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.