Every grace and charm and art,Pompadour, in you is found.And it is alike your partTo be the treasure of one heartAnd a Court’s delight.So much blest, then, live for ayeLovely years with pleasure crown’d.The King brings peace with him. Oh mayYour foes be nothing: and alwayYou both your conquests keep!
Every grace and charm and art,Pompadour, in you is found.And it is alike your partTo be the treasure of one heartAnd a Court’s delight.So much blest, then, live for ayeLovely years with pleasure crown’d.The King brings peace with him. Oh mayYour foes be nothing: and alwayYou both your conquests keep!
Every grace and charm and art,Pompadour, in you is found.And it is alike your partTo be the treasure of one heartAnd a Court’s delight.
So much blest, then, live for ayeLovely years with pleasure crown’d.The King brings peace with him. Oh mayYour foes be nothing: and alwayYou both your conquests keep!
But, after all, though she was an astute, cool-blooded Pompadour, she was a woman too and loved a compliment; and that herentourageshould be aware she received such beautiful ones as that.
It soon reached the ears of poor Marie Leczinska, patient and dignified in the dreary and respectable seclusion of her apartments. The days were long gone when, a bride of one-and-twenty, she had called Voltaire “my poor Voltaire” and pensioned him from her own purse. The ugly daughters, Mesdames, too, had still some influence over their royal father, the King, and were not slow to use it.
Old Roy took occasion to sententiously point out in a dreary poem how abominable it was to allude to royal—mistakes: and how the loves of gods and kings were never meant for the comment of the vulgar. The unlucky Voltaire was further suspected at the moment of having been the author of some lines to the Dauphine, whose gay philosophy offended the King. He denied the authorship, of course,in toto. But that was very little use. It was whispered that Mesdames, the daughters, so worked upon Louis that he signed a decree of banishment for Voltaire, without even consulting Madame de Pompadour. That would seem to have been an addition to make a good story better. There was most likely no edict of banishment on paper. Voltaire himself denied that there was ever any idea of such a thing.But on January 13, 1748, coming gaily to Versailles and not in the least anticipating any evil effect from the charming audacity of his verses, he found the Court too hot to hold him. He dined in Paris that night at a coffee-house, with a few other literary men. He arrived rather late. He had come straight from Versailles, and alone of the company knew what had occurred there. He made his dinner, after his frugal fashion, off seven or eight cups of black coffee and a couple of rolls, and was very talkative and amusing. The conversation turned on the newly imposed tax on playing-cards, and on luxury. When the dinner was over other visitors at the coffee-house gathered round him and “plied him with questions.”
He was not exiled. But he had committed an offence which made it expedient to Go. He knew the Pompadour much too well to suppose she would put her position in jeopardy by trying to save a friend, even if he were a Voltaire. “Circumspection is all very well,” he had once written to d’Argenson, “but it is a melancholy thing in poetry: to be reasonable and cold is almost the same thing.” For his part, he would rather write even compliments and madrigals as he chose, and be banished for them, than remain at Court, tongue-tied and careful. If the Historiographership and the Academy and the solemn joy of signing oneself Gentleman-in-Ordinary to the King did not give one freedom, they were useless. Neither Voltaire nor Émilie had seen Cirey for many months. On the whole, it was best to go. They left Paris in the deep midwinter at nine o’clock on a January evening, 1748, with the snow thick on the ground and a temperature many degrees below freezing-point.
Oneof Madame du Châtelet’s idiosyncrasies was to travel only by night; and another, to overload the travelling carriage with luggage. She insisted on having her way in both particulars this time. It has been aptly said of Voltaire that he was at once patient and hasty. He certainly must have been patient to take the road with a woman whose packages frequently numbered a hundred and who could never travel without her lady’s maid. That he usually lost his temper on such journeys, is simply to say that he was human.
On the present occasion, as they were nearing Nangis, the hind spring of the carriage broke, and the overladen vehicle fell over on the side of Voltaire. Madame du Châtelet, large and bony, thefemme de chambre(whose weight and figure history does not record), and a vast quantity of bandboxes and parcels, came tumbling on the top of him. He relieved his feelings by uttering “piercing shrieks.” Two footmen, by getting on the roof of the overturned carriage and dragging their mistress, the lady’s maid, and the bandboxes up through the doors “as from a well,” at last released M. de Voltaire in the same manner. It was bitterly cold and a brilliant starlight night. The two footmen, aided by the postillions, tried to set the carriage straight again, and failed. One of the postillions rode on into the next village for further assistance. And Voltaire and Émilie sat by the roadside on the carriage cushions, and would have been “perfectly happy” shiveringly studying astronomy, if they had only had a telescope. Theywerephilosophers, after all.
The carriage was mended at last. But it had not gone fiftypaces before it broke down again. The workmen, who considered Madame had underpaid them, had to be brought back by force—and promises. At last the carriage was able to proceed at a walking pace the nine miles to the Château of Chapelle, where the travellers halted. They reached Cirey about the middle of January, 1748, without further adventure.
