At the present time,[6] when it is so difficult to think of anything but
of what is and what will be, it may yet be worth while to cast
occasionally a glance backward at what was. Such glances may at least
prove to have the humble merit of being entertaining: they may even be
instructive as well. Certainly it would be a mistake to forget that
Frederick the Great once lived in Germany. Nor is it altogether useless
to remember that a curious old gentleman, extremely thin, extremely
active, and heavily bewigged, once decided that, on the whole, it would
be as well for him _not_ to live in France. For, just as modern Germany
dates from the accession of Frederick to the throne of Prussia, so
modern France dates from the establishment of Voltaire on the banks of
the Lake of Geneva. The intersection of those two momentous lives forms
one of the most curious and one of the most celebrated incidents in
history. To English readers it is probably best known through the few
brilliant paragraphs devoted to it by Macaulay; though Carlyle's
masterly and far more elaborate narrative is familiar to every lover of
_The History of Friedrich II_. Since Carlyle wrote, however, fifty years
have passed. New points of view have arisen, and a certain amount of new
material--including the valuable edition of the correspondence between
Voltaire and Frederick published from the original documents in the
Archives at Berlin--has become available. It seems, therefore, in spite
of the familiarity of the main outlines of the story, that another rapid
review of it will not be out of place.
Voltaire was forty-two years of age, and already one of the most famous
men of the day, when, in August 1736, he received a letter from the
Crown Prince of Prussia. This letter was the first in a correspondence
which was to last, with a few remarkable intervals, for a space of over
forty years. It was written by a young man of twenty-four, of whose
personal qualities very little was known, and whose importance seemed to
lie simply in the fact that he was heir-apparent to one of the secondary
European monarchies. Voltaire, however, was not the man to turn up his
nose at royalty, in whatever form it might present itself; and it was
moreover clear that the young prince had picked up at least a smattering
of French culture, that he was genuinely anxious to become acquainted
with the tendencies of modern thought, and, above all, that his
admiration for the author of the _Henriade_ and _Zaïre_ was unbounded.
La douceur et le support [wrote Frederick] que vous marquez pour
tous ceux qui se vouent aux arts et aux sciences, me font espérer
que vous ne m'exclurez pas du nombre de ceux que vous trouvez
dignes de vos instructions. Je nomme ainsi votre commerce de
lettres, qui ne peut être que profitable à tout être pensant. J'ose
même avancer, sans déroger au mérite d'autrui, que dans l'univers
entier il n'y aurait pas d'exception à faire de ceux dont vous ne
pourriez être le maître.
The great man was accordingly delighted; he replied with all that
graceful affability of which he was a master, declared that his
correspondent was 'un prince philosophe qui rendra les hommes heureux,'
and showed that he meant business by plunging at once into a discussion
of the metaphysical doctrines of 'le sieur Wolf,' whom Frederick had
commended as 'le plus célèbre philosophe de nos jours.' For the next
four years the correspondence continued on the lines thus laid down. It
was a correspondence between a master and a pupil: Frederick, his
passions divided between German philosophy and French poetry, poured out
with equal copiousness disquisitions upon Free Will and _la raison
suffisante_, odes _sur la Flatterie_, and epistles _sur l'Humanité_,
while Voltaire kept the ball rolling with no less enormous
philosophical replies, together with minute criticisms of His Royal
Highness's mistakes in French metre and French orthography. Thus, though
the interest of these early letters must have been intense to the young
Prince, they have far too little personal flavour to be anything but
extremely tedious to the reader of to-day. Only very occasionally is it
possible to detect, amid the long and careful periods, some faint signs
of feeling or of character. Voltaire's _empressement_ seems to take on,
once or twice, the colours of something like a real enthusiasm; and one
notices that, after two years, Frederick's letters begin no longer with
'Monsieur' but with 'Mon cher ami,' which glides at last insensibly into
'Mon cher Voltaire'; though the careful poet continues with his
'Monseigneur' throughout. Then, on one occasion, Frederick makes a
little avowal, which reads oddly in the light of future events.
Souffrez [he says] que je vous fasse mon caractère, afin que vous
ne vous y mépreniez plus ... J'ai peu de mérite et peu de savoir;
mais j'ai beaucoup de bonne volonté, et un fonds inépuisable
d'estime et d'amitié pour les personnes d'une vertu distinguée, et
avec cela je suis capable de toute la constance que la vraie amitié
exige. J'ai assez de jugement pour vous rendre toute la justice que
vous méritez; mais je n'en ai pas assez pour m'empêcher de faire de
mauvais vers.
But this is exceptional; as a rule, elaborate compliments take the place
of personal confessions; and, while Voltaire is never tired of comparing
Frederick to Apollo, Alcibiades, and the youthful Marcus Aurelius, of
proclaiming the rebirth of 'les talents de Virgile et les vertus
d'Auguste,' or of declaring that 'Socrate ne m'est rien, c'est Frédéric
que j'aime,' the Crown Prince is on his side ready with an equal flow of
protestations, which sometimes rise to singular heights. 'Ne croyez
pas,' he says, 'que je pousse mon scepticisime à outrance ... Je crois,
par exemple, qu'il n'y a qu'un Dieu et qu'un Voltaire dans le monde; je
crois encore que ce Dieu avait besoin dans ce siècle d'un Voltaire pour
le rendre aimable.' Decidedly the Prince's compliments were too
emphatic, and the poet's too ingenious; as Voltaire himself said
afterwards, 'les épithètes ne nous coûtaient rien'; yet neither was
without a little residue of sincerity. Frederick's admiration bordered
upon the sentimental; and Voltaire had begun to allow himself to hope
that some day, in a provincial German court, there might be found a
crowned head devoting his life to philosophy, good sense, and the love
of letters. Both were to receive a curious awakening.
