Part 11

Frederic's angry feelings were roused by several just causes of annoyance. He learned that "Akakia" was published in Holland, and he remembered the scene of its pretended destruction by its author with indignation. He was angry, also, that the poet had escaped, and was no longer liable to the effects of his displeasure, and fear of ridicule added poignancy to these feelings. Frederic at once wished to punish his former friend, and to shield himself from the shafts of his ridicule. Voltaire had taken with him a volume of Frederic's poems, privately circulated and given to him. The king feared that his corrector might strip his verses of their borrowed feathers, and deliver up the unfledged nurslings to the laughter of the world. He sent orders to his agent at Francfort to demand back this volume, as well as the baubles before returned and restored. His agent was a Jew of low character, and totally illiterate. He proceeded against Voltaire, as if he had been a servant suspected of running away with his master's plate. The precious volume which Freitag called _L'Œuvre de Poésie du Roi son Maître_, had been left at Leipsic. Voltaire and madame Denis were kept under strict arrest till this unfortunate book arrived at Francfort; and as there are always ill-omened birds who scent ill fortune, and take advantage of it; so, now, a bookseller of the Hague, whom Voltaire had employed, many years ago, to print the "Anti-Machiavel" of Frederic, brought forward a balance of twenty crowns with interest and compound interest, which the poet was forced to pay. At last, after a disagreeable and strict imprisonment of nearly a month's duration, Voltaire and his niece were allowed to depart.

Thus ended the treaty of equal friendship between king and poet. The pettiness of the details is striking. We find neither the magnanimity of a hero in one, nor the calmness of a philosopher in the other. Voltaire had the excuse that he avenged his injured friend Kœnig in his satire on Maupertuis. He had dreamed of independence in a palace; and from the moment he discovered his mistake he was eager to be free. Frederic, meanwhile, was taught by his enemies to regard him as a restless, intriguing Frenchman. He had written to him, at the beginning of their quarrel: "I was glad to receive you. I esteemed your understanding, your talents, your acquirements; and I believed that a man of your age, weary of skirmishing with authors and exposing himself to the storm, would take refuge here as in a tranquil port. First, you exacted from me, in a singular manner, that I should not engage Freron to correspond with me, and I had the weakness to yield. You visited the Russian minister, and talked to him of affairs in which you had no right to interfere; and it was believed that I commissioned you. You had a dirty transaction with a Jew, and filled the city with clamour. I preserved peace in my house till you arrived; and I warn you, that if you have a passion for intrigue and cabal, you have addressed yourself very ill. I like quiet people; and if you can resolve to live like a philosopher, I shall be glad to see you; but if you give way to your passions, and quarrel with everybody, you had better remain at Berlin. * * * * I write this letter with unpolished German good sense, which says what it thinks, and without adopting equivocal terms and soft palliations to disfigure the truth."[6] This letter shows that Frederic believed himself to be in the right, and had conceived a bad opinion of his friend. We all know the height to which misunderstandings can rise when fostered by malicious and interested persons. We cannot wonder that men of quick tempers like Frederic and Voltaire should disagree; but it was to be lamented that they made their pettish quarrels a spectacle for all Europe.

Voltaire had now a new life to fix upon. He was eager to secure his entire independence. The tranquillity he had at first enjoyed in Prussia made him feel the value of peace. This he could never find in his own country, and he henceforth looked upon expatriation as the only means of securing his tranquillity. Chance assisted him in forming the choice of an abode, which, from the independence it afforded, placed him in a high and dignified position in the eyes of all Europe. He had at first entertained the plan of establishing himself in Alsatia, in which province he spent two years, after leaving Prussia, occupied in writing the annals of the empire; but he was disturbed by the attacks of the Jesuits, who were angry because they had failed in an endeavour to convert him. He found that he could not visit Paris with safety; and he hesitated where to establish himself. Meanwhile, his health being, as ever, bad, he was advised to try the waters of Aix, in Savoy.