The month they spent there was a gay one. Neither was anxious for too manytête-à-têtes. The honeymoon had set for ever. When they were alone, each wrote all day; in the evenings they read aloud together or played trictrac. Émilie had an aggravating habit of keeping her Voltaire waiting till supper was cold while she finished “a little calculation.” That her Voltaire, himself orderly and punctual, was extremelyvifat the delay need not be doubted. Madame du Deffand had once said that he followed Émilie like a faithful dog with the collar round his neck. Well, the dog was faithful still. But the collar irked and worried him; and there were times when he snapped at the hand that had put it there.
Madame de Champbonin reappeared on the scene very soon, with a hoydenish twelve-year-old niece in her train. She had been very warmly invited—if only to finish that solitudeà deux. The whole neighbourhood received invitations presently to act in, or to witness, theatricals. Émilie wrote charades for the occasion. She played comic parts as well as any other. Sometimes the servants were pressed into the cast and acted too. Thebonhommewould seem to have been conveniently absent, as usual. Voltaire doubtless enjoyed the freedom of private life after the slavish etiquette of the Court. He was certainly able to enjoy theatricals to his last breath.
About the middle of February he and Madame went to visit another Court, at Lunéville, where the etiquette was not slavish at all, and where a king was a great deal more anxious to have them than ever dull Louis had been.
Stanislas, once King of Poland, had been not a little thankful to exchange that quarrelsome and much quarrelled over kingdom for the peaceful little duchy of Lorraine, the tranquil enjoyment of a pipe six feet long and thedolce far nienteof his lazy and easy-going mistress, Madame de Boufflers. He stillhad the title of King. He still had a position—he was the father of Marie Leczinska. His miniature Court had all the pleasures and intrigues of a greater, with no weary formalism. Stanislas had his Jesuit, Menou, to rule him just as other kings had their priests to rule them. The priest fought the mistress for the command of the royal puppet, in the approved, courtly fashion; and the mistress fought the priest, when she was not too lazy.
The little Court was further ornamented by a child dwarf, who could sleep in asabot, and a most beautiful young guardsman, six feet high.
Following the example of Frederick, Stanislas was a feeble author himself and a very enthusiastic admirer of the literary Voltaire. The literary Voltaire was not sorry to show the offended Court of France that he stood well with its offended Queen’s royal father. So the visitors and the visited were gratified alike.
The visit was a gay one. “Issé” was played; and “Mérope,” when everyone sobbed just as they had done in Paris. In the evenings they played lansquenet or talked. It was an agreeable, idle life. Voltaire, ailing as usual, was humoured and made much of by the King. Émilie overwhelmed the inert and voluptuous Madame de Boufflers with her energetic friendship. And then—
The Marquis de Saint-Lambert is one of the most picturesque figures of his century. Poet and soldier, handsome, haughty and cold, with just enough disdain in his perfect manner to make every woman adore him and long to thaw that flawless ice—he had almost every quality which makes riches superfluous. He was, in fact, nothing but the officer of a company of Lorraine guards. He was much in Lunéville because he had, said the world, a fancy for his King’s mistress, Madame de Boufflers. His own age accounted him celebrated because he wrote the loveliest drawing-room verses and was the author of a poem called “The Seasons”—much duller than Thomson’s. The present age only knows him as the man who robbed Rousseau of Madame d’Houdetot and Voltaire of Madame du Châtelet.
In 1738, when Madame de Graffigny, who was a friend of his, was at Cirey, she had corresponded with him. He had much wished to be asked to stay there. Since he knew how “to read and rest in his own room during the day” and would only expect to be amused in the evenings, Madame du Châtelet desired to have him for a visitor. But the plan, probably owing to the rupture with Madame de Graffigny, had never been carried out.
Madame du Châtelet was now two-and-forty years old, and, on the unanimous testimony of all her female friends, not at all beautiful. But that inflammable temperament, which years before had made her fling honour and prudence to the winds and give her heart and life to Voltaire, was hers still. Age had not quenched the fire. Abstruse thought and long devotion to the exact sciences had still left her, on one side of her nature, passionately a woman. Voltaire had passed quickly and easily from love to friendship—but not Émilie. Her jealousy of Frederick the Great was a proof that she loved her lover as he had long ceased to love her. As early as 1741, in Brussels, after his return from his second Prussian visit, she had bitterly reproached him with no longer caring for her. He had replied to her in verses of which the following give the keynote.
If you want me still to loveGive me back love’s golden morn;To the twilight of my daysJoin, forsooth, love’s happy dawn.Even the sunrise touches night.One hour is mine: and is no more.We pass: the race which follows us,Another follows: all is o’er.
If you want me still to loveGive me back love’s golden morn;To the twilight of my daysJoin, forsooth, love’s happy dawn.Even the sunrise touches night.One hour is mine: and is no more.We pass: the race which follows us,Another follows: all is o’er.