In 1740 Frederick became King of Prussia, and a new epoch in the
relations between the two men began. The next ten years were, on both
sides, years of growing disillusionment. Voltaire very soon discovered
that his phrase about 'un prince philosophe qui rendra les hommes
heureux' was indeed a phrase and nothing more. His _prince philosophe_
started out on a career of conquest, plunged all Europe into war, and
turned Prussia into a great military power. Frederick, it appeared, was
at once a far more important and a far more dangerous phenomenon than
Voltaire had suspected. And, on the other hand, the matured mind of the
King was not slow to perceive that the enthusiasm of the Prince needed a
good deal of qualification. This change of view, was, indeed, remarkably
rapid. Nothing is more striking than the alteration of the tone in
Frederick's correspondence during the few months which followed his
accession: the voice of the raw and inexperienced youth is heard no
more, and its place is taken--at once and for ever--by the
self-contained caustic utterance of an embittered man of the world. In
this transformation it was only natural that the wondrous figure of
Voltaire should lose some of its glitter--especially since Frederick now
began to have the opportunity of inspecting that figure in the flesh
with his own sharp eyes. The friends met three or four times, and it is
noticeable that after each meeting there is a distinct coolness on the
part of Frederick. He writes with a sudden brusqueness to accuse
Voltaire of showing about his manuscripts, which, he says, had only been
sent him on the condition of _un secret inviolable_. He writes to Jordan
complaining of Voltaire's avarice in very stringent terms. 'Ton avare
boira la lie de son insatiable désir de s'enrichir ... Son apparition de
six jours me coûtera par journée cinq cent cinquante écus. C'est bien
payer un fou; jamais bouffon de grand seigneur n'eut de pareils gages.'
He declares that 'la cervelle du poète est aussi légère que le style de
ses ouvrages,' and remarks sarcastically that he is indeed a man
_extraordinaire en tout_.
Yet, while his opinion of Voltaire's character was rapidly growing more
and more severe, his admiration of his talents remained undiminished.
For, though he had dropped metaphysics when he came to the throne,
Frederick could never drop his passion for French poetry; he recognised
in Voltaire the unapproachable master of that absorbing art; and for
years he had made up his mind that, some day or other, he would
_posséder_--for so he put it--the author of the _Henriade_, would keep
him at Berlin as the brightest ornament of his court, and, above all,
would have him always ready at hand to put the final polish on his own
verses. In the autumn of 1743 it seemed for a moment that his wish would
be gratified. Voltaire spent a visit of several weeks in Berlin; he was
dazzled by the graciousness of his reception and the splendour of his
surroundings; and he began to listen to the honeyed overtures of the
Prussian Majesty. The great obstacle to Frederick's desire was
Voltaire's relationship with Madame du Châtelet. He had lived with her
for more than ten years; he was attached to her by all the ties of
friendship and gratitude; he had constantly declared that he would never
leave her--no, not for all the seductions of princes. She would, it is
true, have been willing to accompany Voltaire to Berlin; but such a
solution would by no means have suited Frederick. He was not fond of
ladies--even of ladies like Madame du Châtelet--learned enough to
translate Newton and to discuss by the hour the niceties of the
Leibnitzian philosophy; and he had determined to _posséder_ Voltaire
either completely or not at all. Voltaire, in spite of repeated
temptations, had remained faithful; but now, for the first time, poor
Madame du Châtelet began to be seriously alarmed. His letters from
Berlin grew fewer and fewer, and more and more ambiguous; she knew
nothing of his plans; 'il est ivre absolument' she burst out in her
distress to d'Argental, one of his oldest friends. By every post she
dreaded to learn at last that he had deserted her for ever. But suddenly
Voltaire returned. The spell of Berlin had been broken, and he was at
her feet once more.
What had happened was highly characteristic both of the Poet and of the
King. Each had tried to play a trick on the other, and each had found
the other out. The French Government had been anxious to obtain an
insight into the diplomatic intentions of Frederick, in an unofficial
way; Voltaire had offered his services, and it had been agreed that he
should write to Frederick declaring that he was obliged to leave France
for a time owing to the hostility of a member of the Government, the
Bishop of Mirepoix, and asking for Frederick's hospitality. Frederick
had not been taken in: though he had not disentangled the whole plot, he
had perceived clearly enough that Voltaire's visit was in reality that
of an agent of the French Government; he also thought he saw an
opportunity of securing the desire of his heart. Voltaire, to give
verisimilitude to his story, had, in his letter to Frederick, loaded the
Bishop of Mirepoix with ridicule and abuse; and Frederick now secretly
sent this letter to Mirepoix himself. His calculation was that Mirepoix
would be so outraged that he would make it impossible for Voltaire ever
to return to France; and in that case--well, Voltaire would have no
other course open to him but to stay where he was, in Berlin, and Madame
du Châtelet would have to make the best of it. Of course, Frederick's
plan failed, and Voltaire was duly informed by Mirepoix of what had
happened. He was naturally very angry. He had been almost induced to
stay in Berlin of his own accord, and now he found that his host had
been attempting, by means of treachery and intrigue, to force him to
stay there whether he liked it or not. It was a long time before he
forgave Frederick. But the King was most anxious to patch up the
quarrel; he still could not abandon the hope of ultimately securing
Voltaire; and besides, he was now possessed by another and a more
immediate desire--to be allowed a glimpse of that famous and scandalous
work which Voltaire kept locked in the innermost drawer of his cabinet
and revealed to none but the most favoured of his intimates--_La
Pucelle_.
Accordingly the royal letters became more frequent and more flattering
than ever; the royal hand cajoled and implored. 'Ne me faites point
injustice sur mon caractère; d'ailleurs il vous est permis de badiner
sur mon sujet comme il vous plaira.' '_La Pucelle! La Pucelle! La
Pucelle!_ et encore _La Pucelle_!' he exclaims. 'Pour l'amour de Dieu,
ou plus encore pour l'amour de vous-même, envoyez-la-moi.' And at last
Voltaire was softened. He sent off a few fragments of his
_Pucelle_--just enough to whet Frederick's appetite--and he declared
himself reconciled, 'Je vous ai aimé tendrement,' he wrote in March
1749; 'j'ai été fâché contre vous, je vous ai pardonné, et actuellement
je vous aime à la folie.' Within a year of this date his situation had
undergone a complete change. Madame du Châtelet was dead; and his
position at Versailles, in spite of the friendship of Madame de
Pompadour, had become almost as impossible as he had pretended it to
have been in 1743. Frederick eagerly repeated his invitation; and this
time Voltaire did not refuse. He was careful to make a very good
bargain; obliged Frederick to pay for his journey; and arrived at Berlin
in July 1750. He was given rooms in the royal palaces both at Berlin and
Potsdam; he was made a Court Chamberlain, and received the Order of
Merit, together with a pension of £800 a year. These arrangements caused
considerable amusement in Paris; and for some days hawkers, carrying
prints of Voltaire dressed in furs, and crying 'Voltaire le prussien!
