VOLTAIRE
Voltaire was sixty years of age when he settled on the shores of the
lake, where he was to remain for another four-and-twenty years; and he
did not go there for his pleasure. He would have preferred to live in
Paris, but was afraid of being locked up in the Bastille. As the great
majority of the men of letters of the reign of Louis XV. were, at one
time or another, locked up in the Bastille, his fears were probably
well founded. Moreover, notes of warning had reached his ears. ‘I dare
not ask you to dine,’ a relative said to him, ‘because you are in bad
odour at Court.’ So he betook himself to Geneva, as so many Frenchmen,
illustrious and otherwise, had done before, and acquired various
properties--at Prangins, at Lausanne, at Saint-Jean (near Geneva), at
Ferney, at Tournay, and elsewhere.
He was welcomed cordially. Dr. Tronchin, the eminent physician,
co-operated in the legal fictions necessary to enable him to become a
landowner in the republic. Cramer, the publisher, made a proposal for
the issue of a complete and authorized edition of his works. All the
best people called. ‘It is very pleasant,’ he was able to write, ‘to
live in a country where rulers borrow your carriage to come to dinner
with you.’ Yet his desire to ‘score off’ the ministers of religion, who
no doubt struck him as pretentious persons of sluggish intellect, soon
set him at loggerheads with his hosts.
The first trouble arose in connection with the article on Geneva
published in the encyclopædia edited by Diderot and d’Alembert. It was
in the course of a short visit to Voltaire that d’Alembert gathered
the materials for that article. He was encouraged, and afforded every
facility for pursuing his researches, alike by the ministers and by
the magistrates. ‘He is the curiosity of the town,’ a contemporary
letter-writer declared, ‘and it is quite the fashion to go and call
on him.’ In particular he was entertained by the clergy, and talked
theology with them after dinner. Their views were broad, thanks to the
influence of that eminent theologian, Turretini; probably their views
were broader after dinner than before. At all events, the encyclopædist
drew them out to his satisfaction, with the result that, when his
article appeared, and the divines made haste to read it, it was
found that their theological position was expounded in the following
startling paragraph:
‘There is less complaint of the advance of infidelity at Geneva than
elsewhere; but that is not surprising. Religion there--unless it be
among the common people--is reduced to the worship of one God; a
certain respect for Jesus Christ and the Scriptures is, perhaps, the
only thing that distinguishes the Christianity of Geneva from pure
Deism.’
This in the city of Calvin. It was as though the encyclopædist had
stirred a hornets’ nest. To change the metaphor, the fat was in the
fire, and the flame blazed up at once. The Consistory met and appointed
a Commission ‘to consider what were the best steps to take in the
matter.’ The Commission deputed Dr. Tronchin to try and obtain an
apology and retraction from the offending author; and Dr. Tronchin
applied to Voltaire for help. Seeing that Voltaire had already
written to d’Alembert congratulating him on his success in arousing
the ‘murmurs of the synagogue,’ this was not a very hopeful step.
Voltaire, in fact, had inspired the statements which he was now asked
to invite his collaborator to withdraw. He temporized, enjoyed the
fun, and tampered with the truth, to keep it up. He protested that he
knew nothing about the article; that he wanted nothing but a quiet
life, for himself and for everybody else, including ‘Trinitarians,
Unitarians, Quakers, Moravians, Turks, Jews, and Chinamen.’ He also, in
the friendliest manner, warned his correspondent that, if d’Alembert
were pressed too hard, he might, instead of apologizing, prove that the
things which he had said were true.
[Illustration: THE CHATEAU DE PRANGINS]
‘Retractation,’ he wrote, ‘was all very well for St. Augustine; but it
will not do for him. I know his character. If your complaints get too
loud, he will quote a certain catechism by your Professor of Theology,
wherein it is said that revelation is “a thing of some utility,” and
wherein there is no single word about the holy, adorable, and invisible
Trinity. When he establishes that he has not disclosed a secret, but
has only publicly taken cognizance of an opinion publicly expressed,
you will be slightly embarrassed.’