Part 2

Gentlemen, to sum up epochs, by giving them the names of men, to name ages, to make of them in some sort human personages, has only been done by three peoples, Greece, Italy, France. We say, the Age of Pericles, the Age of Augustus, the Age of Leo X, the Age of Louis XIV, the Age of Voltaire. Those appellations have a great significance. This privilege of giving names to periods belonging exclusively to Greece, to Italy, and to France, is the highest mark of civilization. Until Voltaire, they were the names of the chiefs of states; Voltaire is more than the chief of a state; he is a chief of ideas; with Voltaire a new cycle begins. We feel that henceforth the supreme governmental power is to be thought. Civilization obeyed force; it will obey the ideal. It was the scepter and the sword broken, to be replaced by the ray of light; that is to say, authority transfigured into liberty. Henceforth, no other sovereignty than the law for the people, and the conscience for the individual. For each of us, the two aspects of progress separate themselves clearly, and they are these: to exercise one’s right; that is to say, to be a man; to perform one’s duty; that is to say, to be a citizen.

Such is the signification of that word, the Age of Voltaire; such is the meaning of that august event, the French Revolution.

The two memorable centuries which preceded the eighteenth, prepared for it; Rabelais warned royalty in Gargantua, and Molière warned the church in Tartuffe. Hatred of force and respect for right are visible in those two illustrious spirits.

Whoever says today, _might makes right_, performs an act of the Middle Ages, and speaks to men three hundred years behind their time. [Repeated applause.]

Gentlemen, the nineteenth century glorifies the eighteenth century. The eighteenth proposed, the nineteenth concludes. And my last word will be the declaration, tranquil but inflexible, of progress.

The time has come. The right has found its formula: human federation.

Today, force is called violence, and begins to be judged; war is arraigned. Civilization, upon the complaint of the human race, orders the trial, and draws up the great criminal indictment of conquerors and captains. [Emotion.] This witness, History, is summoned. The reality appears. The factitious brilliancy is dissipated. In many cases, the hero is a species of assassin. [Applause.] The peoples begin to comprehend that increasing the magnitude of a crime cannot be its diminution; that, if to kill is a crime, to kill much cannot be an extenuating circumstance [Laughter and bravos]; that, if to steal is a shame, to invade cannot be a glory [Repeated applause]; that _Te Deums_ do not count for much in this matter; that homicide is homicide; that bloodshed is bloodshed; that it serves nothing to call one’s self Caesar or Napoleon; and that in the eyes of the eternal God, the figure of a murderer is not changed because, instead of a gallow’s cap, there is placed upon his head an emperor’s crown. [Long continued acclamation. Triple salvo of applause.]

Ah! let us proclaim absolute truths. Let us dishonor war. No; glorious war does not exist. No; it is not good, and it is not useful, to make corpses. No; it cannot be that life travails for death. No; oh, mothers who surround me, it cannot be that war, the robber, should continue to take from you your children. No; it cannot be that women should bear children in pain, that men should be born, that people should plow and sow, that the farmer should fertilize the fields, and the workmen enrich the city, that industry should produce marvels, that genius should produce prodigies, that the vast human activity should, in presence of the starry sky, multiply efforts and creations, all to result in that frightful international exposition which is called a field of battle! [Profound sensation. The whole audience rises and applauds the orator.]

The true field of battle, behold it’s here! It is this rendezvous of the masterpieces of human labor which Paris offers the world at this moment.[1]

The true victory is the victory of Paris. [Applause.]

Alas! we cannot hide it from ourselves, that the present hour, worthy as it is of admiration and respect, has still some mournful aspects; there are still shadows upon the horizon; the tragedy of the peoples is not finished; war, wicked war, is still there, and it has the audacity to lift its head in the midst of this august festival of peace. Princes, for two years past, obstinately adhere to a fatal misunderstanding; their discord forms an obstacle to our concord, and they are ill-inspired to condemn us to the statement of such a contrast.