Six sols le fameux prussien!' were to be seen walking up and down the
Quays.
The curious drama that followed, with its farcical [Greek: peripeteia]
and its tragi-comic _dénouement_, can hardly be understood without a
brief consideration of the feelings and intentions of the two chief
actors in it. The position of Frederick is comparatively plain. He had
now completely thrown aside the last lingering remnants of any esteem
which he may once have entertained for the character of Voltaire. He
frankly thought him a scoundrel. In September 1749, less than a year
before Voltaire's arrival, and at the very period of Frederick's most
urgent invitations, we find him using the following language in a letter
to Algarotti: 'Voltaire vient de faire un tour qui est indigne.' (He had
been showing to all his friends a garbled copy of one of Frederick's
letters).
Il mériterait d'être fleurdelisé au Parnasse. C'est bien dommage
qu'une âme aussi lâche soit unie à un aussi beau génie. Il a les
gentillesses et les malices d'un singe. Je vous conterai ce que
c'est, lorsque je vous reverrai; cependant je ne ferai semblant de
rien, car j'en ai besoin pour l'étude de l'élocution française. On
peut apprendre de bonnes choses d'un scélérat. Je veux savoir son
français; que m'importe sa morale? Cet homme a trouvé le moyen de
réunir tous les contraires. On admire son esprit, en même temps
qu'on méprise son caractère.
There is no ambiguity about this. Voltaire was a scoundrel; but he was a
scoundrel of genius. He would make the best possible teacher of
_l'élocution française_; therefore it was necessary that he should come
and live in Berlin. But as for anything more--as for any real
interchange of sympathies, any genuine feeling of friendliness, of
respect, or even of regard--all that was utterly out of the question.
The avowal is cynical, no doubt; but it is at any rate straightforward,
and above all it is peculiarly devoid of any trace of self-deception. In
the face of these trenchant sentences, the view of Frederick's attitude
which is suggested so assiduously by Carlyle--that he was the victim of
an elevated misapprehension, that he was always hoping for the best, and
that, when the explosion came he was very much surprised and profoundly
disappointed--becomes obviously untenable. If any man ever acted with
his eyes wide open, it was Frederick when he invited Voltaire to Berlin.
Yet, though that much is clear, the letter to Algarotti betrays, in more
than one direction, a very singular state of mind. A warm devotion to
_l'élocution française_ is easy enough to understand; but Frederick's
devotion was much more than warm; it was so absorbing and so intense
that it left him no rest until, by hook or by crook, by supplication, or
by trickery, or by paying down hard cash, he had obtained the close and
constant proximity of--what?--of a man whom he himself described as a
'singe' and a 'scélérat,' a man of base soul and despicable character.
And Frederick appears to see nothing surprising in this. He takes it
quite as a matter of course that he should be, not merely willing, but
delighted to run all the risks involved by Voltaire's undoubted roguery,
so long as he can be sure of benefiting from Voltaire's no less
undoubted mastery of French versification. This is certainly strange;
but the explanation of it lies in the extraordinary vogue--a vogue,
indeed, so extraordinary that it is very difficult for the modern reader
to realise it--enjoyed throughout Europe by French culture and
literature during the middle years of the eighteenth century. Frederick
was merely an extreme instance of a universal fact. Like all Germans of
any education, he habitually wrote and spoke in French; like every lady
and gentleman from Naples to Edinburgh, his life was regulated by the
social conventions of France; like every amateur of letters from Madrid
to St. Petersburg, his whole conception of literary taste, his whole
standard of literary values, was French. To him, as to the vast majority
of his contemporaries, the very essence of civilisation was concentrated
in French literature, and especially in French poetry; and French poetry
meant to him, as to his contemporaries, that particular kind of French
poetry which had come into fashion at the court of Louis XIV. For this
curious creed was as narrow as it was all-pervading. The _Grand Siècle_
was the Church Infallible; and it was heresy to doubt the Gospel of
Boileau.
Frederick's library, still preserved at Potsdam, shows us what
literature meant in those days to a cultivated man: it is composed
entirely of the French Classics, of the works of Voltaire, and of the
masterpieces of antiquity translated into eighteenth-century French. But
Frederick was not content with mere appreciation; he too would create;
he would write alexandrines on the model of Racine, and madrigals after
the manner of Chaulieu; he would press in person into the sacred
sanctuary, and burn incense with his own hands upon the inmost shrine.
It was true that he was a foreigner; it was true that his knowledge of
the French language was incomplete and incorrect; but his sense of his
own ability urged him forward, and his indefatigable pertinacity kept
him at his strange task throughout the whole of his life. He filled
volumes, and the contents of those volumes afford probably the most
complete illustration in literature of the very trite proverb--_Poeta
nascitur, non fit_. The spectacle of that heavy German Muse, with her
feet crammed into pointed slippers, executing, with incredible
conscientiousness, now the stately measure of a Versailles minuet, and
now the spritely steps of a Parisian jig, would be either ludicrous or
pathetic--one hardly knows which--were it not so certainly neither the
one nor the other, but simply dreary with an unutterable dreariness,
from which the eyes of men avert themselves in shuddering dismay.