If you want me still to loveGive me back love’s golden morn;To the twilight of my daysJoin, forsooth, love’s happy dawn.
Even the sunrise touches night.One hour is mine: and is no more.We pass: the race which follows us,Another follows: all is o’er.
In the year after he first met her, on the occasion of Richelieu’s marriage to Mademoiselle de Guise, in April, 1734, he had written:
Love not too much: and so you mayLove alway.For were it not the better far to beFriends for eternityThan lovers for a day?
Love not too much: and so you mayLove alway.For were it not the better far to beFriends for eternityThan lovers for a day?
Love not too much: and so you mayLove alway.For were it not the better far to beFriends for eternityThan lovers for a day?
He had always been honest at least. If he had been still lover indeed, it might yet never have occurred to him that there could be cause for jealousy of Émilie of two-and-forty and a young guardsman of one-and-thirty.
When did that wild passion begin? Did it begin in those idle, early days of the Lunéville visit, gradually nourished by propinquity, that gay, easy life, those lovely society verses, and the tantalising fact that Saint-Lambert was a little bit in love with that stupid, lazy, self-indulgent de Boufflers? It would have been an irresistible temptation to Émilie’s cleverness and energy to win away such a man from such a woman.
But it seems more likely that she had no time for designs, that she fell head over ears in love madly, recklessly, and at once—with that utterabandon, all foolish and half pathetic, with which an old woman too often loves a young man. Was it the handsome face and cold manner and heart that attracted her? The whole eighteenth century found them attractive. Saint-Lambert had so much, too, of that particularly vague quality called taste! He liked being amused, though he found it too much trouble to be amusing himself. And here was one of the cleverest women of her day, or of any day, who could not be dull if she tried and wanted nothing better than to entertain him. She was an invigorating change from the sleepy de Boufflers, at any rate. He was not sorry, too, to obtain thecachetwhich would accrue to him for having robbed a Voltaire.
But whether the passion on both sides was born full-grown, dominant, and irresistible, or had slower roots in vanity and idleness, matters not. It was soon an accomplished fact. Madame du Châtelet wrote her Saint-Lambert the most mad, adoring letters on rose-coloured or sky-blue notepaper with an edge of lace. She put the letters in Madame de Boufflers’s harp in the salon. And when everyone had gone to bed, the young guardsman came and found them there. He replied of course. If he did not adore, he graciously submitted to be adored. “Come to me as soon as you are up,” wrote the deluded woman. And sometimes, secretly creeping round by the thickets of the garden,shewould visithim. She hardlythought her conduct required apology. She loved him. That was enough. Or if it did, well then, for years Voltaire had been but her friend when he should have been her lover. “I loved for both.” “I had reason to complain and I forgave all.” She had tried to be satisfied with friendship: but she could not. She wrote thus to d’Argental in a letter not devoid of genuine feeling and even of pathos. Shehadsome excuse. But she made the common mistake of thinking that an excuse and a justification are the same thing.
The Abbé Voisenon has recorded how once Madame du Châtelet, after, it may be guessed, a quarrel with Voltaire, spoke of herself as entirely alienated from him. The Abbé took down one of the eight volumes of Voltaire’s manuscript letters to her and read some aloud. All his love letters contained, says the Abbé, more epigrams against religion than madrigals for his mistress. But when the reader stopped, Émilie’s eyes were wet. She was not cured yet. A few years later, in 1749, her priestly friend tried the same experiment. She listened unmoved. She was cured indeed: and the doctor had been Saint-Lambert.
The Lunéville visit lasted from about February, 1748, until the end of April. Then Madame du Châtelet left the Court, and returned to Cirey, where she and Saint-Lambert may have spent a few blissful, uninterrupted days together. Voltaire prolonged his visit to Stanislas a short time. By May 15th he and Madame du Châtelet were both once more at Cireyen routefor Paris.
During her stay at Lunéville the energetic Marquise had not only found a lover, but obtained for herbonhommethe lucrative post of the Grand Marshal of the Household to Stanislas, and a commission in the army for her son.
But her thoughts were not with husband, son, or friend (as, she still called her Voltaire), but with M. de Saint-Lambert. Wherever she was she wrote to him continually—letters filled with passion,abandon, tenderness, bitterness, doubt. He had purposed taking a journey in Italy, but renounced it at her pleading. She thanked him with the melancholy effusion and the humiliating gratitude of the woman who has obtained fromher master a sacrifice she knows to be unwilling. She and her unsuspecting Voltaire came up to Paris. If she spent her time writing to her lover, Voltaire spent his in superintending the rehearsals of his new tragedy “Semiramis.” One day his versatility appeared in a new character, and he wrote a prologue for his “Death of Cæsar” for a girls’ school that proposed to act it. It is characteristic of the man that he adapted himself to this entirely newrôlewith the most perfect flexibility and thoroughness. The prologue’s chief characteristics are its “ease and orthodoxy.” He wrote it leaning on a mantelpiece, on the spur of the moment. He included a charming little letter to the Sister Superior and even begged the prayers of that good lady on his behalf!