Let this contrast lead us back to Voltaire. In the presence of menacing possibilities, let us be more pacific than ever. Let us turn toward that great death, toward that great life, toward that great spirit. Let us bend before the venerated tombs. Let us take counsel of him whose life, useful to men, was extinguished a hundred years ago, but whose work is immortal. Let us take counsel of the other powerful thinkers, the auxiliaries of this glorious Voltaire, of Jean Jacques, of Diderot, of Montesquieu. Let us give the word to those great voices. Let us stop the effusion of human blood. Enough! enough! despots. Ah! barbarism persists; very well, let civilization be indignant. Let the eighteenth century come to the help of the nineteenth. The philosophers, our predecessors, are the apostles of the true; let us invoke those illustrious shades; let them, before monarchies meditate wars, proclaim the right of man to life, the right of conscience to liberty, the sovereignty of reason, the holiness of labor, the beneficence of peace; and since night issues from the thrones, let the light come from the tombs. [Acclamations unanimous and prolonged. From all sides bursts the cry: “Vive Victor Hugo.”]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: The exposition of 1878 was then open in Paris.]

A SKETCH OF VOLTAIRE

Francois Marie Arouet, generally known by the name of Voltaire, was born at Chatenay on February 20, 1694. To write his life during those eighty-three years would be to give the intellectual history of Europe.

While Voltaire was living at Ferney in 1768, he gave a curious exhibition of that profane sportiveness which was a strong element in his character. On Easter Sunday he took his secretary Wagnière with him to commune at the village church, and also “to lecture a little those scoundrels who steal continually.” Apprised of Voltaire’s sermon on theft, the Bishop of Anneci rebuked him, and finally “forbade every curate, priest, and monk of his diocese to confess, absolve or give the communion to the seigneur of Ferney, with his express orders, under pain of interdiction.” With a wicked light in his eyes, Voltaire said he could commune in spite of the Bishop; nay, that the ceremony should be gone through in his chamber. Then ensued an exquisite comedy, which shakes one’s side even as described by the stolid Wagnière. Feigning a deadly sickness, Voltaire took to his bed. The surgeon, who found his pulse was excellent, was bamboozled into certifying that he was in danger of death. Then the priest was summoned to administer the last consolation. The poor devil at first objected, but Voltaire threatened him with legal proceedings for refusing to bring the sacrament to a dying man, who had never been excommunicated. This was accompanied with a grave declaration that M. de Voltaire “had never ceased to respect and to practice the Catholic religion.” Eventually the priest came “half dead with fear.” Voltaire demanded absolution at once, but the Capuchin pulled out of his pocket a profession of faith, drawn up by the Bishop, which Voltaire was required to sign. Then the comedy deepened. Voltaire kept demanding absolution, and the distracted priest kept presenting the document for his signature. At last the Lord of Ferney had his way. The priest gave him the wafer, and Voltaire declared “Having my God in my mouth,” that he forgave his enemies. Directly he left the room, Voltaire leaped briskly out of bed, where a minute before he seemed unable to move. “I have had a little trouble,” he said to Wagnière, “with this comical genius of a Capuchin; but that was only for amusement, and to accomplish a good purpose. Let us take a turn in the garden. I told you I would be confessed and commune in my bed, in spite of M. Biord.”

Voltaire treated Christianity so lightly that he confessed and took the sacrament for a joke. Is it wonderful if he did the same thing on his death-bed to secure the decent burial for his corpse? He remembered his own bitter sorrow and indignation, which he expressed in burning verse, when the remains of poor Adrienne Lecouvreur were refused sepulture because she died outside the pale of the Church. Fearing similar treatment himself, he arranged to cheat the Church again. By the agency of his nephew, the Abbé Mignot, the Abbé Gautier was brought to his bedside, and according to Condorcet he “confessed Voltaire, receiving from him a profession of faith, by which he declared that he died in the Catholic religion, wherein he was born.” This story is generally credited, but its truth is by no means indisputable; for in the Abbé Gautier’s declaration to the Prior of the Abbey of Scellieres, where Voltaire’s remains were interred, he says that when he visited M. de Voltaire, he found him “_unfit to be confessed_.”