Frederick himself felt that there was something wrong--something, but
not really very much. All that was wanted was a little expert advice;
and obviously Voltaire was the man to supply it--Voltaire, the one true
heir of the Great Age, the dramatist who had revived the glories of
Racine (did not Frederick's tears flow almost as copiously over
_Mahomet_ as over _Britannicus_?), the epic poet who had eclipsed Homer
and Virgil (had not Frederick every right to judge, since he had read
the 'Iliad' in French prose and the 'Aeneid' in French verse?), the
lyric master whose odes and whose epistles occasionally even surpassed
(Frederick Confessed it with amazement) those of the Marquis de la Fare.
Voltaire, there could be no doubt, would do just what was needed; he
would know how to squeeze in a little further the waist of the German
Calliope, to apply with his deft fingers precisely the right dab of
rouge to her cheeks, to instil into her movements the last _nuances_ of
correct deportment. And, if he did that, of what consequence were the
blemishes of his personal character? 'On peut apprendre de bonnes choses
d'un scélérat.'
And, besides, though Voltaire might be a rogue, Frederick felt quite
convinced that he could keep him in order. A crack or two of the
master's whip--a coldness in the royal demeanour, a hint at a stoppage
of the pension--and the monkey would put an end to his tricks soon
enough. It never seems to have occurred to Frederick that the possession
of genius might imply a quality of spirit which was not that of an
ordinary man. This was his great, his fundamental error. It was the
ingenuous error of a cynic. He knew that he was under no delusion as to
Voltaire's faults, and so he supposed that he could be under no delusion
as to his merits. He innocently imagined that the capacity for great
writing was something that could be as easily separated from the owner
of it as a hat or a glove. 'C'est bien dommage qu'une âme aussi lâche
soit unie à un aussi beau génie.' _C'est bien dommage_!--as if there was
nothing more extraordinary in such a combination than that of a pretty
woman and an ugly dress. And so Frederick held his whip a little
tighter, and reminded himself once more that, in spite of that _beau
génie_, it was a monkey that he had to deal with. But he was wrong: it
was not a monkey; it was a devil, which is a very different thing.
A devil--or perhaps an angel? One cannot be quite sure. For, amid the
complexities of that extraordinary spirit, where good and evil were so
mysteriously interwoven, where the elements of darkness and the elements
of light lay crowded together in such ever-deepening ambiguity, fold
within fold, the clearer the vision the greater the bewilderment, the
more impartial the judgment the profounder the doubt. But one thing at
least is certain: that spirit, whether it was admirable or whether it
was odious, was moved by a terrific force. Frederick had failed to
realise this; and indeed, though Voltaire was fifty-six when he went to
Berlin, and though his whole life had been spent in a blaze of
publicity, there was still not one of his contemporaries who understood
the true nature of his genius; it was perhaps hidden even from himself.
He had reached the threshold of old age, and his life's work was still
before him; it was not as a writer of tragedies and epics that he was to
take his place in the world. Was he, in the depths of his consciousness,
aware that this was so? Did some obscure instinct urge him forward, at
this late hour, to break with the ties of a lifetime, and rush forth
into the unknown?
What his precise motives were in embarking upon the Berlin adventure it
is very difficult to say. It is true that he was disgusted with
Paris--he was ill-received at Court, and he was pestered by endless
literary quarrels and jealousies; it would be very pleasant to show his
countrymen that he had other strings to his bow, that, if they did not
appreciate him, Frederick the Great did. It is true, too, that he
admired Frederick's intellect, and that he was flattered by his favour.
'Il avait de l'esprit,' he said afterwards, 'des grâces, et, de plus, il
était roi; ce qui fait toujours une grande séduction, attendu la
faiblesse humaine.' His vanity could not resist the prestige of a royal
intimacy; and no doubt he relished to the full even the increased
consequence which came to him with his Chamberlain's key and his
order--to say nothing of the addition of £800 to his income. Yet, on the
other hand, he was very well aware that he was exchanging freedom for
servitude, and that he was entering into a bargain with a man who would
make quite sure that he was getting his money's worth; and he knew in
his heart that he had something better to do than to play, however
successfully, the part of a courtier. Nor was he personally attached to
Frederick; he was personally attached to no one on earth. Certainly he
had never been a man of feeling, and now that he was old and hardened by
the uses of the world he had grown to be completely what in essence he
always was--a fighter, without tenderness, without scruples, and without
remorse. No, he went to Berlin for his own purposes--however dubious
those purposes may have been.
And it is curious to observe that in his correspondence with his niece,
Madame Denis, whom he had left behind him at the head of his Paris
establishment and in whom he confided--in so far as he can be said to
have confided in anyone--he repeatedly states that there is nothing
permanent about his visit to Berlin. At first he declares that he is
only making a stay of a few weeks with Frederick, that he is going on to
Italy to visit 'sa Sainteté' and to inspect 'la ville souterraine,' that
he will be back in Paris in the autumn. The autumn comes, and the roads
are too muddy to travel by; he must wait till the winter, when they will
be frozen hard. Winter comes, and it is too cold to move; but he will
certainly return in the spring. Spring comes, and he is on the point of
finishing his _Siècle de Louis XIV_.; he really must wait just a few
weeks more. The book is published; but then how can he appear in Paris
until he is quite sure of its success? And so he lingers on, delaying
and prevaricating, until a whole year has passed, and still he lingers
on, still he is on the point of going, and still he does not go.
Meanwhile, to all appearances, he was definitely fixed, a salaried
official, at Frederick's court; and he was writing to all his other
friends, to assure them that he had never been so happy, that he could
see no reason why he should ever come away. What were his true
intentions? Could he himself have said? Had he perhaps, in some secret
corner of his brain, into which even he hardly dared to look, a
premonition of the future? At times, in this Berlin adventure, he seems
to resemble some great buzzing fly, shooting suddenly into a room
through an open window and dashing frantically from side to side; when
all at once, as suddenly, he swoops away and out through another window
which opens in quite a different direction, towards wide and flowery
fields; so that perhaps the reckless creature knew where he was going
after all.
