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_By S. G. Tallentyre_
The Life of Voltaire
The Life of Mirabeau
Matthew Hargraves
THE LIFE
OF
VOLTAIRE
[Illustration: _Voltaire from the statue by Houdon at the Comédie
Française._]
THE LIFE
OF
VOLTAIRE
BY
S. G. TALLENTYRE
AUTHOR OF “THE WOMEN OF THE SALONS,” ETC.
“_Je n’ai point de sceptre, mais j’ai une plume._”--VOLTAIRE
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
THIRD EDITION
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
The Knickerbocker Press
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE BOYHOOD 1
II. EPIGRAMS AND THE BASTILLE 16
III. “ŒDIPE,” AND THE JOURNEY TO HOLLAND 25
IV. THE “HENRIADE,” AND A VISIT TO COURT 37
V. ENGLAND, AND THE “ENGLISH LETTERS” 48
VI. PLAYS, A BURLESQUE, AND THE APPEARANCE OF THE “LETTERS” 60
VII. MADAME DU CHÂTELET 74
VIII. A YEAR OF STORMS 86
IX. WORK AT CIREY 96
X. PLEASURE AT CIREY 106
XI. THE AFFAIR DESFONTAINES 117
XII. FLYING VISITS TO FREDERICK 127
XIII. TWO PLAYS AND A FAILURE 137
XIV. VOLTAIRE AS DIPLOMATIST AND COURTIER 149
XV. THE POPE, THE POMPADOUR, AND “THE TEMPLE OF GLORY” 159
XVI. THE ACADEMY, AND A VISIT 167
XVII. COURT DISFAVOUR, AND HIDING AT SCEAUX 175
XVIII. THE MARQUIS DE SAINT-LAMBERT 183
XIX. THE DEATH OF MADAME DU CHÂTELET 194
XX. PARIS, “ORESTE” AND “ROME SAUVÉE” 206
XXI. GLAMOUR 221
XXII. THE RIFT WITHIN THE LUTE 233
XXIII. THE QUARREL WITH MAUPERTUIS 249
XXIV. THE FLIGHT FROM PRUSSIA 265
XXV. THE COMEDY OF FRANKFORT 274
XXVI. THE “ESSAY ON THE MANNERS AND MIND OF NATIONS” 286
XXVII. THE ARRIVAL IN SWITZERLAND 296
XXVIII. THE DÉLICES, AND THE “POEM ON THE DISASTER OF LISBON” 307
XXIX. “NATURAL LAW,” THE VISIT OF D’ALEMBERT, AND THE AFFAIR OF BYNG 318
XXX. THE INTERFERENCE IN THE SEVEN YEARS’ WAR, THE
“GENEVA” ARTICLE, AND LIFE AT DÉLICES 329
XXXI. “THE LITERARY WAR,” AND THE PURCHASE OF FERNEY AND TOURNEY 344
XXXII. FERNEY 356
XXXIII. “CANDIDE,” AND “ÉCRASEZ L’INFÂME” 369
XXXIV. THE BATTLE OF PARTICLES, AND THE BATTLE OF COMEDIES 384
XXXV. BUILDING A CHURCH, AND ENDOWING A DAUGHTER 401
XXXVI. THE AFFAIR OF CALAS 413
XXXVII. THE “TREATISE ON TOLERANCE” 429
XXXVIII. THE SIRVENS AND LA BARRE 446
XXXIX. VOLTAIRE AND GENEVA: VOLTAIRE AND LA HARPE 463
XL. THE COLONY OF WATCHMAKERS AND WEAVERS 481
XLI. THE PIGALLE STATUE, AND THE VINDICATION OF LALLY 497
XLII. LATTER DAYS 514
XLIII. THE LAST VISIT 530
XLIV. THE END 553
INDEX 573
ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING PAGE
VOLTAIRE _Frontispiece_
_From the Statue by Houdon at the Comédie Française._
NINON DE L’ENCLOS 6
_From an original Picture given by herself to the Countess of Sandwich._
J. B. ROUSSEAU 32
_From an Engraving after a Picture by J. Aved._
LOUIS XV. 40
_From the Picture by Carle Van Loo in the Museum at Versailles._
MADAME DU CHÂTELET 70
_From an Engraving after Marianne Loir._
MADAME DE POMPADOUR 152
_From the Painting by François Boucher in the possession, and by kind
permission, of Baron Nathaniel de Rothschild._
MARIA LECZINSKA 172
_From the Picture by Carle Van Loo in the Louvre._
FREDERICK THE GREAT 210
_From an Engraving by Cunejo, after the Painting by Cunningham._