The curate of St. Sulpice was annoyed at being forestalled by the Abbé Gautier, and as Voltaire was his parishioner he demanded “a detailed profession of faith and a disavowal of all heretical doctrines.” He paid the dying Freethinker many unwelcome visits, in the vain hope of obtaining a full recantation, which would be a fine feather in his hat. The last of these visits is thus described by Wagnière, who was an eye-witness to the scene. I take Carlyle’s translation:

“Two days before that mournful death, M. l’Abbé Mignot, his nephew, went to seek the Curé of St. Sulpice and the Abbé Gautier, and brought them into his uncle’s sick room; who, on being informed that the Abbé Gautier was there, ‘Ah, well!’ said he, ‘give him my compliments and my thanks.’ The Abbé spoke some words to him, exhorting him to patience. The Curé of St. Sulpice then came forward, having announced himself, and asked of M. de Voltaire, elevating his voice, if he acknowledged the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ? The sick man pushed one of his hands against the Curé’s calotte (coif), shoving him back, and cried, turning abruptly to the other side, ‘Let me die in peace (Laissez-moi mourir en paix).’ The Curé seemingly considered his person soiled, and his coif dishonored, by the touch of the philosopher. He made the sick-nurse give him a little brushing, and then went out with the Abbé Gautier.”

A further proof that Voltaire made no real recantation lies in the fact that the Bishop of Troyes sent a peremptory dispatch to the Prior of Scellieres, which lay in his diocese, forbidding him to inter the heretic’s remains. The dispatch, however, arrived too late, and Voltaire’s ashes remained there until 1791, when they were removed to Paris and placed in the Pantheon, by order of the National Assembly.

Voltaire’s last moments are described by Wagnière. I again take Carlyle’s translation:

“He expired about a quarter past eleven at night, _with the most perfect tranquility_, after having suffered the cruelest pains in consequence of those fatal drugs, which his own imprudence, and especially that of the persons who should have looked to it, made him swallow. Ten minutes before his last breath he took the hand of Morand, his valet-de-chambre, who was watching him, pressed it, and said, ‘_Adieu, mon cher Morand, je me meurs_’--‘Adieu, my dear Morand, I am gone.’ These are the last words uttered by M. de Voltaire.”

Such are the facts of Voltaire’s decease. He made no recantation, he refused to utter or sign a confession of faith, but with the connivance of his nephew, the Abbé Mignot, he tricked the Church into granting him a decent burial, not choosing to be flung into a ditch or buried like a dog. His heresy was never seriously questioned at the time, and the clergy actually clamored for the expulsion of the Prior who had allowed his body to be interred in a church vault.

Many years afterwards the priests pretended that Voltaire died raving. They declared that Marshal Richelieu was horrified by the scene and obliged to leave the chamber. From France the pious concoction spread to England, until it was exposed by Sir Charles Morgan, who published the following extracts from a letter by Dr. Burard, who, as assistant physician, was constantly about Voltaire in his last moments:

“I feel happy in being able, while paying homage to the truth, to destroy the effects of the lying stories which have been told respecting the last moments of Mons. de Voltaire. I was, by office, one of those who were appointed to watch the whole progress of his illness, with M. M. Tronchin, Lorry, and Try, his medical attendants. I never left him for an instant during his last moments, and I can certify that we invariably observed in him the same strength of character, though his disease was necessarily attended with horrible pain. (Here follow the details of his case.) We positively forbade him to speak in order to prevent the increase of a spitting of blood, with which he was attacked; still he continued to communicate with us by means of little cards, on which he wrote his questions; we replied to him verbally, and if he was not satisfied, he always made his observations to us in writing. He therefore, retained his faculties up to the last moment, and the fooleries which have been attributed to him are deserving of the greatest contempt. It could not even be said that such or such person had related any circumstance of his death, as being witness to it; for at the last, admission to his chamber was forbidden to any person. Those who came to obtain intelligence respecting the patient, waited in the saloon, and other apartments at hand. The proposition, therefore, which has been put in the mouth of Marshal Richelieu is as unfounded as the rest.