In any case, it is evident to the impartial observer that Voltaire's
visit could only have ended as it did--in an explosion. The elements of
the situation were too combustible for any other conclusion. When two
confirmed egotists decide, for purely selfish reasons, to set up house
together, everyone knows what will happen. For some time their sense of
mutual advantage may induce them to tolerate each other, but sooner or
later human nature will assert itself, and the _ménage_ will break up.
And, with Voltaire and Frederick, the difficulties inherent in all such
cases were intensified by the fact that the relationship between them
was, in effect, that of servant and master; that Voltaire, under a very
thin disguise, was a paid menial, while Frederick, condescend as he
might, was an autocrat whose will was law. Thus the two famous and
perhaps mythical sentences, invariably repeated by historians of the
incident, about orange-skins and dirty linen, do in fact sum up the gist
of the matter. 'When one has sucked the orange, one throws away the
skin,' somebody told Voltaire that the King had said, on being asked how
much longer he would put up with the poet's vagaries. And Frederick, on
his side, was informed that Voltaire, when a batch of the royal verses
were brought to him for correction, had burst out with 'Does the man
expect me to go on washing his dirty linen for ever?' Each knew well
enough the weak spot in his position, and each was acutely and
uncomfortably conscious that the other knew it too. Thus, but a very few
weeks after Voltaire's arrival, little clouds of discord become visible
on the horizon; electrical discharges of irritability began to take
place, growing more and more frequent and violent as time goes on; and
one can overhear the pot and the kettle, in strictest privacy, calling
each other black. 'The monster,' whispers Voltaire to Madame Denis, 'he
opens all our letters in the post'--Voltaire, whose light-handedness
with other people's correspondence was only too notorious. 'The monkey,'
mutters Frederick, 'he shows my private letters to his
friends'--Frederick, who had thought nothing of betraying Voltaire's
letters to the Bishop of Mirepoix. 'How happy I should be here,'
exclaims the callous old poet, 'but for one thing--his Majesty is
utterly heartless!' And meanwhile Frederick, who had never let a
farthing escape from his close fist without some very good reason, was
busy concocting an epigram upon the avarice of Voltaire.
It was, indeed, Voltaire's passion for money which brought on the first
really serious storm. Three months after his arrival in Berlin, the
temptation to increase his already considerable fortune by a stroke of
illegal stock-jobbing proved too strong for him; he became involved in a
series of shady financial transactions with a Jew; he quarrelled with
the Jew; there was an acrimonious lawsuit, with charges and
countercharges of the most discreditable kind; and, though the Jew lost
his case on a technical point, the poet certainly did not leave the
court without a stain upon his character. Among other misdemeanours, it
is almost certain--the evidence is not quite conclusive--that he
committed forgery in order to support a false oath. Frederick was
furious, and for a moment was on the brink of dismissing Voltaire from
Berlin. He would have been wise if he had done so. But he could not part
with his _beau génie_ so soon. He cracked his whip, and, setting the
monkey to stand in the corner, contented himself with a shrug of the
shoulders and the exclamation 'C'est l'affaire d'un fripon qui a voulu
tromper un filou.' A few weeks later the royal favour shone forth once
more, and Voltaire, who had been hiding himself in a suburban villa,
came out and basked again in those refulgent beams.
And the beams were decidedly refulgent--so much so, in fact, that they
almost satisfied even the vanity of Voltaire. Almost, but not quite.
For, though his glory was great, though he was the centre of all men's
admiration, courted by nobles, flattered by princesses--there is a
letter from one of them, a sister of Frederick's, still extant, wherein
the trembling votaress ventures to praise the great man's works, which,
she says, 'vous rendent si célèbre et immortel'--though he had ample
leisure for his private activities, though he enjoyed every day the
brilliant conversation of the King, though he could often forget for
weeks together that he was the paid servant of a jealous despot--yet, in
spite of all, there was a crumpled rose-leaf amid the silken sheets, and
he lay awake o' nights. He was not the only Frenchman at Frederick's
court. That monarch had surrounded himself with a small group of
persons--foreigners for the most part--whose business it was to instruct
him when he wished to improve his mind, to flatter him when he was out
of temper, and to entertain him when he was bored. There was hardly one
of them that was not thoroughly second-rate. Algarotti was an elegant
dabbler in scientific matters--he had written a book to explain Newton
to the ladies; d'Argens was an amiable and erudite writer of a dull
free-thinking turn; Chasot was a retired military man with too many
debts, and Darget was a good-natured secretary with too many love
affairs; La Mettrie was a doctor who had been exiled from France for
atheism and bad manners; and Pöllnitz was a decaying baron who, under
stress of circumstances, had unfortunately been obliged to change his
religion six times.
These were the boon companions among whom Frederick chose to spend his
leisure hours. Whenever he had nothing better to do, he would exchange
rhymed epigrams with Algarotti, or discuss the Jewish religion with
d'Argens, or write long improper poems about Darget, in the style of _La
Pucelle_. Or else he would summon La Mettrie, who would forthwith prove
the irrefutability of materialism in a series of wild paradoxes, shout
with laughter, suddenly shudder and cross himself on upsetting the salt,
and eventually pursue his majesty with his buffooneries into a place
where even royal persons are wont to be left alone. At other times
Frederick would amuse himself by first cutting down the pension of
Pöllnitz, who was at the moment a Lutheran, and then writing long and
serious letters to him suggesting that if he would only become a
Catholic again he might be made a Silesian Abbot. Strangely enough,
Frederick was not popular, and one or other of the inmates of his little
menagerie was constantly escaping and running away. Darget and Chasot
both succeeded in getting through the wires; they obtained leave to
visit Paris, and stayed there. Poor d'Argens often tried to follow their
example; more than once he set off for France, secretly vowing never to
return; but he had no money, Frederick was blandishing, and the wretch
was always lured back to captivity. As for La Mettrie, he made his
escape in a different manner--by dying after supper one evening of a
surfeit of pheasant pie. 'Jésus! Marie!' he gasped, as he felt the pains
of death upon him. 'Ah!' said a priest who had been sent for, 'vous
voilà enfin retourné à ces noms consolateurs.' La Mettrie, with an oath,
expired; and Frederick, on hearing of this unorthodox conclusion,
remarked, 'J'en suis bien aise, pour le repos de son âme.'
