Louis XIV.,” from elaborate corrections which he was making to the “Henriade,” and from the study of Demosthenes and Euclid. Madame had an iron constitution herself, and could be at a dance all night and up at six the next morning studying mathematics—for fear Koenig should find her a dunce.En routefor Brussels, they stopped at Valenciennes, where they were entertained with a ball, a ballet, and a comedy. They had no sooner reached their quiet house in the Rue de la Grosse Tour, Brussels, than they left it to visit some du Châtelet relations, at Beringen, ten miles distant, and at Hain. They were back in Brussels by June 17th. The city put herselfen fêtefor them. J. B. Rousseau, who lived there, was “no more spoken of than if he were dead.” Anyone with a human nature must have been pleased atthat. Voltaire exerted himself and had a beautiful garden-party with fireworks one of those fine days to the Duc d’Aremberg and all the other polite society in Brussels. Of course he must needs superintend the firework preparations himself. Two of his unfortunate workmen fell from the scaffolding on to him,killing themselves, and nearly killing him. The event affected him not a little.
Then the Duc d’Aremberg invited his entertainers to stay with him at Enghien. The gardens were so exquisite that they almost reconciled even a Voltaire and a Marquise du Châtelet to a house where there was not a single book except those they had brought themselves. They playedbrelan: they played comedy: and the author of the “Century of Louis XIV.” listened to the Duke’s anecdotes of the days when he had served under Prince Eugene. They were back in Brussels by July 18th. Useful Moussinot was there too. On September 4, 1739, and after an absence from it of more than three years, Voltaire found himself again in Paris.
If he had not wished to move to Brussels, he had much less wished to move to Paris. But “the divine Émilie found it necessary for her to start for Paris,et me voilà.” That was the situation. They were both immediately engulfed in a social whirlpool—suppers, operas and theatres, endless visitors and calls—“not an instant to oneself, neither time to write, to think, or to sleep.” Voltaire wrote rather sorrowfully of the dreadful ennui of these perpetual amusements to placid old Champbonin, at Cirey. As for Madame du Châtelet—