MOREAU DE MAUPERTUIS 238
_From an Engraving after a Painting by Tourmere._
LEKAIN 292
_From an Engraving after a Painting by S. B. Le Noir._
THE CHÂTEAU OF FERNEY 334
_From an Engraving._
VOLTAIRE 370
_From the Bust by Houdon._
MADEMOISELLE CLAIRON 426
_From an Engraving after a Picture by Carle Van Loo._
VOLTAIRE 486
_From the Etching by Denon._
LOUIS XVI. 496
_From the Portrait by Callet in the Petit Trianon._
VOLTAIRE’S DECLARATION OF FAITH 506
_From the Original in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris._
“TRIOMPHE DE VOLTAIRE” 530
_From a Contemporary Print._
SOME SOURCES OF INFORMATION
Œuvres Complètes de Voltaire. _Beuchot._
La Jeunesse de Voltaire. _Gustave Desnoiresterres._
Voltaire au Château de Cirey. _Gustave Desnoiresterres._
Voltaire à la Cour. _Gustave Desnoiresterres._
Voltaire et Frédéric. _Gustave Desnoiresterres._
Voltaire aux Délices. _Gustave Desnoiresterres._
Voltaire et J. J. Rousseau. _Gustave Desnoiresterres._
Voltaire et Genève. _Gustave Desnoiresterres._
Voltaire. Son Retour et sa Mort. _Gustave Desnoiresterres._
Voltaire. _Morley._
Vie de Voltaire. _Condorcet._
Mon Séjour auprès de Voltaire. _Collini._
Mémoires sur Voltaire. _Longchamp et Wagnière._
Critical Essays. _Carlyle._
Vie de Voltaire. _Abbé Duvernet._
Le Roi Voltaire. _A. Houssaye._
Voltaire et son Temps. _F. Bungener._
Voltaire à Ferney. _M. Bavoux._
The Life of Voltaire. _James Parton._
Voltaire et le Président de Brosses. _Foisset._
Les Ennemis de Voltaire. _Charles Nisard._
Ménage et Finances de Voltaire. _Nicolardot._
Voltaire et le Voltairisme. _Nourrisson._
Voltaire au Collège. _Henri Beaune._
Voltaire et les Génevois. _Gabarel._
Vie Privée de Voltaire et de Madame du Châtelet. _Madame de Graffigny._
Voltaire’s Visit to England. _Archibald Ballantyne._
Voltaire, sa Vie et ses Œuvres. _Eugène Noel._
Voltaire et Rousseau. _Maugras._
Voltaire avant et pendant la Guerre de Sept Ans. _Duc de Broglie._
Bolingbroke and Voltaire in England. _Churton Collins._
Voltaire for English Readers. _Colonel Hamley._
Voltaire et Madame du Châtelet. _Havard._
Centenaire de Voltaire. _Victor Hugo._
Vie Intime de Voltaire aux Délices et Ferney. _Perry et Maugras._
La Physique de Voltaire. _E. Saigey._
Histoire Littéraire de Voltaire. _Marquis de Luchet._
Mémoires de Marmontel.
Mémoires, ou Essai sur la Musique. _Grétry._
Mémoires. _Madame de Genlis._
Mémoires sur la Vie de Ninon de l’Enclos.
Mémoires. _Président Hénault._
Mémoires. _Saint-Simon._
Mémoires. _Marquis d’Argenson._
Journal et Mémoires. _Marais._
Mémoires. _Madame d’Épinay._
Journal. _Collé._
Mémoires. _Comte de Ségur._
Mémoires et Correspondance. _Diderot._
Souvenirs d’un Citoyen. _Formey._
La Jeunesse de Florian, ou Mémoires d’un jeune Espagnol.
Mémoires de Madame du Hausset.
Mémoires et Lettres du Cardinal de Bernis.
Madame de Pompadour. _De Goncourt._
Letters of an English Traveller. _Martin Sherlock._
The State of Music in France and Italy. _Dr. Burney._
A View of Society and Manners in France, etc. _Dr. John Moore._
Mémoires. _Lekain._
Lettres. _Madame Suard._
Lettres et Pensées du Maréchal Prince de Ligne.
