Part 10

His next production was _The Henriade_, an epic poem on Henry of Navarre. The chief event in it was the massacre of St. Bartholomew, and this gave him an opportunity of expressing his hatred of fanaticism and superstition. It was censored, but he managed secretly to get two thousand copies into Paris, and the very fact of its being forbidden fruit ensured its success. As time went on, he came into close contact with the Court, and was patronized by Marie Leczinska, daughter of the ex-King of Poland, who was to be married to Louis XV. She read his poems and plays with pleasure and amusement, and for three months he was the idol of the royal circle. Anxious, however, as he had been to go to Court, he was more than glad to get away.

Voltaire never enjoyed good health. Hardly a week passed without his suffering, and when he became a victim to smallpox his case was serious. In this connection as much as in any other, Voltaire’s pluck and indomitable will-power showed itself. He fought ill-health all his life through, and triumphed. His great secret was work. Others might make an excuse of illness to take a holiday. That was not his way. He dictated, he wrote, he read, to prevent physical weakness getting the mastery over him. Another of his finer characteristics was his undefeated persistence. He never would give in. For instance, when a play of his was a failure, he was disappointed, but took it back and rewrote it. Even at the age of eighty-three he did this with a play that did not please him. All attempts to silence, suppress, insult, or ignore such a man were bound to fail. There are two instances of his being twice badly insulted. A spy named Beauregard, whom he offended, waylaid him in the street and beat him. And again later, the Chevalier de Rohan, an arrogant nobleman, fell out with him, and had him thrashed by his servants. Voltaire took lessons in fencing, and after three months challenged Rohan, who accepted the challenge. But on the morning appointed for the duel Voltaire was arrested, and sent a second time to the Bastille. He was kept in confinement for a fortnight, and then, at his own request, packed off to England.

George II was King of England. He was no lover of “boetry,” but Queen Caroline was, and was pleased to welcome him. Voltaire’s chief friend in England was Bolingbroke, and he soon became acquainted with the leading people of the day. There were Swift and Addison, whose writings he greatly admired; Pope, Congreve, Gay, the Walpoles, and Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough. Newton died during his visit; he attended the funeral at Westminster Abbey, and was much impressed by the tribute paid by the nation to a man of science. He diligently mastered the English language, and wrote not only letters but plays and poems in it. He expresses in his writings the greatest appreciation of British liberty, freedom of speech, and absence of intolerance. The Quakers specially interested him. He liked the simplicity of their religion, and the absence of formulas, dogmas, creeds, and ritual. He quotes one of them as saying in reply to his question, “You have no priests, then?” “No, friend, and we get on very well without them.”

Moreover, as an inveterate hater of war, he revered a sect so far removed from the brutality of military government as to hold peace for a first principle of the Christian faith. His affection for England and the English spirit can be summed up in the words he used with regard to Swift’s writings, “How I love people who say what they think! We only half live if we dare only half think.” Through him a more intimate knowledge of England was spread, not only in France but in other parts of the Continent.

In 1729, when he was thirty-five, he obtained a license to return to France, which he had only been able to visit secretly, now and then, during his stay in England. He devoted the next four years to great literary activity. Whatever he wrote always produced a certain sensation, and often brought him into trouble. Among the best of his productions were _Zaïre_, the most successful of all his plays, and _The Temple of Taste_, a brilliant burlesque, in which he satirized the overrated celebrities of the day. Owing to the death of one of his patrons with whom he had been staying, he was obliged to go into uncomfortable lodgings in a poor quarter of Paris. But whether he was in a castle or a garret, his genius for hard work never left him. The censor kept his eye on this man, who seemed bent on startling and shocking the authorities, so that Voltaire was often obliged to get his writings privately printed and secretly distributed, and even on some occasions to deny the authorship of the offending works. Things came to a head when his _English Letters_ appeared. They were by way of being criticism and praise of England, but at the same time they were a vehement attack on everything established in Church and State in France. The printer was thrown into the Bastille. The book was denounced and publicly burnt by the hangman as “scandalous, contrary to religion, to morals, and respect for authority.” His lodgings were searched, but when the officer came to arrest him the author was found to have escaped.

France, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, more than any other country at any other time, produced a number of women who occupied a very leading position, not only in the high society of Paris, but in the intellectual and political life of the nation. They collected in their houses all the eminent men of letters and science and politics, who not only came to meet one another, but were attracted by the charm, the beauty, the wit, and the intelligence of their hostesses. Attempts have been made at other times and in other countries to imitate these French _salons_, but without anything like the same success. The names of some of these women have become historical—Madame de Sévigné, Madame de Staël, Ninon de l’Enclos, Madame du Châtelet, Madame du Deffand, Mademoiselle de l’Espinasse—to mention only a few of them. Voltaire was a favorite with those of his time, more especially with Madame du Châtelet, who went so far as to place her castle at Cirey at his disposal. She was a very clever woman, wrote books on philosophy, and at the same time she was extremely frivolous—just the sort of combination Voltaire loved. At Cirey he interested himself in refurnishing the house and in gardening. He set up a laboratory and experimented in physics; he busied himself with iron-founding; he studied astronomy and philosophy with his hostess, made love to her, quarreled with her over trifles, for she had a very hot temper; and all the while kept on producing an almost incredible amount of writings. Cirey became his home and headquarters till Madame du Châtelet died in 1749. During this period he came again into Court favor, wrote a play which was performed before the King, and was made Historiographer and Gentleman of the Chamber.

One of the most curious and interesting incidents in Voltaire’s life was his friendship with Frederick the Great of Prussia. After the exchange of many enthusiastic and ridiculously complimentary letters, they met first in 1740, and subsequently Voltaire went over to Berlin on a diplomatic mission. But it was not till 1751 that he went and stayed for any length of time with his royal friend. Half the world watched the meetings of the two most prominent men of the day. They were very different, and this made their intimacy all the more surprising. The very slender link that united them was little more than flattery. The worst qualities of both soon came to the front, and led finally to their separation. Frederick was an arrogant disciplinarian, combining with his genius as a soldier an artistic sense and some literary talent. He welcomed Voltaire because he liked to gather round him celebrated men of every description, and he hoped to gain advantage from the advice and amusement from the company of the greatest writer and wit of his age. Voltaire, on his side, loved appreciation, especially from great people. The pomp and display of Courts attracted him; he was taken in by the honors and praise that were lavishly showered on him. He was content to correct Frederick’s writings, and to be in close contact with the great man. But, like a spoilt child, he became mischievous, and the harmony between the two men, which was only on the surface, became a hideous discord.

Voltaire was given apartments in the palace; he was made a royal chamberlain, decorated with an order, and granted a pension. Royal servants attended on him; he supped with the King, and took part in an endless round of feasts and entertainments. But foolishly delighted as he was with all these honors, he noticed that the King was apt to give a sly scratch with one hand while patting and stroking with the other. Voltaire used to refer to him by the nickname “Luc,” after an ape which had a knack of biting. “The supper parties are delicious,” he wrote; “the King is the life of the company. I have operas and comedies, reviews and concerts, my studies and books: Berlin is fine, the princesses charming, the maids of honor handsome, BUT ... !”

The magnificence of his style of living gradually began to fall off, and Frederick cut down his allowance of sugar, coffee and chocolate, and the philosopher stooped to pocketing candle-ends from the royal apartments. Voltaire began quarreling with others at the Court. Plots and intrigues, petty jealousies and rivalries began to make his life intolerable. He was mixed up in a discreditable affair connected with money matters which came out in a sordid dispute between him and a Jew named Hirsch. In fact, all the glamour was fading; the glitter was proving to be very far from gold. He never took the trouble to learn German, as French was the language of the Court and good German books were rare. Lessing, the founder of modern German literature, was still quite a young man. The two men met and made friends, but the inevitable quarrel soon separated them.

At last Voltaire became bored to death with correcting Frederick’s verses: “See,” he exclaimed when a batch was sent to him, “what a quantity of dirty linen the King has sent me to wash.” The remark reached the royal ear, while on the other hand Voltaire was told that Frederick when speaking of him had said something about “sucking an orange and throwing away the rind.” The finishing touch to the growing estrangement was put by Voltaire’s wittiest and most pitiless personal satire on Maupertuis, the president of the Berlin Academy, a vain but worthy individual. Frederick could not help laughing at it, but he forbade its publication. Voltaire pretended to agree, but in a few days the _Diatribe of Doctor Akakia_ appeared. It was received with great applause and merriment, but Frederick was furious. He ordered the pamphlet to be burned by the hangman and insisted on an apology from Voltaire, who in his turn sent back his order and chamberlain’s key. This was the last straw, and Voltaire left Berlin. But he carried off with him a volume of Frederick’s verses, probably as a curiosity. He was arrested at Frankfurt and treated with uncalled-for brutality by order of the King.

The whole visit reflects no credit whatever on either of the parties. Voltaire’s foolish vanity and hot temper seem to have obscured an intellect shrewd enough to have known that such a life as he lived in the Prussian capital was empty, profitless, and utterly vain. For Frederick there was more excuse, because monarchs at all times have claimed service and homage in return for a passing smile of friendship; Court attendance they have considered a sufficiently rich reward for any devotion; and thrones have ever been surrounded by the refuse of orange-rinds out of which the juice has been sucked.