“Paris, April 3rd, 1819.

(Signed) BURARD.”

Another slander appears to emanate from the Abbé Barruel, who was so well informed about Voltaire that he calls him “the dying Atheist,” when, as all the world knows, he was a Deist.

“In his last illness he sent for Dr. Tronchin. When the doctor came, he found Voltaire in the greatest agony, exclaiming with the utmost horror--‘I am abandoned by God and man.’ He then said, ‘Doctor, I will give you half of what I am worth, if you will give me six months’ life.’ The doctor answered, ‘Sir, you cannot live six weeks.’ Voltaire replied, ‘Then I shall go to hell, and you will go with me!’ and soon after expired.”

When, the clergy are reduced to manufacture such contemptible rubbish as this, they must indeed be in great straits. It is flatly contradicted by the evidence of every contemporary of Voltaire.

My readers will, I think, be fully satisfied that Voltaire neither recanted nor died raving, but remained a skeptic to the last; passing away quietly, at a ripe old age, to “the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns,” and leaving behind him a name that brightens the track of time.

GEORG BRANDES ON VOLTAIRE

By Julius Moritzen.

It is hardly to be expected that 144 years after the death of Francois de Voltaire any new and startling facts should have been discovered anent the career of one of the greatest Frenchmen that ever lived. But there is that in the writings of Georg Brandes that when this Danish critic and internationalist undertakes a task like that of writing a new history of Voltaire we are very sure to find an old subject given a new interpretation. That Brandes’ “Francois de Voltaire” is today considered perhaps the most picturesque presentation of a personality whose influence on the history of France has been most profound is but a natural corollary considering what the author of “William Shakespeare, a Critical Study,” did in the case of England when analyzing the character of Shakespeare.

Georg Brandes places Voltaire in the various environments that went to widen the horizon of the French satirist, and it is quite apart from his literary achievements that Voltaire rises before the reader’s mind as having done so much for making nations better acquainted with each other. Himself a man with an international vision, Brandes for this reason emphasizes Voltaire’s English education and what English culture of that period did toward infusing the spirit of liberalism into a France surcharged with the dominance of a Louis XV through an arrogant court circle. Whether or not Voltaire led the way for the Revolution that swept aside a regime that became unbearable, the fact is not to be denied that his last stay at Ferney saw him prepare unconsciously for an event that he had inspired while he himself was far from being revolutionary in spirit.

Banished from French soil for so great a part of his life, Francois de Voltaire could not fail to discern the weak points of his own country’s national life as compared with what England had to show him. Brandes is very explicit on this score.

“Voltaire was released from the Bastile on the second day of May on orders of the King and his royal highness, the Duke,” writes Brandes, “and Conde was instructed to accompany him to Calais and watch him go on board and leave the harbor. His exile, designed as a punishment, proved in every way an advantage to his development.”

Differing as day from night, English social conditions as compared with the France of the period could not fail to impress the young exile.

“Landing at Greenwich,” Brandes continues, “Voltaire slept his first night in London at Lord Bolingbroke’s palace in Pall Mall, after spending the evening in the company of ladies and gentlemen of the most exclusive society. Bolingbroke knew the foremost writers of England, so that through him Voltaire could immediately make their acquaintance, except where language prevented. Bolingbroke called the triumvirate of the English Parnassus, Pope, Swift and Gray, by their first names. Voltaire could not have had a better introduction to the literary and aristocratic world of England.”

It was characteristic of the manners and customs of the day that Voltaire arrived in England supplied with letters of introduction from members of the very French government that had exiled him. The abler men among the ministers were apparently ashamed that they had been obliged to exile a man, not because of what wrongs he had done but because of the injustice he had suffered. The French minister of foreign affairs, M. de Morville, requested Horatio Walpole, a brother of the English Premier, Sir Robert Walpole, and Stair’s successor as England’s ambassador to France, to do all he could for the welfare of Voltaire on English soil.