The Private Correspondence of Garrick.
Lettres du Chevalier de Boufflers sur son Voyage en Suisse.
Letters of Horace Walpole.
Frederick the Great. _Carlyle._
Frederick the Great and his Times. _T. Campbell._
Œuvres. _Frederick the Great._
La Jeunesse du Grand Frédéric. _Lavisse._
Mes Souvenirs de Vingt Ans à Berlin. _Thiébault._
Critical and Historical Essays. _Macaulay._
Œuvres du Marquis de Villette.
The Early History of Charles James Fox. _Trevelyan._
Lettres de l’Abbé Galiani.
Causeries. _Sainte-Beuve._
Autobiography. _Lady Morgan._
Autobiography. _Gibbon._
Lettres de Mdlle. de Lespinasse.
Essay on Shakespeare. _Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu._
Mémoires. _Mademoiselle Clairon._
Mémoires de Madame de Staal-Delaunay.
Le Conseiller François Tronchin et ses Amis. _Henry Tronchin._
Correspondance Littéraire. _Grimm._
Correspondance inédite du Roi Stanislas-Augustus Poniatowski et de
Madame Geoffrin.
Lettres inédites de Madame la Marquise du Châtelet.
Biographie de Albert de Haller.
Mémoires. _Bachaumont._
Le Salon de Madame Necker. _D’Haussonville._
Les Mots de Voltaire. _Lefort et Buquet._
La Philosophie de Voltaire. _Bersot._
Correspondance complète de Madame du Deffand.
Œuvres. _D’Alembert._
Mémoires. _Comte de Montlosier._
Mémoires. _Duc de Richelieu._
Vie Privée du Maréchal de Richelieu.
Rousseau et les Génevois. _Gabarel._
Rousseau. _Morley._
Jean Calas et sa Famille. _Coquerel._
Dix-huitième Siècle: Études Littéraires. _Faguet._
Histoire du Dix-huitième Siècle. _Lacretelle._
Stanislaus et Marie Leczinska. _Des Réaulx._
Vie de Maupertuis. _La Beaumelle._
THE LIFE OF VOLTAIRE
CHAPTER I
THE BOYHOOD
In 1694, when Louis XIV. was at the height of that military glory which
at once dazzled and ruined France, there was born in Paris on November
21st a little, puny, weak, sickly son.
The house into which the infant was born was the ordinary house of a
thoroughly comfortable well-to-do _bourgeois_ of the time and place. A
notary was M. Arouet _père_. _His_ father had been a prosperous
linen-draper; and Arouet the son, shrewd and thrifty in affairs, had
bought, after the custom of his time and his profession, first one post
and then another, until he was a man of some wealth and, for his class,
of some position. Among his clients he could number the Dukes of Sully
and of Richelieu, memoir-writing Saint-Simon, the poet Boileau, and the
immortal Ninon de l’Enclos. He had a country house at Châtenay, five
miles from Paris. Plenty of sound common-sense, liberal, practical,
hospitable; just enough taste for literature to enjoy a doze over a book
in the evening when his day’s labour was done; eminently respected and
respectable; decently acquiescing in the national religion as such, and
with no particular faith in anything but hard work and monetary
prudence; not a little hasty in temper and deadly obstinate--such was
Maître Arouet.
At thirty-four years old he had been prosperous enough to marry one
Mademoiselle d’Aumard, of Poitou, whose gentle birth and a certain
refinement of type, not at all shared by her husband, formed the chief
part of her dowry. The biographers of her younger son have done their
best to prove the d’Aumard family something more noble, and the Arouet
family something less _bourgeois_, than they were. They need not have
troubled. The man who afterwards called himself Voltaire valued his
ancestry not at all, and owed it nothing. The most painstaking research
has been unable to prove that there was a single one of his forbears who
had the smallest taste for literature, or mental endowments above the
common. Some have pretended that he owed to his mother the delicacy of
his wit, as he certainly owed to her the delicacy of his body. Beyond
the fact that she was the friend of her husband’s brilliant and too
famous client Ninon, and of three abbés--clever, musical, and
profligate--who were the _amis de la maison_ Arouet and always about it,
the theory is without the smallest foundation. Her great son does not
mention her half a dozen times in that vast bulk of writings he left the
world. To him she was but a shadow; to the world she must needs be but a
shadow too.