On June 28th he and Madame du Châtelet left Paris for Commercy, another seat of Stanislas, where that King then was.
Voltaire was ill and miserable and Madame a more impossible travelling companion than ever. On their route, at Châlons-sur-Marne, she must needs engage in the most vociferous, fatiguing dispute with the landlady of an inn over a basin of soup.
Commercy was as gay as Lunéville. There were the inevitable operas and comedies, and on July 14th Providence kindly arranged a total eclipse of the sun to further amuse the little Court. One of its number had astronomised ever so many years ago at Sceaux and at Villars: and had not forgotten those times.
On August 26th he returned to Paris, leaving Madame du Châtelet behind him. She did not complain of his neglect this time. King Stanislas also came up to Paris to stay for a few days with his daughter, the Queen. Voltaire arrived in the capital on the very day of the production of “Semiramis”—probably August 29, 1748.
There had long been forming a cabal against the piece, headed by enemy Piron and joined by most of the adherents of that dismal old playwright Crébillon, who had himself written a clumsy “Semiramis” in 1717. Well, conspiracy for conspiracy. What weapons you use against me, I have theright to use against you. That was Voltaire’s theory now as ever. He met cunning with cunning. He bought up half the seats in the house. He gave them to persons who could be absolutely relied upon to clap and cry at the right moments, and to drown all hisses with applause. Theriot helped him. The d’Argental husband and wife had been already active on his behalf. Voltaire too had boldly asked the patronage of King Louis and Madame de Pompadour, and the King, in consideration of the piece having been originally written for the late Dauphine, agreed to pay the expenses of putting it on the stage. If the play but once had a hearing Voltaire believed that no conspiracy could damn it.
The little scheme succeeded fairly well. M. de Voltaire’s friends wept and applauded to perfection. But the first three acts were received by the audience as a whole with only a very moderate warmth. And in the fourth, the play was nearly ruined. It was then the custom in France for the spectators to sit and walk about on the stage. During this fourth act, at a scene at the tomb of Ninus, there were so many of them, that the too enthusiastic player who took the part of the sentinel and was guarding the tomb, called out: “Make way for the ghost, if you please, gentlemen. Make way for the ghost!” which set the house in a roar. The playwright, to be sure, had no reason to find the incident amusing. He complained to the Lieutenant of Police, and in future performances of “Semiramis” the abuse was corrected.
That first night, then, was by no means so decidedly successful as its author had hoped.
On the second night, August 30th, M. de Voltaire, wanting to hear what his friends as well as his enemies said of the piece behind his back, disguised himself and went to the famous Café Procope, opposite the Comédie Française, and largely frequented by literary and theatrical people. He had been an amateur actor to some purpose, and understood the art of make-up as well as any professional on the boards. With cassock and bands, an old three-cornered hat, and an immense full-bottom unpowdered wig that showed hardly anything of his face except the sharp end of his long, pointed nose, helooked the part of an abbé to perfection. He put a breviary under his arm; arrived at thecafé; possessed himself of a newspaper; chose a dark corner; put on his spectacles, and read the paper over a modest repast of a cup of tea and a roll. Thecaféfilled presently—journalists, actors, some of the partisans of Crébillon and some of Voltaire—all fresh from the play and all anxious to air their views thereon. That sensitive, thin-skinned, long-nosed abbé in the corner had to exercise all his self-control to keep himself from contradicting an enemy who criticised unjustly, or a friend who praised foolishly. But he did it. Therôlepleased his sense of humour. And one or two of his critics quoted some of his fine passages not amiss. He sat there for an hour and a half, keenly attentive to the conversation. The result as a whole was not unsatisfactory. The play would do.
It ran for fifteen nights in succession. When a month or so later a vile parody appeared on it, Voltaire, supported by her father’s friendship, begged Marie Leczinska to suppress that parody. But the Queen, remembering Voltaire not as the man whose “Indiscret” and “Mariamne” had charmed her youth, but as the imprudent friend of Madame de Pompadour, coldly declined to interfere. The Pompadour herself could do little. But the parody did not much harm the original after all. On October 24, 1784, “Semiramis” was performed at Fontainebleau and well received. The play is still of interest to English people—not for itself, but for the “Advertisement” which precedes it: and which contains the most famous and the most adverse criticism upon Shakespeare in the world. He was “a drunken savage”; and “Hamlet” “a coarse and barbarous piece which would not be endured by the dregs of the people in France or Italy.” In his head “Nature delighted to bring together the noblest imagination with the heaviest grossness.” This was Voltaire’s most remarkable word on the great Englishman. But it was not his last.