Brandes places emphasis on a letter Walpole wrote the Duke of Newcastle as follows: “I trust you will pardon me when, at the earnest solicitation of M. de Morville, I recommend to you M. de Voltaire, a writer and a most talented one who has recently come to England in order to have published through subscription a splendid poem, called ‘Henry IV.’ It is true that he has been imprisoned in the Bastile, but not on account of anything having to do with the government. It was merely through a dispute with a private individual, and I therefore hope that your Excellency will bestow on him your favor and protection by furthering the subscription.”

Walpole wrote a similar letter to Bubb Dodington, Duke of Melcombe, the rich and highly placed patron of men of letters in whose house in Eastbury Voltaire lived for more than three months, and whom he always remembered with gratitude as a wealthy and active man, of keen intelligence and sound character. Voltaire at a later period introduced Thierot to him with the remark that he had once sent Dodington his “History of Charles XII” but that now he sent him something much better.

In Eastbury, Voltaire made the acquaintance of Edward Young who, later, was to win repute as a devotional writer, and eventually became his friend. Young had not then become a clergyman and had not yet written his “Night Thoughts” which Voltaire later called a “confusing mixture of bombastical and obscure trivialities.” In Eastbury Voltaire met also James Thomson, the popular author of “The Seasons,” and the impression he left on him was that of a “great genius and great simplicity.”

Very characteristic of Brandes’ style and analytical skill is the following: “From the very first Voltaire had access to the Minister Robert Walpole, the Duke of Newcastle, the Archduchess of Marlborough, and the two courts, that of the King and of the Prince and Princess of Wales. Some years before he had paid his respects, though only in a literary fashion, to King George I, when in 1718 he sent him his ‘Ædipe’ with flattering verses which have a humorous effect today. He termed the clumsy boarish Hanoveranian a man of wisdom and a hero, whereupon the King sent Lord Stair a watch as a gift to Voltaire. A letter from Voltaire to his Lordship requests that he send the watch to his father, for Voltaire evidently hoped to raise himself in his parent’s eyes when he saw that he had a son who received presents from an English monarch.”

“What most impressed Voltaire,” Brandes continues, “who had come from a country where the gag was the sceptre, the chief instrument of the art of government, was the utter absence of such a thing in England. Here every writer, from Swift downward, could attack the policy of the cabinet with a derisive violence that in France would have put him behind the bars for life. Here no one touched a hair on his head. Most remarkable of all, he found this freedom of speech was perfectly consistent with peace and order.

“Voltaire discovered that in England nobility did not stand for caste, but that the great merchant whose trade benefited England and the world was raised to the nobility while he gave the younger sons to civic enterprise and industry. It is unquestionably true that while Voltaire’s exile was meant as a punishment it brought the young writer knowledge and insight. It sharpened his sense for what was actual and his instinct for the possible. It gave to his inborn elasticity of mind that practical understanding without which there can be no great writer.”

II.

While there is no lack of historical accounts about the relations existing between Voltaire and Frederick the Great, yet there are phases of that relationship which still lend themselves to fresh interpretation when viewed by one so keenly analytical as Georg Brandes. The Danish critic declares emphatically that history can show few instances where a ruler in his relations with a great productive mentality has proceeded in such a way as to make the contact significant to both principals.

“In ancient times,” Brandes writes, “Aristotle was the teacher of Alexander, and the latter, when on his campaign would send Aristotle books and material for study. But Alexander could exert no influence on the philosopher. Caesar and Cicero knew each other thoroughly. Cicero was Caesar’s political opponent. Nevertheless, Caesar paid homage to Cicero as the representative of literature and repaid his attacks by showing him knightly attention. But neither Caesar nor Cicero owed each other any intellectual enrichment.