CHAPTER III.

Sometimes the diatribe is sprinkled with quicklime. All those black pen-nibs finish by digging ill-omened ditches.

Among the writers abhorred for having been useful, Voltaire and Rousseau hold a conspicuous rank. They were reviled when alive, mangled when dead. To have a bite at these renowned ones was a splendid deed, and reckoned as such in favour of literary constables. A man who insulted Voltaire was at once promoted to the dignity of pedant. Men in power encouraged the men of libellous propensity. A swarm of mosquitoes have rushed upon those two illustrious minds, and ate yet buzzing.

Voltaire is the most hated, being the greatest. Everything was good for an attack on him, everything was a pretext: Mesdames de France, Newton, Madame du Châtelet, the Princess of Prussia, Maupertuis, Frederic, the Encyclopædia, the Academy, even Labarre, Sirven, and Calas,--never a truce. His popularity suggested to Joseph de Maistre this: "Paris crowned him; Sodom would have banished him." Arouet was translated into _A rouer._[1] At the house of the Abbess of Nivelles, Princess of the Holy Empire, half recluse and half worldling, and having recourse, it is said, in order to make her cheeks rosy, to the method of the Abbess of Montbazon, charades were played,--among others, this one: The first syllable is his fortune; the second should be his duty. The word was _Vol-taire._[2] A celebrated member of the Academy of Sciences, Napoleon Bonaparte, seeing in 1803, in the library of the Institute, in the centre of a crown of laurels, this inscription: "Au grand Voltaire," scratched with his nail the last three letters, leaving only, _Au grand Volta!_

There is round Voltaire particularly a _cordon sanitaire_ of priests, the Abbé Desfontaines at the head, the Abbé Nicolardot at the tail. Fréron, although a layman, is a critic after the priestly fashion, and belongs to this band.

Voltaire made his first appearance at the Bastille. His cell was next to the dungeon in which had died Bernard Palissy. Young, he tasted the prison; old, exile. He was kept twenty-seven years away from Paris.

Jean-Jacques, wild and rather surly, was tormented in consequence of those traits in his nature. Paris issued a writ against his person; Geneva expelled him; Neufchâtel rejected him; Motiers-Travers damned him; Bienne stoned him; Berne gave him the choice between prison and expulsion; London, hospitable London, scoffed at him.

Both died, following closely on each other. Death caused no interruption to the outrages. A man is dead; insult does not slacken pursuit for such a trifle. Hatred can feast on a corpse. Libels continued, falling furiously on these glories.

The Revolution came and sent them to the Pantheon.

At the beginning of this century, children were often brought to see these two graves. They were told, "It is here." That made a strong impression on their minds. They carried forever in their thoughts that apparition of two sepulchres side by side,--the elliptical arch of the vault; the antique form of the two monuments provisionally covered with wood painted like marble; these two names, Rousseau, Voltaire, in the twilight; and the arm carrying a flambeau which was thrust out of the tomb of Jean-Jacques.

Louis XVIII. returned. The restoration of the Stuarts had torn Cromwell from his grave; the restoration of the Bourbons could not do less for Voltaire.

One night, in May, 1814, about two o'clock in the morning, a cab stopped near the barrier of La Gare, which faces Bercy, at the door of an enclosure of planks. This enclosure surrounded a large vacant piece of ground, reserved for the projected _entrepôt_, and belonging to the city of Paris. The cab was coming from the Pantheon, and the coachman had been ordered to take the most deserted streets. The closed planking opened. Some men alighted from the cab and entered the enclosure. Two carried a sack between them. They were conducted, so tradition asserts, by the Marquis of Puymaurin, afterward deputy to the Invisible Chamber, and director of the mint, accompanied by his brother, the Comte de Puymaurin. Other men, many in cassocks, were waiting for them. They proceeded toward a hole dug in the middle of the field. This hole, according to one of the witnesses, who since has been waiter at the inn of the Marronniers at La Rapée, was round, and looked like a blind well. At the bottom of the hole was quicklime. These men said nothing, and had no light. The wan break of day gave a ghastly light. The sack was opened. It was full of bones. These were, pell-mell, the bones of Jean Jacques and of Voltaire, which had just been withdrawn from the Pantheon. The mouth of the sack was brought close to the hole, and the bones were thrown into that darkness. The two skulls struck against each other; a spark, not likely to be seen by such men as those present was doubtless exchanged between the head that had made the "Dictionnaire Philosophique" and the head which had made the "Contrat Social," and reconciled them. When that was done, when the sack had been shaken, when Voltaire and Rousseau had been emptied into that hole, a digger seized a spade, threw inside the opening all the earth which was at the side, and filled tip the hole; the others stamped with their feet on the ground, so as to remove from it the appearance of having been freshly disturbed. One of the assistants took for his trouble the sack, as the hangman takes the clothing of his victim; they all left the enclosure, closed the door, got into the cab without saying a word, and hastily, before the sun had risen, those men got away.

[Footnote 1: Deserving of being broken on the wheel.]

[Footnote 2: _Vol_ meaning _theft_, _taire_ meaning to be silent.]