Before “Semiramis” was performed at Court Voltaire had returned to Lunéville. The excitements of Paris had been too much for him. From being always ailing, he was now really ill. Longchamp was his travelling companion. By the time theyreached that unlucky Châlons, on September 12th, Voltaire was in a high fever and compelled to take to his bed in a wretched post-house. Longchamp, seeing that his condition was critical (Voltaire never gave in to illness until he could neither stand nor speak), told the bishop and intendant of the place. They hastened to the patient and offered him hospitality, which he declined; and then they sent him a doctor. He listened to the professional advice very patiently. Long ago, at Cirey, Madame de Graffigny had noted his good humour and politeness in sickness: and recorded how he was grateful even for advice and prayers! His gratitude for advice fortunately did not extend to following it. On the present occasion he heard meekly and replied laconically when he was told he must be bled and swallow various violent and nauseous mixtures. But he was not bled and he did not take the medicines. Temperance and exercise in health, and abstinence and rest in illness, were the main principles of the system which he followed all his life. That with a wretched constitution and a fatal habit of taking too little sleep and doing far too much brain-work, he lived to be eighty-four at a period when the threescore years and ten of the Psalmist were accounted very old age, is a proof that hisrégimewas not wholly a mistaken one.
On the present occasion he was so ill that he thought himself dying. But he still read and still dictated letters to Longchamp; though he was so weak he could only sign himself “V.” After a few days on a self-imposed diet of tea, toast, and barleywater, the fever left him. He was far too feeble to stand. But he made Longchamp wrap him up in his dressing-gown and carry him into the post-chaise, in which they proceeded towards Lunéville. He was still so ill that he travelled thirty miles without uttering a single word. Before this, unknown to him, Longchamp, who was very sincerely attached to him, had written to tell Madame du Châtelet and Madame Denis of his condition. Once, Émilie would have hastened to him, and half killed him with her vigorous, overwhelming affection and attentions. It was as well for his health that she was quite engrossed with her lover at Lunéville and simply sent a courier with a message.
That message cheered the sick man a little. If he was but her friend, he was her very faithful friend. And friendship meant much more to Voltaire than to most people.
He was better by the time he reached Lunéville. The urgent desire to get well as soon as possible, on that old principle that illness was a kind of degradation, may have helped his recovery.
Madame du Châtelet insisted upon his being cheerful because she felt so herself. He was soon fairly well again, and that miserable journey faded into a bad dream.
In the early part of the October of 1748, Stanislas, and his little Court with him, moved again to Commercy. The guilty loves of Madame du Châtelet and Saint-Lambert were still not even suspected by Voltaire. The guardsman, who soon resigned his commission to become Grand Master of Stanislas’s Royal Wardrobe, seems to have been not a little embarrassed by the vehemence of Émilie’s passion. But in exact proportion as he was cold, she was ardent. His letters to her have not survived; but from hers to him it is evident that while she was imprudent, headlong, and reckless, he was at least cool enough to see danger and discourage the maddest of her schemes.
The discovery of their secret was of course only a matter of time. One night early in that October of 1748 at Commercy, Voltaire walked into Madame du Châtelet’s apartments, unannounced as his habit was, and there in a little room at the end of the suite, lighted by only one candle, he found the handsome young soldier and his clever, foolish, elderly mistress “talking upon something besides poetry and philosophy.”
Ifthe invasion of Silesia by King Anti-Machiavelli-Frederick-the-Great had given Voltaire a moral shock difficult to recover from, he experienced a shock far greater in degree and kind now.
He had been slow to see anything. But when he did see, he saw all. He broke into the most passionate and violent reproaches. The lofty Saint-Lambert responded that no one had the right to criticisehisconduct, and that if M. de Voltaire did not like it, he had better leave the château. The remark irritated Voltaire to a frenzy. Émilie stood by, nonplussed for once in her life, not at all ashamed, but in very considerable difficulty. One can fancy the half dark study, the abominably aggravating coolness of Saint-Lambert, and the inarticulate fury of Voltaire. He flung himself out of the room in one of the greatest passions of his life. He called Longchamp, said that he must beg, borrow, or steal a post-chaise, and make ready to start for Paris that very night. The artful valet went straight to Madame du Châtelet for an explanation. “No post-chaise is to be found on any consideration,” said Émilie. An outcry would ruin her reputation. (It is inconceivable, but true, that Madame du Châtelet considered her reputation as yet immaculate.) At two o’clock in the morning Longchamp came to his master’s rooms and announced that a post-chaise was an impossibility. Then ride to Nancy at daybreak and get one! M. de Voltaire’s passion had not yet spent its force. He went to bed. And Longchamp crept down again to Madame du Châtelet. That marvellous woman was writing at her desk, and announced the extraordinary intentionof going to see M. de Voltaire herself, then and there, and bring him to reason.
She did it. She took a seat on the end of his bed. She spoke to him in English, that old language of their quarrels and love, and by a tender name, long disused. Longchamp lit a couple of candles and retired—to listen to the conversation through the wall. It was the most marvellous conversation in the world. They spoke in French now. Émilie tried to excuse herself—somehow. The lean, furious, exhausted, unhappy man in bed started up.
“Believe you!” he cried. “Now! I have sacrificed health and fortune for you, and you have deceived me.”