Voltaire, now over sixty, entered upon the last phase of his life, which was the calmest and certainly the noblest. After wandering from place to place, he settled down at last in a house just outside Geneva, which he called _Les Délices_. Here he entertained many visitors and had a private theater in which his own plays were performed, he himself always taking a part and stage managing. He kept up a voluminous correspondence and continued to exchange letters with Frederick, quarreling as usual but finally making it up. He wrote at this time one of his most famous works, “Candide,” which was inspired by an earthquake at Lisbon, and in it he ridiculed the idea that everything was for the best in the best possible of all worlds. The book was burned by order of the Council of Geneva. But Voltaire was now accustomed to his writings being treated in this way.

In appearance he must have been a very peculiar figure. He was very thin, he had a long nose and protruding chin, and his face always wore an amused but rather mischievous smile. His sparkling eyes, peering from under his heavy wig, showed he was very much alive. His health always troubled him, and nobody spoke about dying so much or thought so little about death. From _Les Délices_ he would drive into Geneva in an extraordinary old-fashioned carriage painted blue with gold stars and drawn by four horses. On one occasion a crowd assembled to see him alight. “What do you want to see, boobies?” he cried. “A skeleton? Well, here is one!” And he threw off his cloak.

A few years later he bought another property near by, called Ferney, and erected a château, where he spent the remainder of his days. Here he developed into a complete country gentleman, and came to be known all over Europe as the Squire of Ferney. He took great pride in all the details of the arrangements in the house. He had a bath-room made, which in those days was an almost unknown luxury, but he was very particular in matters of cleanliness and was very neat and tidy. His niece, Madame Denis, however, who kept house for him, was slovenly and a bad manager. She was an ugly and tiresome woman, without humor or even common sense. She actually wrote a comedy, which the players, out of respect for Voltaire, declined to act. She was responsible for a good deal of extravagance in the household, as well as neglect in keeping the house clean. Her uncle, who could not bear the sight of a cobweb, took advantage of her absence in Paris at one time to have the whole house cleaned from top to bottom. There were a large number of servants, and two of them once robbed their master. The police having got wind of the matter, Voltaire sent a message to the culprits to fly directly, or else he would not be able to save them from hanging. He even sent them money for the journey. So touched were they by his generosity that, having got away successfully, they settled down to live honest lives. Gardens, park, farms, nurseries, bees and silkworms, all received personal attention from this wonderful little old philosopher. An immense number of visitors, many of them celebrated people, were entertained, and after theatricals, sometimes as many as eighty people sat down to supper. Indeed, he became a little weary of being what he called “an hotel-keeper.” Some visitors stayed with him for a considerable time, and the grand-niece of the poet Corneille he adopted as a daughter.

Though now an old man, his life at Ferney, like his life at Cirey, was one of ceaseless activity. Never can any one have written so many letters. Seven thousand have been printed, but there are many more: and his correspondents ranged from kings and empresses to the humblest and most undistinguished people. With all his faults, and he had many, Voltaire never fell a prey to two of the worst failings of which a human being can be guilty—indifference and indolence.

Let us try and picture a day at Ferney. Voltaire did not appear till eleven o’clock. He remained in his room, where he had five desks all very carefully and neatly arranged with the notes and papers for the various works on which he was engaged. The rest of the morning he spent in garden or farm superintending and giving orders. He dined with the house-party, eating very little himself, his only form of indulgence being coffee. After some conversation with his guests in the early afternoon, he retired to his study and refused to be interrupted by anybody till supper-time. Then he came out in very lively spirits, led the conversation, provoked discussion, and amused every one with his jokes and repartees. In the evening there was probably a theatrical entertainment in his little theater, or he would read out some of his poems, or play chess, the only game he ever indulged in. When he went to bed he started work afresh, and as he slept very little, this would go on sometimes far into the night, especially if he had a play on hand. Madame Denis looked after the guests, some of whom, to their great annoyance, saw very little of their host.

It was in the last twenty years of his life that Voltaire played such a noble part in championing the cause of men who were subjected to gross and cruel persecution. The most famous case is that of Callas. He was a Protestant shopkeeper in Toulouse, a kind and benevolent old man. The monstrous accusation brought against him was that of murdering his son, who, as a matter of fact, committed suicide in a fit of melancholy. The motive of the murder was supposed to be that the son wanted to become a Roman Catholic, and his father, rather than allow it, killed him. Callas was tried and condemned without a shred of evidence against him. He was tortured with hideous cruelty, broken on the wheel, and finally strangled. This was in 1762. Some of the family fled to Switzerland, and Voltaire heard of the case. He soon saw that behind it lay the thing he hated most in the world, namely, religious intolerance. He set to work with an energy and perseverance which were quite extraordinary. He left off his usual literary work; he examined evidence, drew up reports, wrote statements and narratives, collected a fund, composed pamphlets, wrote to influential people, and devoted his whole time and thoughts and much money to the cause he had undertaken. He succeeded in getting a new trial, and at last, three years after the savage sentence had been passed on Callas, a unanimous verdict of complete innocence was recorded by a council of forty judges. The whole of Europe had heard of the case, because it was Voltaire who had taken up the cause of the poor and honest man who had been the victim of a vile plot. Nothing in his life gave him more satisfaction than his success in this affair. Thirteen years later an old woman in Paris, in reply to some one who asked who the little old man was whom crowds surrounded, said, “It is the saviour of Callas.” No honor that ever came to Voltaire gave him so much pleasure as that simple answer.