She had two living children when this last frail baby was born on that
November Sunday--Armand of ten and Catherine of nine. She had lost two
infants, and she never really recovered this last one’s birth.
He himself had at the first but a poor chance of life. He was hurriedly
baptised on Monday, November 22, 1694, by the names of François Marie.
Every morning the _nourrice_ came down from the attic where she tended
him to say he could not live an hour. And every day one of those abbés,
who had taken on himself the office of godfather and was called
Châteauneuf, ran up to the attic to see the baby and suggest remedies to
the nurse.
Perhaps the nurse did not try the remedies. At any rate, the puny infant
disappointed the expectations of his relatives, and lived. Zozo they
called him, or, from the wilfulness of his baby temper, “le petit
volontaire.” Châteauneuf’s interest in him increased daily. He must have
detected an extraordinarily precocious intelligence in the small
creature, since, when he was but three years old, the abbé had begun to
perform his godfatherly duties as he understood them, and to teach the
child a certain ribald deistical poem by J. B. Rousseau called “Le
Moïsade.”
It is not too much to say that at this period, and for about a hundred
years afterwards, the name of abbé was synonymous with that of
scoundrel. Free liver and free thinker, gay, base, and witty--“qui
n’était d’église que pour les bénéfices,” as that little godson said of
him hereafter--Châteauneuf was not worse than most of his kind, and
perhaps, if anything, was rather better. He accepted, indeed, the
emoluments of a religion in which he did not only not believe but at
which he openly scoffed, in order to live at his ease a life quite
profligate and disreputable. It is said, or he said, that he had the
honour of being Ninon de l’Enclos’ last lover. But he was both
goodnatured and kindhearted, and after his fashion was really fond of
the little godson and doing his best to lead his baby mind away from a
superstition which he himself had found, to be sure, tolerably
profitable.
What a strange picture it is! This child lisped scoffings as other
children lisp prayers. He had very big brown eyes, bright with
intelligence, in his little, wizened, old man’s face. The precocity
greatly entertained Châteauneuf. Père Arouet may have been amused too,
in private, at this infant unbeliever--the state of the Church making it
hard then for any man, at once honest and reasonable, to put faith in
her teachings. The society of her three abbés and her Ninon must have
made delicate Madame pretty used to free thought.
So the little boy learnt his “Moïsade” by heart and was taught to read
out of the “Fables” of La Fontaine.
He was but seven when his mother died. Sister Catherine of sixteen was
already thinking of a _dot_ and a husband, as a prudent French girl
should. Brother Armand of seventeen--“my Jansenist of a brother”--had
imbibed extreme religious opinions at the seminary of Saint Magloire and
was an austere youthful bigot.
So Zozo scrambled up as best he might among mortgages, bonds, and
shares; designed from the first by his father to be _avocat_ (wherein
the family influence would be powerful to help him), a lonely and
precocious little creature, and still the infant _protégé_ of
Châteauneuf.
In the December of 1704, when he was ten years old, he first affixed his
name--his baby name of Zozo--to a letter which Brother Armand dutifully
wrote at his father’s request to wish an aunt in Poitou the compliments
of the New Year 1705. That letter may be taken as the small beginning of
one of the most enormous correspondences in the world, which new
discoveries are still increasing in bulk, and which, as has been said,
seems likely to go on increasing until the Day of Judgment.
In that very same year 1704, Zozo was sent to the Jesuit College of St.
Louis-le-Grand as a parlour boarder. The school was only a few minutes’
walk from his own home. But in that home there was no one to look after
him save the busy middle-aged notary fully occupied in affairs.
Catherine was married. Armand had already succeeded in repelling a
volatile child’s spirit with his narrow harshness. So Zozo went to
school, and took up his place in the very lowest class.
St. Louis-le-Grand--“the Eton of France”--had two thousand pupils,
mostly belonging to the French aristocracy. Louis XIV. had visited it,
and left it his name. It was entirely under Jesuit influence, and
taught, or omitted to teach, exactly according to the royal pleasure and
the fashion of the day.