And Émilie proceeded to explain with a perfect plainness of speech that Voltaire had long ceased to love her as a lover, and that since shemustlove someone, he should be pleased that her choice had fallen on a mutual friend, like M. de Saint-Lambert.
How the piercing eyes in the thin face on the pillow must have looked her through and through! Voltaire answered with a very fine irony: “Madame, you are always right; but if things must be so, do not let me see them.”
Before she left him, she embraced him. She had succeeded in her aim so far that he was calmer.
The rest of the night the energetic woman spent in appeasing Saint-Lambert, who considered Voltaire had insulted him.
Voltaire was ill in bed the next day. It must be allowed he had an excuse for illness this time. And behold, as the evening drew in, the young Marquis comes in person to make inquiries after the invalid’s health, and the invalid admits him. Saint-Lambert makes very handsome apologies for the hasty words which had escaped him in a moment of agitation. Voltaire takes him by both hands and embraces him. “Mon enfant, I have forgotten all. It was I who was wrong. You are at the happy age of love and pleasure. Make the most of both.”
The very next day the three met at supper at Madame de Boufflers’s, and all enjoyed themselves immensely. All idea of the post-chaise and Paris was dismissed. Did Voltairerecall that gay episode of his youth when he and de Génonville had shared the smiles of Mademoiselle de Livri?
In 1749, he actually wrote Saint-Lambert a beautiful gallant poem on the event which had for the time being so much disturbed his peace:
Saint-Lambert, it is all for theeThe flower grows:The rose’s thorns are but for me:For thee, the rose—
Saint-Lambert, it is all for theeThe flower grows:The rose’s thorns are but for me:For thee, the rose—
Saint-Lambert, it is all for theeThe flower grows:The rose’s thorns are but for me:For thee, the rose—
and went on to say in flowing couplets how the “astronomic, Émilie” had renounced mathematics and inky fingers for those “beautiful airs which Love repeats and Newton never knew.”
By October 17th, the ex-lover, the lover, and the mistress had returned to Lunéville with Stanislas’s Court (of which Voltaire justly complained as being “a little ambulant”) on terms of perfect amity. The whole episode had occupied only a few days. And presently Voltaire was once more engrossed heart and soul in his “History of Louis XV.”
The explanation of his conduct lies, as ever, in character.
He was angry at first because he had an uncommonly quick temper and a great provocation. But he was always a philosopher as he grew calmer. It was a very bad world. That was his lifelong conviction. So much the more reason to make the best of it! He had lost a selfish, irritating, and exigeante mistress. But there was no reason why he should not keep a clever woman for a friend. Émilie had, after all, but acted on a principle which was his as well as hers; that, in the relation of the sexes, when duty ceases to be a pleasure, it ceases to be a duty also. (It is but just to Voltaire and to Madame du Châtelet to say that they did not carry this remarkable theory, not yet out of vogue, into any other department of morals.)
The age looked upon such irregularities simply as subjects for a jest or an epigram. And every man sees in some degree with the eyes of the time in which he lives.
So Voltaire wrote “Louis XV.” The pain passed, as sharp pains are apt to do, quickly. He and Madame du Châtelet,unaccompanied by Saint-Lambert, left Lunéville for Cirey about December 20, 1748. The journey was very like a hundred they had made in old times. At that fatal Châlons, Émiliewouldcall on the bishop and keep the post-horses waiting the whole day while she played cards, and Voltaire lost his temper with her just as if he had been her lover still. Once at Cirey, he was engrossed in hard work, and she wrote a preface to her Newton when she was not writing love letters to Saint-Lambert. Her infidelity would hardly have altered the course of her life were it not for that rigorous law that “every sin creates its own punishment.”
The events that followed are such as are best passed over in the fewest words possible. In this December of 1748 at Cirey, Madame du Châtelet found that she was again to be a mother. Saint-Lambert was summoned. He, Voltaire, and the unhappy woman consulted together on what course they would take. Émilie was in tears at first; and they all ended in laughter. They decided on a daring comedy. The Marquis—that simplebonhomme—was summoned home, fêted, caressed—and deceived. It is sufficient to say that he was delighted with his wife’s prospects, and thought he had reason to be so delighted. He left Cirey, spreading the good news abroad. And Madame du Châtelet complacently considered that her reputation was saved.
Nothing damns the eighteenth century deeper than the fact that this loathsome story was its darling anecdote; and that his criminal connection with Madame du Châtelet, and the sinister events which were its consequence, made Saint-Lambert the very height of fashion. Every memoir of the period has the tale in detail. Longchamp gloats over it. The fine ladies of Paris mademotsupon it, of which in our day a decent bargee would be ashamed. If the French Revolution immolated some of the very persons who brought it about, was the injustice so gross? A Voltaire shared the vices of the social conditions he condemned, and was himself in some sort a part of that system which set itself above decency and duty and which he knew to be fatal to the good of mankind.