Among this circle of down-at-heel eccentrics there was a single figure
whose distinction and respectability stood out in striking contrast from
the rest--that of Maupertuis, who had been, since 1745, the President of
the Academy of Sciences at Berlin. Maupertuis has had an unfortunate
fate: he was first annihilated by the ridicule of Voltaire, and then
recreated by the humour of Carlyle; but he was an ambitious man, very
anxious to be famous, and his desire has been gratified in over-flowing
measure. During his life he was chiefly known for his voyage to Lapland,
and his observations there, by which he was able to substantiate the
Newtonian doctrine of the flatness of the earth at the poles. He
possessed considerable scientific attainments, he was honest, he was
energetic; he appeared to be just the man to revive the waning glories
of Prussian science; and when Frederick succeeded in inducing him to
come to Berlin as President of his Academy the choice seemed amply
justified. Maupertuis had, moreover, some pretensions to wit; and in his
earlier days his biting and elegant sarcasms had more than once
overwhelmed his scientific adversaries. Such accomplishments suited
Frederick admirably. Maupertuis, he declared, was an _homme d'esprit_,
and the happy President became a constant guest at the royal
supper-parties. It was the happy--the too happy--President who was the
rose-leaf in the bed of Voltaire. The two men had known each other
slightly for many years, and had always expressed the highest admiration
for each other; but their mutual amiability was now to be put to a
severe test. The sagacious Buffon observed the danger from afar: 'ces
deux hommes,' he wrote to a friend, 'ne sont pas faits pour demeurer
ensemble dans la même chambre.' And indeed to the vain and sensitive
poet, uncertain of Frederick's cordiality, suspicious of hidden enemies,
intensely jealous of possible rivals, the spectacle of Maupertuis at
supper, radiant, at his ease, obviously protected, obviously superior to
the shady mediocrities who sat around--that sight was gall and wormwood;
and he looked closer, with a new malignity; and then those piercing eyes
began to make discoveries, and that relentless brain began to do its
work.
Maupertuis had very little judgment; so far from attempting to
conciliate Voltaire, he was rash enough to provoke hostilities. It was
very natural that he should have lost his temper. He had been for five
years the dominating figure in the royal circle, and now suddenly he was
deprived of his pre-eminence and thrown completely into the shade. Who
could attend to Maupertuis while Voltaire was talking?--Voltaire, who as
obviously outshone Maupertuis as Maupertuis outshone La Mettrie and
Darget and the rest. In his exasperation the President went to the
length of openly giving his protection to a disreputable literary man,
La Beaumelle, who was a declared enemy of Voltaire. This meant war, and
war was not long in coming.
Some years previously Maupertuis had, as he believed, discovered an
important mathematical law--the 'principle of least action.' The law
was, in fact, important, and has had a fruitful history in the
development of mechanical theory; but, as Mr. Jourdain has shown in a
recent monograph, Maupertuis enunciated it incorrectly without realising
its true import, and a far more accurate and scientific statement of it
was given, within a few months, by Euler. Maupertuis, however, was very
proud of his discovery, which, he considered, embodied one of the
principal reasons for believing in the existence of God; and he was
therefore exceedingly angry when, shortly after Voltaire's arrival in
Berlin, a Swiss mathematician, Koenig, published a polite memoir
attacking both its accuracy and its originality, and quoted in support
of his contention an unpublished letter by Leibnitz, in which the law
was more exactly expressed. Instead of arguing upon the merits of the
case, Maupertuis declared that the letter of Leibnitz was a forgery, and
that therefore Koenig's remarks deserved no further consideration. When
Koenig expostulated, Maupertuis decided upon a more drastic step. He
summoned a meeting of the Berlin Academy of Sciences, of which Koenig
was a member, laid the case before it, and moved that it should solemnly
pronounce Koenig a forger, and the letter of Leibnitz supposititious and
false. The members of the Academy were frightened; their pensions
depended upon the President's good will; and even the illustrious Euler
was not ashamed to take part in this absurd and disgraceful
condemnation.
Voltaire saw at once that his opportunity had come. Maupertuis had put
himself utterly and irretrievably in the wrong. He was wrong in
attributing to his discovery a value which it did not possess; he was
wrong in denying the authenticity of the Leibnitz letter; above all he
was wrong in treating a purely scientific question as the proper subject
for the disciplinary jurisdiction of an Academy. If Voltaire struck now,
he would have his enemy on the hip. There was only one consideration to
give him pause, and that was a grave one: to attack Maupertuis upon this
matter was, in effect, to attack the King. Not only was Frederick
certainly privy to Maupertuis' action, but he was extremely sensitive of
the reputation of his Academy and of its President, and he would
certainly consider any interference on the part of Voltaire, who himself
drew his wages from the royal purse, as a flagrant act of disloyalty.
But Voltaire decided to take the risk. He had now been more than two
years in Berlin, and the atmosphere of a Court was beginning to weigh
upon his spirit; he was restless, he was reckless, he was spoiling for a
fight; he would take on Maupertuis singly or Maupertuis and Frederick
combined--he did not much care which, and in any case he flattered
himself that he would settle the hash of the President.