Nor was the case of Callas the only one in which he took an active interest. A man called Sirven was persecuted in much the same way, and would have suffered a similar fate had he not escaped. It took nine years for justice to be done this time, and Voltaire was seventy-seven when the case was retried and the accused declared innocent. Further, there was the case of Espinasse, who was sentenced to the galleys for giving supper and a bed to a Protestant minister; of Montbailli, who was falsely accused of murdering his mother; of La Barre; and several others, who for one reason or another were victims of persecution. Voltaire’s hatred of injustice had always been strong. He showed it when he was a much younger man. One occasion was the death of Adrienne Lecouvreur, the great actress, who had performed in several of his plays. Because she was an actress she was refused Christian burial. His fury knew no bounds, more especially as he had seen an actress buried in London with every mark of respect and sympathy. He wrote a poem which showed the depths of his indignation at this senseless intolerance.

Voltaire’s finest qualities, in fact, came to the front in his character of champion of the persecuted. The cynical satirist was merged into the generous and courageous upholder of justice. The oppressed and needy may get sympathy from others who are in like condition, but it is much more rare for one who is neither poor nor downtrodden to give them not only sympathy, but practical and useful support.

Voltaire, as already said, detested intolerance. He expressed this in a well-known phrase, which he repeated both in his writings and in his conversation, “_Écrasez l’infâme_” (Crush the infamous). His enemies declared that he meant God, Christ, Christianity, and religion. But this was very far from true. By _l’infâme_ he meant intolerance, bigotry, superstition, persecution, and all the hideous evils that blighted the true spirit of religion. It was _l’infâme_ that enforced the doctrines of religion by fire, torture, and imprisonment, it was _l’infâme_ that encouraged oppression and tyranny; it was _l’infâme_ that was the barrier to liberty, progress, and enlightenment; and _l’infâme_ was Voltaire’s lifelong enemy. He did as much as any one to combat this evil spirit. But it requires more than a man, it requires a people, to succeed completely; and no people have even yet got the power in any land. Voltaire was certainly not a sentimentalist, and it is interesting to note that he was the first influential writer who was struck more by the futility than the cruelty of war. He regarded both war and the intrigues of diplomacy which create it as being absolutely contrary to the best interests of nations.

It is a pity Voltaire ever left Ferney. However, he very naturally wanted to revisit Paris, which he had not seen for twenty-eight years. Also he wanted to superintend the production of a new tragedy he had just written. Madame Denis, who was bored with Ferney, seems to have encouraged him to go. Instead, therefore, of dying quietly in his home, he passed the last few weeks of his life in a perfect orgy of entertainment and excitement, and there is something pathetic in the vain little old man, masquerading for the benefit of Paris crowds. And yet his last visit to Paris, which amounted to an event of public importance, was very characteristic of the man’s whole life. He received all sorts of distinguished visitors; society flocked to see him; the French Academy, by whom in old days he had been rejected, paid him every compliment possible; actors welcomed him with enthusiasm; the middle-class turned out in crowds to see him; the Protestants worshiped the man who had fought against persecution; the mob filled the streets in awe of a man who could stand up so boldly against the powers of government; the Court and the Church avoided him because they feared him, while the preachers denounced him from their pulpits.

One of his oldest friends was greeted by him on his arrival with the words, “I have left off dying to come and see you.” The Academy’s reception was a great function. A gorgeous coach was sent for him, and as the crowd waited he appeared in the doorway, a very lean figure, with his old-fashioned gray wig surmounted by a little square cap. He wore a red coat lined with ermine, white silk stockings on his shrunken legs, large silver buckles on his shoes, a little cane in his hand with a crow’s beak for a handle, and over all this wonderful dress, a sable cloak which had been given to him by Catherine, Empress of Russia. At the Louvre two thousand people assembled, and greeted him with shouts of “Long live Voltaire!” Afterwards, at the theater, he appeared in a box, and the whole audience rose and received him with frantic applause. An actor came forward and crowned him with a wreath of laurels, while the people stormed and shouted. It certainly was a triumph, a remarkable triumph, not only for the man, but for his opinions. There was no discordant voice. As one who was present said, “Envy, hatred, fanaticism, and intolerance dared not murmur.”