He came out of this unclean comedy less smirched than theother actors therein. But that is to say very little. To be a part of it at all was defilement enough.
By February 17th of the new year 1749 Voltaire and Émilie were installed in the Rue Traversière-Saint-Honoré in Paris.
Thebonhommehad rejoined his regiment. Saint-Lambert was in attendance at Lunéville.
Voltaire had written a “Panegyric of Louis XV.” which was to be recited to his Majesty by Richelieu when the Academy went in a body on February 21st to offer their congratulations to the King upon the establishment of peace. But, as so often happened with Voltaire’s writings, the thing had become public too soon. Friend Richelieu, enraged at hearing his recitation being murmured and quoted by the courtiers about him, would not recite it at all. Voltaire was not present on the occasion. When he heard what Richelieu had done, he flung his old friend’s portrait into the fire in a rage.
March 10th saw a brief revival of “Semiramis”: but all the same it was the fashion just now to prefer Crébillon and his “Catilina.”
On May 27th, Voltaire obtained the privilege of selling his useless post of Gentleman-in-Ordinary, while he was allowed to retain its title. But privilege or no privilege, he did not stand well at Court. King Stanislas had written a work called the “Christian Philosopher”: in which his good daughter, Queen Marie Leczinska, saw, disapprovingly, the freethinking influence of Voltaire. He still courted Madame de Pompadour; but no Pompadour ever yet imperilled her own position for any friend in the world.
Another king and court were, indeed, particularly anxious that Voltaire should return to them, but Voltaire refused Frederick’s invitation firmly. Hewasreally ill, as he said. But there was another reason. He had resolved not to leave Madame du Châtelet until the dark hour that was coming upon her had passed.
They fell, even in Paris, into their old habit of hard work. Émilie worked to kill thought, to stifle a dreadful foreboding which was with her always. She studied mathematics with Clairaut, who had once visited Cirey and was “one of the bestgeometricians in the universe.” She shut herself up with him for hours and hours, resolving problems. She plunged into all kinds of gaiety. Her letters to Saint-Lambert are the letters of a very unhappy woman—tortured with jealousy and doubts,exigeante, fearful, unquiet. He was true to her—and cold. She tried to thaw his ice at the fire of her own passion. “I do not even love Newton,” she wrote; “only you. But it is a point of honour with me to finish my work.”
One day, she and Clairaut were so engrossed in their labours, that Voltaire, whose philosophy never could endure being kept waiting for meals, bounded up from the supper-table, ran upstairs “four steps at a time,” found the door locked, and smashed it in with his foot in a rage. “Are you in league to kill me?” he cried as he went down again, followed by the too-zealous mathematicians, who had the grace to be ashamed of themselves. There was a very cross, silent supperà trois. The next morning Madame du Châtelet, feeling she owed her friend a reparation, suggested that she should take her morning coffee in his rooms. She did so, out of a priceless porcelain cup and saucer, which Voltaire, whose temper was still rather irritable, broke by a clumsy movement. Madame reproached him sharply. He retaliated. He grumbled a good deal at the exorbitant sum he had to pay to replace thebric-à-brac. Both he and Émilie were at the end of their tether. Yet they were good to each other. Émilie felt she owed Voltaire much for his pardon, and his reasonableness. And Voltaire never appears even to have thought that her faithlessness as his mistress could exonerate him from fidelity to her as his friend. He knew that she was unhappy. Compassion was in his nature. It is that quality which made him to the last hour of his life, in spite of his gibes and cynicisms, something more than commonly lovable.
In April, Stanislas had come up for a fortnight to the French Court. The unhappy Marquise had then been able to make arrangements for a future sojourn at Lunéville, of great importance to her: and of which she wrote, eagerly and feverishly, to Saint-Lambert.
Voltaire was now writing a play, “Nanine”—founded onRichardson’s “Pamela.” When it was produced on June 16, 1749, he had followed his old plan of filling the house as much as possible with his friends. There were a few spectators in the gallery, however, who would talk aloud. The nervous and sensitive author could by no means endurethat. Up he got on to his feet. “Silence, you boors, silence!” he cried; and silent they were. Whenever he saw his own plays he found it impossible to contain himself. He not only trained the actors beforehand; but he must lead the laughter and the tears of theparterreat the performance. And, to be sure, if there is anyone who should know where a play is pathetic and where it is comic, it is the man who wrote it.
He and Émilie were in Paris from February until the end of June. Frederick repeated his invitation warmly. “You are not asage-femmeafter all,” he wrote to Voltaire scornfully, “and Madame will get on very well without you.” Any sarcasm penetrated Voltaire’s thin skin. But he replied gravely, “Not even Frederick the Great can now prevent me fulfilling a duty I believe to be indispensable. I am neither doctor nor nurse, but I am a friend and will not leave, even for your Majesty, a woman who may die in September.”