As a preparatory measure, he withdrew all his spare cash from Berlin,
and invested it with the Duke of Wurtemberg. 'Je mets tout doucement
ordre à mes affaires,' he told Madame Denis. Then, on September 18,
1752, there appeared in the papers a short article entitled 'Réponse
d'un Académicien de Berlin à un Académicien de Paris.' It was a
statement, deadly in its bald simplicity, its studied coldness, its
concentrated force, of Koenig's case against Maupertuis. The President
must have turned pale as he read it; but the King turned crimson. The
terrible indictment could, of course only have been written by one man,
and that man was receiving a royal pension of £800 a year and carrying
about a Chamberlain's gold key in his pocket. Frederick flew to his
writing-table, and composed an indignant pamphlet which he caused to be
published with the Prussian arms on the title-page. It was a feeble
work, full of exaggerated praises of Maupertuis, and of clumsy
invectives against Voltaire: the President's reputation was gravely
compared to that of Homer; the author of the 'Réponse d'un Académicien
de Berlin' was declared to be a 'faiseur de libelles sans génie,' an
'imposteur effronté,' a 'malheureux écrivain' while the 'Réponse' itself
was a 'grossièreté plate,' whose publication was an 'action malicieuse,
lâche, infâme,' a 'brigandage affreux.' The presence of the royal
insignia only intensified the futility of the outburst. 'L'aigle, le
sceptre, et la couronne,' wrote Voltaire to Madame Denis, 'sont bien
étonnés de se trouver là.' But one thing was now certain: the King had
joined the fray. Voltaire's blood was up, and he was not sorry. A kind
of exaltation seized him; from this moment his course was clear--he
would do as much damage as he could, and then leave Prussia for ever.
And it so happened that just then an unexpected opportunity occurred
for one of those furious onslaughts so dear to his heart, with that
weapon which he knew so well how to wield. 'Je n'ai point de sceptre,'
he ominously shot out to Madame Denis, 'mais j'ai une plume.'
Meanwhile the life of the Court--which passed for the most part at
Potsdam, in the little palace of Sans Souci which Frederick had built
for himself--proceeded on its accustomed course. It was a singular life,
half military, half monastic, rigid, retired, from which all the
ordinary pleasures of society were strictly excluded. 'What do you do
here?' one of the royal princes was once asked. 'We conjugate the verb
_s'ennuyer_,' was the reply. But, wherever he might be, that was a verb
unknown to Voltaire. Shut up all day in the strange little room, still
preserved for the eyes of the curious, with its windows opening on the
formal garden, and its yellow walls thickly embossed with the brightly
coloured shapes of fruits, flowers, birds, and apes, the indefatigable
old man worked away at his histories, his tragedies, his _Pucelle_, and
his enormous correspondence. He was, of course, ill--very ill; he was
probably, in fact, upon the brink of death; but he had grown accustomed
to that situation; and the worse he grew the more furiously he worked.
He was a victim, he declared, of erysipelas, dysentery, and scurvy; he
was constantly attacked by fever, and all his teeth had fallen out. But
he continued to work. On one occasion a friend visited him, and found
him in bed. 'J'ai quatre maladies mortelles,' he wailed. 'Pourtant,'
remarked the friend, 'vous avez l'oeil fort bon.' Voltaire leapt up from
the pillows: 'Ne savez-vous pas,' he shouted, 'que les scorbutiques
meurent l'oeil enflammé?' When the evening came it was time to dress,
and, in all the pomp of flowing wig and diamond order, to proceed to the
little music-room, where his Majesty, after the business of the day, was
preparing to relax himself upon the flute. The orchestra was gathered
together; the audience was seated; the concerto began. And then the
sounds of beauty flowed and trembled, and seemed, for a little space,
to triumph over the pains of living and the hard hearts of men; and the
royal master poured out his skill in some long and elaborate cadenza,
and the adagio came, the marvellous adagio, and the conqueror of
Rossbach drew tears from the author of _Candide_. But a moment later it
was supper-time; and the night ended in the oval dining-room, amid
laughter and champagne, the ejaculations of La Mettrie, the epigrams of
Maupertuis, the sarcasms of Frederick, and the devastating coruscations
of Voltaire.
Yet, in spite of all the jests and roses, everyone could hear the
rumbling of the volcano under the ground. Everyone could hear, but
nobody would listen; the little flames leapt up through the surface, but
still the gay life went on; and then the irruption came. Voltaire's
enemy had written a book. In the intervals of his more serious labours,
the President had put together a series of 'Letters,' in which a number
of miscellaneous scientific subjects were treated in a mildly
speculative and popular style. The volume was rather dull, and very
unimportant; but it happened to appear at this particular moment, and
Voltaire pounced upon it with the swift swoop of a hawk on a mouse. The
famous _Diatribe du Docteur Akakia_ is still fresh with a fiendish
gaiety after a hundred and fifty years; but to realise to the full the
skill and malice which went to the making of it, one must at least have
glanced at the flat insipid production which called it forth, and noted
with what a diabolical art the latent absurdities in poor Maupertuis'
_rêveries_ have been detected, dragged forth into the light of day, and
nailed to the pillory of an immortal ridicule. The _Diatribe_, however,
is not all mere laughter; there is a real criticism in it, too. For
instance, it was not simply a farcical exaggeration to say that
Maupertuis had set out to prove the existence of God by 'A plus B
divided by Z'; in substance, the charge was both important and well
founded. 'Lorsque la métaphysique entre dans la géometrie,' Voltaire
wrote in a private letter some months afterwards, 'c'est Arimane qui
entre dans le royaume d'Oromasde, et qui y apporte des ténèbres'; and
Maupertuis had in fact vitiated his treatment of the 'principle of
least action' by his metaphysical pre-occupations. Indeed, all through
Voltaire's pamphlet, there is an implied appeal to true scientific
principles, an underlying assertion of the paramount importance of the
experimental method, a consistent attack upon _a priori_ reasoning,
loose statement, and vague conjecture. But of course, mixed with all
this, and covering it all, there is a bubbling, sparkling fountain of
effervescent raillery--cruel, personal, insatiable--the raillery of a
demon with a grudge. The manuscript was shown to Frederick, who laughed
till the tears ran down his cheeks. But, between his gasps, he forbade
Voltaire to publish it on pain of his most terrible displeasure.
Naturally Voltaire was profuse with promises, and a few days later,
under a royal licence obtained for another work, the little book
appeared in print. Frederick still managed to keep his wrath within
bounds: he collected all the copies of the edition and had them
privately destroyed; he gave a furious wigging to Voltaire; and he
flattered himself that he had heard the last of the business.