In his way thither he passed through Lyons. Cardinal Tencin refused to receive him, on account of his being out of favour at court. Voltaire was piqued; but the inhabitants of Lyons compensated for the insult. They entertained him with public honours; got up his tragedies, that he might be present at the representation, and receive the enthusiastic applause of an audience who gloried in the opportunity of thus rewarding the author of works which excited so much admiration. Proceeding from Lyons to Savoy, he passed through Geneva, and here he consulted Tronchin, a physician, whom every one looked on as holding life and death in his hands. Tronchin dissuaded him from trying the waters, but promised to restore his health if he would make some stay near him. Voltaire gave readier faith than could have been expected from a ridiculer of the medical art. He consented to remain in the neighbourhood of Geneva; and, finding that it was an established law that no Catholic might purchase land in Protestant Switzerland, it pleased his whimsical mind instantly to buy an estate in the territory of Geneva. [Sidenote: 1755. Ætat. 61.] Add to which motive, he fully appreciated the advantages he must derive from living out of France, yet in a country where French was spoken, and where liberty of speech and of the press had hitherto reigned undisturbed. His house, named Les Delices, was beautifully situated. He describes it as commanding a delightful view. The lake on one side, the town of Geneva on the other; the swift swelling Rhone formed a stream at the end of his garden, fed by the Arve and other mountain rivers. A hundred country houses with their gardens adorned the shores of the lake and of the rivers; and the Alps were seen afar off,--Mont Blanc and its range, whose picturesque snow-clad peaks for ever presented new aspects, as the clouds or the varying sunlight painted them. A philosopher, blest with affluence, might well be happy in such a seclusion. Soon after his arrival, Voltaire wrote the fragment of his autobiography, to explain his quarrel with the king of Prussia. These memoirs are one of his most entertaining works. The playful sarcasm, which characterises every page he ever wrote, in this production reaches home, yet can scarcely be said to sting. He laughs at Frederic and his _Œuvres des Poésies_; he laughs at his own illusions; and then lingers with fondness on the retreat he had at last found from the tumult of society and the friendship or enmity of kings. He congratulates himself on having made his own fortune, and confesses that this was done by speculations in finance. "It is necessary to be attentive to the operations to which the ministry, always pressed and always changing, makes in the finances of the state," he observes. "Something often occurs of which a private individual can profit without being under obligations to any one; and it is vastly agreeable to fabricate one's own fortune. The first step is troublesome, the rest are easy. One must be economical in one's youth, and in old age one is surprised at one's wealth. Money is at that time more necessary, and that time I now enjoy. After having lived with kings, I am become a king in my home. I possess all the conveniences of life in furniture, equipages, and good living. The society of agreeable and clever people occupy all the time spared from study and the care I am forced to take of my health. While I enjoy the most pleasant style of life that can be imagined, I have the little philosophic pleasure of perceiving that the kings of Europe do not taste the same happy tranquillity; and I conclude that the position of a private person is often preferable to that of royalty."

These words were singularly verified in the renewal of his correspondence with the king of Prussia. Frederic had begun it by sending him an opera he had founded on "Mérope." [Sidenote: 1756. Ætat. 62.] Soon after the coalition was formed against Prussia, which, victorious at first, brought Frederic to the position of rebel against the empire. The loss of a battle reduced him to extremities; and, rather than submit to his enemies, he resolved to commit suicide. He wrote a long epistle in verse announcing his intention: Voltaire answered it in prose, and combated his idea by every argument that seemed most likely to have weight. Frederic was in some sort convinced; he dismissed the idea of self-destruction; but he resolved to fall on the field of battle, unless the victory was decided in his favour.

This more heroic resolution was rewarded by the gain of two battles, in which scarcely a Prussian fell, and the defeat of the enemy was complete. Frederic wrote triumphantly to his friend to announce his victories. [Sidenote: 1758. Ætat. 64.] Soon after, Voltaire was applied to by cardinal Tencin, who had refused to receive him at Lyons, to forward letters which were to negotiate a peace. The wily philosopher consented: he was aware that the cardinal would fail, and he was malicious enough to wish to enjoy the sight of his mortification. The cardinal did fail, and more disgracefully than he expected; and the disappointment cost him his life. "I have never been able to understand," Voltaire observes, "how it is that people are killed by vexation, and how ministers and cardinals, whose hearts are so hard, retain sufficient sensibility to die from the effects of a disappointment. It was my design to mortify and laugh at, not to kill him."

Voltaire had secured his safety, and could give himself up to that ardent love of study, that restless aspiration for fame, that eager endeavour to overthrow the superstitions (and, unfortunately, more than the superstitions, the religion) of Europe, and that more noble resolution to oppose all abuses, and to be the refuge and support of the oppressed, which animated his soul through a long life chequered by physical suffering. In his retreat of Les Delices, he brought out his historical work on the "Manners and Spirit of Nations." He composed several of his best tragedies; he wrote "Candide," a book rendered illustrious by its wit and penetrating spirit of observation, in spite of its grossness and implied impiety, which are the reigning blemishes of Voltaire's writings. As usual, also, he erected a theatre in his house. Added to his habitual love for theatrical amusements, he hoped to impart a taste for them to the Genevese, and so to weaken that ascetic spirit of repulsion of intellectual pleasure to which, whether enjoined by monks or recommended by Calvin, he was hostile.