He was true to his word. Late in June, while “Nanine” was still running, he and Madame du Châtelet went to Cirey at her urgent desire. When they were there, the most versatile of human creatures, the author of the “Pucelle” and the prim prologue for a girls’ school, wrote at her request a eulogy of Saint-Louis, and a very good eulogy too, for an abbé who had to deliver one before the Academy and could by no means compose it himself.
It was at Émilie’s desire, too, that they left Cirey, after only a fortnight’s stay there—“these delightful rooms, books and liberty, to go and play at comets” at Lunéville. A few days at Commercy had preceded their stay at Lunéville, which they reached on July 21, 1749. It was there that Madame would find Saint-Lambert. It was there that the event which she dreaded more every day was to take place. Voltaire was not only sick to death of that wearisome mockery of astronomy with which Stanislas’s little Court was still amusing itself, butwas further annoyed by being very uncomfortable and ill-attended to in his rooms, in which he shut himself up as much as he could. He bore the discomfort—not at all in silence indeed—but he bore it.
A quarrel on the subject with Alliot, who was commissioner-general of the household of Stanislas, and a very economical commissioner too, burst out on August 29th, and Voltaire relieved his feelings in someviflittle notes: one of which he addressed to the King himself, and besought his Majesty to remedy the defects in the meals, lighting, and firing supplied to his guest. Émilie, who had so urgent a reason for remaining at Lunéville, did her clever best to soothe herami. He was soothed apparently.
Meanwhile the little Court went its usual way. Madame de Boufflers was her smiling, easy self—thatdame de volupté“who,” as she said in her epitaph, “for greater security, made her Paradise in this world.” There were also the austerer, priestly influences trying to gain Stanislas. Poetry was a fashion among the guests and the courtiers, as also the inevitable play-acting. Saint-Lambert was still at work on that lengthy poem, “The Seasons.” The summer was waning. Émilie plunged into every excess of gaiety, and every excess of work. She forgot that she was three-and-forty, not three-and-twenty. To forget everything—that was her aim—to have no time to think of past or future. His duties often called Saint-Lambert away to Nancy, and when he was absent the wretched woman endured torments of loneliness, helplessness, and foreboding. He reassured her when he was there. He was always so calm! As September drew near she sent for Mademoiselle du Thil from Paris, that ill-advised friend of hers, once her lady-companion, who on one memorable occasion had lent her money—to lose at the Queen’s table. Thebonhommeappeared on the scene. Voltaire was writing constant letters to his friends, anticipating the coming event gaily. Madame had a herculean constitution. All would be well! She was still constantly at her desk. She employed many hours in doing up her manuscripts and letters in parcels, and giving Longchamp directions as to the persons who wereto receive them—if—if——. It was a point of honour with her, as she had said, to finish Newton. On August 30, 1749, she wrote her last letter to Saint-Lambert. “I am wretched to a degree which would frighten me if I believed in presentiments,” she said.
On September 4th, Voltaire was writing delightedly to announce the birth of a little girl and the well-being of the mother. The infant was sent straight into the village to be nursed, and in the stress of the painful events which followed, died almost unnoticed. Madame du Châtelet progressed favourably. The little Court was in the highest spirits and spent most of its time in her room. On September 9th, the weather being exceedingly hot, the patient asked for an iced drink. It was given her and she was seized with convulsions.
Stanislas’s physician hastened to her and for the moment she seemed better. The next day, September 10th, the convulsions returned: and two doctors from Nancy were called in. The Marquise again appeared better. In the evening Voltaire and the Marquis du Châtelet went down to supper with Madame de Boufflers—still not the least anticipating any danger. Longchamp, Saint-Lambert, and Mademoiselle du Thil were left in the room with the sick woman. Eight or ten minutes later, they heard a rattle in her throat. They did what they could. Mademoiselle hastened downstairs to tell Voltaire and the Marquis. The horrified supper-party hurried to the bedroom and a scene of dreadful confusion ensued. Madame du Châtelet was already quite unconscious. No one had time to think “of priest, of Jesuit, or of Sacrament.” But the Marquise was past their help. “She knew none of the horrors of death,” wrote Voltaire. “It was her friends who felt those.”
His own anguish of spirit, when the dreadful truth was borne in upon him, rendered him beside himself. He and Saint-Lambert remained by the bed awhile. And then Voltaire, who had loved his mistress longer and better than his supplanter, dragged himself away, blind and dull with misery. He stumbled at the foot of the staircase without, and when Saint-Lambert, who had followed, would have helpedhim, Voltaire turned upon him with a bitter reproach. Its terms are so unrepeatable that the eighteenth century repeated themad nauseam: and the twentieth may as well forget them if it can.
The brief remainder of that fatal day Voltaire spent in writing the bitter news to his friends.
If any proof be needed of the vehemence and sincerity of his feeling for the dead woman, those letters give it.
The next day Madame de Boufflers took from the Marquise’s ring a portrait of Saint-Lambert and bade Longchamp give the ring to the Marquis du Châtelet. A little later Voltaire asked Longchamp for the ring in question. Thirteen years before, he had given Émilie his own portrait for it, with these lines,