Ne vous embarrassez de rien, mon cher Maupertuis [he wrote to the
President in his singular orthography]; l'affaire des libelles est
finie. J'ai parlé si vrai à l'hôme, je lui ai lavé si bien la tête
que je ne crois pas qu'il y retourne, et je connais son âme lache,
incapable de sentiments d'honneur. Je l'ai intimidé du côté de la
boursse, ce qui a fait tout l'effet que j'attendais. Je lui ai
déclaré enfin nettement que ma maison devait être un sanctuaire et
non une retraite de brigands ou de célérats qui distillent des
poissons.
Apparently it did not occur to Frederick that this declaration had come
a little late in the day. Meanwhile Maupertuis, overcome by illness and
by rage, had taken to his bed. 'Un peu trop d'amour-propre,' Frederick
wrote to Darget, 'l'a rendu trop sensible aux manoeuvres d'un singe
qu'il devait mépriser après qu'on l'avait fouetté.' But now the monkey
_had_ been whipped, and doubtless all would be well. It seems strange
that Frederick should still, after more than two years of close
observation, have had no notion of the material he was dealing with. He
might as well have supposed that he could stop a mountain torrent in
spate with a wave of his hand, as have imagined that he could impose
obedience upon Voltaire in such a crisis by means of a lecture and a
threat 'du côté de la boursse.' Before the month was out all Germany was
swarming with _Akakias_; thousands of copies were being printed in
Holland; and editions were going off in Paris like hot cakes. It is
difficult to withold one's admiration from the audacious old spirit who
thus, on the mere strength of his mother-wits, dared to defy the enraged
master of a powerful state. 'Votre effronterie m'étonne,' fulminated
Frederick in a furious note, when he suddenly discovered that all Europe
was ringing with the absurdity of the man whom he had chosen to be the
President of his favourite Academy, whose cause he had publicly
espoused, and whom he had privately assured of his royal protection.
'Ah! Mon Dieu, Sire,' scribbled Voltaire on the same sheet of paper,
'dans l'état où je suis!' (He was, of course, once more dying.) 'Quoi!
vous me jugeriez sans entendre! Je demande justice et la mort.'
Frederick replied by having copies of _Akakia_ burnt by the common
hangman in the streets of Berlin. Voltaire thereupon returned his Order,
his gold key, and his pension. It might have been supposed that the
final rupture had now really come at last. But three months elapsed
before Frederick could bring himself to realise that all was over, and
to agree to the departure of his extraordinary guest. Carlyle's
suggestion that this last delay arose from the unwillingness of Voltaire
to go, rather than from Frederick's desire to keep him, is plainly
controverted by the facts. The King not only insisted on Voltaire's
accepting once again the honours which he had surrendered, but actually
went so far as to write him a letter of forgiveness and reconciliation.
But the poet would not relent; there was a last week of suppers at
Potsdam--'soupers de Damoclès' Voltaire called them; and then, on March
26, 1753, the two men parted for ever.
The storm seemed to be over; but the tail of it was still hanging in the
wind. Voltaire, on his way to the waters of Plombières, stopped at
Leipzig, where he could not resist, in spite of his repeated promises to
the contrary, the temptation to bring out a new and enlarged edition of
_Akakia_. Upon this Maupertuis utterly lost his head: he wrote to
Voltaire, threatening him with personal chastisement. Voltaire issued
yet another edition of _Akakia_, appended a somewhat unauthorised
version of the President's letter, and added that if the dangerous and
cruel man really persisted in his threat he would be received with a
vigorous discharge from those instruments of intimate utility which
figure so freely in the comedies of Molière. This stroke was the _coup
de grâce_ of Maupertuis. Shattered in body and mind, he dragged himself
from Berlin to die at last in Basle under the ministration of a couple
of Capuchins and a Protestant valet reading aloud the Genevan Bible. In
the meantime Frederick had decided on a violent measure. He had suddenly
remembered that Voltaire had carried off with him one of the very few
privately printed copies of those poetical works upon which he had spent
so much devoted labour; it occurred to him that they contained several
passages of a highly damaging kind; and he could feel no certainty that
those passages would not be given to the world by the malicious
Frenchman. Such, at any rate, were his own excuses for the step which he
now took; but it seems possible that he was at least partly swayed by
feelings of resentment and revenge which had been rendered
uncontrollable by the last onslaught upon Maupertuis. Whatever may have
been his motives, it is certain that he ordered the Prussian Resident in
Frankfort, which was Voltaire's next stopping-place, to hold the poet in
arrest until he delivered over the royal volume. A multitude of strange
blunders and ludicrous incidents followed, upon which much controversial
and patriotic ink has been spilt by a succession of French and German
biographers. To an English reader it is clear that in this little comedy
of errors none of the parties concerned can escape from blame--that
Voltaire was hysterical, undignified, and untruthful, that the Prussian
Resident was stupid and domineering, that Frederick was careless in his
orders and cynical as to their results. Nor, it is to be hoped, need any
Englishman be reminded that the consequences of a system of government
in which the arbitrary will of an individual takes the place of the rule
of law are apt to be disgraceful and absurd.
After five weeks' detention at Frankfort, Voltaire was free--free in
every sense of the word--free from the service of Kings and the clutches
of Residents, free in his own mind, free to shape his own destiny. He
hesitated for several months, and then settled down by the Lake of
Geneva. There the fires, which had lain smouldering so long in the
profundities of his spirit, flared up, and flamed over Europe, towering
and inextinguishable. In a few years letters began to flow once more to
and from Berlin. At first the old grievances still rankled; but in time
even the wrongs of Maupertuis and the misadventures of Frankfort were
almost forgotten. Twenty years passed, and the King of Prussia was
submitting his verses as anxiously as ever to Voltaire, whose
compliments and cajoleries were pouring out in their accustomed stream.
But their relationship was no longer that of master and pupil, courtier
and King; it was that of two independent and equal powers. Even
Frederick the Great was forced to see at last in the Patriarch of Ferney
something more than a monkey with a genius for French versification. He
actually came to respect the author of _Akakia_, and to cherish his
memory. 'Je lui fais tous les matins ma prière,' he told d'Alembert,
when Voltaire had been two years in the grave; 'je lui dis, Divin
Voltaire, _ora pro nobis_.'
1915.