All, however, was not labour, peace, and amusement. The publication of the poem of the "Pucelle" threatened a renewal of the persecutions of which he had been the victim in his earlier days. Several forged verses in ridicule of Louis XV. and madame de Pompadour had been foisted into the surreptitious edition that appeared, and it was with difficulty that his friends proved that he was not the writer. Voltaire, indeed, was always in a state of inky war. A man who had provoked the priesthood of Europe, and whose talent for perceiving and pourtraying the ridiculous was unequalled and unsparing, could not fail in creating a host of enemies. Satires, epigrams, and libels rained on him. In his retirement of Les Delices, he might, if he had chosen, have been insensible to these attacks; but not one but found their way; he answered all, dealing about his shafts dipped in sarcasm and irony, and spreading abroad a sort of terror that served as a wholesome check to his enemies. A word or line from his pen marked a man for ever. Several among those thus attacked were forced to hide themselves till a new victim was immolated, and their own disgrace forgotten. In his "Life of Molière," speaking of the epigrams with which Boileau and Molière attacked, and, it is said, caused the death of Cotin, Voltaire called this the sad effect of a licence rather perilous than useful, which is more apt to flatter the malignity of men than to inspire good taste; and in his "Essay on Satire," he severely blames Boileau for naming the poets whom he censures. Yet, with blind inconsistency, Voltaire never spared an enemy. He conceived that, if attacked by, he had a fair right to annihilate, as he well could, the stinging gadflies of literature. The society of Paris was kept alive by his multitudinous epigrams. This engendered a baneful spirit of sarcasm, and spread abroad an appetite for injuring others by ridicule, slander, and jests that wound. They rendered society more heartless and more cruel than ever.

Voltaire, himself, was visited by the effects of the disturbed state of feeling he helped to engender. He had hoped to find a safe asylum in the Genevese territories. But his attacks on their prejudices created a host of enemies. He began to feel that the dark shadows of persecution were gathering round. [Sidenote: 1762. Ætat. 68.] He found that, although his presence in Paris would not be permitted, he might, in safety, take up his abode in a remote part of France. He purchased, therefore, the estate of Ferney, on the French territory, within a short distance of Geneva; and thus with a foot, as it were, in two separate states, he hoped to find safety in one if threatened with hostility in the other.

He was more fortunate than he anticipated. The persecutions he afterwards endured were reduced to little more than threats, and were less than might be expected by a man who first raised the voice of hostility to, and resolved on, the destruction of a system of religion supported by a powerful hierarchy which was in possession of half the wealth of the nations who professed their faith, and which was regarded as the bulwark of their power by the monarchs of Europe. Voltaire's poem on the law of Nature, and his version of Ecclesiastes, were burnt in Paris as deistical and blasphemous, although the latter had no fault but that of turning the sublime into commonplace. A poem on the earthquake at Lisbon was also produced at this time; and "Candide" was written and published. To collect together the most dreadful misfortunes, to heap them on the head of a single individual, and in one canvass to group all of disastrous that a fertile imagination can paint, and present this as a picture of life, does not seem at first sight the most worthy occupation of a philosopher. Voltaire himself, though he had met reverses, was a living refutation of "Candide." But as, in truth, whether by sudden reverse or the slow undermining of years, all human hope does fade and decay, as life proceeds to its close; so Voltaire, now nearly seventy years of age, might, on looking back, consider disappointment and sorrow as the mark of humanity; and, by showing these ills to be inevitable, inculcate a philosophical indifference. Still the tone of "Candide" is not moral, and, like all Voltaire's lighter productions, is stamped with a coarseness which renders it unfit for general perusal. In addition to these minor productions, Voltaire laboured at the correction and enlargement of his historical work on the "Manners and Spirit of Nations,"--one of the greatest monuments which his genius achieved.

While Voltaire was at Berlin, d'Alembert and Diderot had set on foot the project of the "Encyclopédie." Their plan was, to write a book which would become indispensable to every library, from its containing the most recent discoveries in philosophy, and the best explanations and details on every topic, and this mingled with an anti-catholic spirit, that would serve to sap the foundations of the national religion. Voltaire contributed but few, and those merely literary, articles to this work--whose progress, however, he regarded with lively interest.

The outcry against the "Encyclopédie" was of course prodigious; every one who did not belong to the party formed by the lovers of innovation rose against it. Parliament and clergy pronounced its condemnation, and succeeded so far in suppressing it, that the editors were obliged to continue it clandestinely. They, however, did not submit without a struggle: a literary war was declared, which raged furiously. Voltaire was considered at the head of the liberal party, and he gave his mighty aid to turn the opposers of his opinions into ridicule. One after the other, they sank under the shafts of his wit, and were forced to take shelter in retirement from the ridicule with which his epigrams had covered them. Voltaire considered his thus abetting his friends a sacred duty. "I belong to a party," he wrote, "and a persecuted, party, which, persecuted as it is, has nevertheless gained the greatest possible advantage over its enemies, by rendering them at once odious and ludicrous."

It is pleasant to turn from these matters, which often display the self-love and intolerance of the philosophers of the day, to such acts as stamp Voltaire as a generous man, full of the warmest feelings of benevolence, and capable of exerting all his admirable faculties in the noblest cause,--that of assisting and saving the unfortunate. A great niece of Corneille lived in indigence in Paris. A friend of hers conceived the happy thought of applying to Voltaire for assistance; and that which he instantly afforded, at once rescued her from privation and care. His answer to the application deserves record. "It becomes an old follower of the great Corneille to endeavour to be useful to the descendant of his general. When one builds chateaux and churches, and has poor relations to support, one has but little left to assist one, who ought to be aided by the first people in the kingdom. I am old. I have a niece who loves the fine arts, and cultivates them with success. If the young lady of whom you speak will accept a good education under my niece's care, she will look on her as a daughter, and I will be to her as a father." This offer was of course gratefully accepted. The young lady was clever, lively, yet gentle. Voltaire himself assisted in her education. "I do not wish to make her learned," he writes, "but desire that she should learn how to conduct the affairs of life and to be happy." He was rewarded for his exertion by his protégée's docility and gratitude. As a means of obtaining a dowry for her, he wrote his elaborate commentary on Corneille's works, and published it, with an edition of the great tragedian's works, by subscription--inducing the monarchs and nobles of Europe, through his mighty influence, to send in their names, and thus fabricated a fortune for the orphan.

Soon after, another and more important occasion offered itself for serving his fellow creatures, and he acquitted himself of the task with resolution and success.

The frightful spirit of persecution of the Huguenots, engendered by the revocation of the edict of Nantes, by Louis XIV. and his dragoon-missionaries, still survived in the provinces; and not only embittered the minds of the ignorant, but influenced the legal authorities, and led them always to associate the ideas of crime and Protestantism together. Jean Calas had been a merchant of Thoulouse for forty years. He was a Protestant--an upright and good man, and by no means bigoted. One of his sons was a convert to Catholicism; but, far from showing displeasure. Calas made him an allowance for his maintenance. A female servant who had been in his family for thirty years was a Catholic. One of his sons, named Marc-Antoine, committed suicide. He was a young man of a restless, sombre, discontented disposition; he disliked trade, and found himself excluded by the laws against his religion from entering on any profession. He read various books on suicide--conversed on the subject with his friends--and one day, having lost all his money in play, resolved on the fatal act. The family supped together; they had a guest with them--a young man only nineteen, named Lavaisse, known for his amiable and gentle disposition. After supper, Marc-Antoine left them; and when, shortly after, Lavaisse took his leave, and the father went down stairs to let him out, they discovered his son hanging from a door: he had undressed himself, folded up his clothes, and committed the act with the utmost deliberation. The family were seized with terror. They summoned medical aid and officers of justice; their cries and terror gathered a crowd about the house. The only error they committed was, that, knowing the horror in which suicide was held, they at first declared that the unfortunate man had died a natural death. The falsehood of this assertion being at once detected, the most frightful suspicions were the consequence.

The people of Thoulouse were peculiarly fanatical--they regarded Protestants as monsters capable of any crime: a whisper was raised that Jean Calas had murdered his son. A story was quickly fabricated and believed. It was alleged that Marc-Antoine was on the point of abjuring Protestantism, and that his family and Lavaisse had murdered him, to prevent him from putting his design into execution. A thousand other details were swiftly invented for the purpose of adding terror to the scene. The chief magistrate of Thoulouse, named David, excited by these rumours, and paying no attention to possibility or proof, without even proceeding with legal forms, threw the whole family of Calas, their Catholic servant, and Lavaisse into prison. In the frenzy of the moment, they turned the supposed victim into a martyr, and buried him in the church of St. Etienne, as if he had already abjured his faith, and died in consequence. One of the religious confraternities of the town celebrated his funeral with pomp; a magnificent catafalque was raised to his honour, on which was placed a skeleton, who was supposed to represent Marc-Antoine, which was made to move; it held a pen, with which it was supposed to sign the act of abjuration. The people, excited by their priests, were transported with fanaticism: they invoked the son as a saint; they demanded the execution of the father as a murderer.

The details of the trial of the unfortunate man accused of murdering his own son were not less frightful and unjust: of twelve judges, six acquitted him--it required a plurality of voices for his condemnation. Two judges were terrified into retiring; others were gained over; a majority of two was obtained, and the unfortunate Calas broken on the wheel.