A very thin-faced, keen-witted little youth was its new ten-year-old
scholar. It did not take him long to conceive a passion for Cicero, for
Horace, and for Virgil. He soon discovered that he was learning “neither
the constitution nor interests of my country: not a word of mathematics
or of sound philosophy. I learnt Latin and nonsense.” But he applied
himself to that “Latin and nonsense” with that passionate voracity for
information, useful or useless, good, bad, or indifferent, which he
retained till his death. He must have been one of the quickest boys that
ever Jesuit master taught. He had an intelligence like an arrow--and an
arrow which always went straight to the mark. Before he was eleven he
was writing bad verses with a facility and enthusiasm alike
extraordinary. The masters were, with one exception, his friends and
admirers. While the other boys were at their games this one would walk
and talk with the Fathers; and when they told him that he should play
like the others, he looked up with those brilliant eyes that lighted the
little, lean, sallow face like leaping flames--“Everybody must jump
after his own fashion,” said he.
His especial tutor was a certain Abbé d’Olivet, then a young man, for
whom the promising little scholar conceived a lifelong friendship.
Another tutor, called Tournemine, was also first the boy’s teacher and
then his pupil. Yet another Father, called Porée, would listen long and
late to the child’s sharp questions on history and politics. “That boy,”
said he, “wants to weigh the great questions of Europe in his little
scales.”
He had friends among the boys too, as well as the masters. It was at
school he met the d’Argensons--afterwards powers to help him in the
French Government--Cideville and d’Argental, his lifelong friend, whom
he called his guardian angel.
In 1705, those fluent verses he had written came to the notice of
Godpapa Châteauneuf. As a reward the abbé took him to see Ninon de
l’Enclos, that marvellous woman who was as charming at eighty as at
eighteen, who “looked on love as a pleasure which bound her to no duties
and on friendship as something sacred,” and was in some sort an answer
to her own prayer, “God make me an honest man but never an honest
woman!” She received the child in the midst of her brilliant circle with
that infinite tact and kindness which have made her as immortal as her
frailties. His bright, quick answers, his self-confidence, his childish
store of information delighted her. Châteauneuf said that she saw in him
“the germ of a great man.” Perhaps she did. When she died a few months
later, she left him two thousand francs in her will, with which to buy
books. And the “great man,” many years after, wrote an account of the
interview as if it had happened yesterday.
He went back to school after that episode and learnt, and knew he was
learning, though he was only twelve years old, “a prodigious number of
things” for which he had no talent.
Porée taught him a good deal of Latin, and the primers a very little
Greek. He learnt no history, no science, and no modern languages. That
he acquired a knowledge of the history and government of France is as
undoubted as that he was never formally taught it.
Young Abbé d’Olivet inspired him with his own love of Cicero.
Châteauneuf had taught his godson to worship Corneille; and young Arouet
championed him valiantly against Father Tournemine’s dear hero, Racine.
Other seeds which Châteauneuf had sown in a childish heart were growing
and ripening fast. His one enemy among the masters, Father Lejay,
answered a too brilliant and too daring retort with the words, “Wretch!
you will one day be the standard-bearer of Deism in France!”
The enterprising Deist was still only twelve when, encouraged by Ninon’s
pension perhaps and the success of some impromptu verses made in class,
he attempted a tragedy called “Amulius and Numitor.” He burnt it
thereafter--very wisely no doubt. But verse-making was in his blood,
though his blood was Maître Arouet’s and the noble, dull Aumards’ of
Poitou. Play-acting at the school prize-givings encouraged a love of the
drama, also inborn. François Marie Arouet was not yet thirteen when he
wrote a versified petition to Louis XIV. to grant an old soldier a
pension, wherein the compliments were so delicately turned as to attract
the momentary attention of the best flattered monarch who ever sat upon
a throne. The old soldier obtained his pension, and François Marie
enough fame and flattery to turn a youthful head.
When he was fifteen, in 1709, Châteauneuf died, Malplaquet was lost, and
France starving to pay for her defeats. In the midst of that bitter
winter of famine, when young Arouet’s high place in class always kept
him away from the comforting stove, he called out to the lucky dullard
who was always near it, “Get out, or I’ll send you to warm with Pluto!”
“Why don’t you say hell?” asked the other. “Bah!” replied Arouet; “the
one is no more a certainty than the other.”
Here spoke the religious influence of the priestly godfather,
[Illustration: NINON DE L’ENCLOS]
who, before he died, had tried to form the godson’s mind by recounting
to him some of Ninon de l’Enclos’ most marvellous adventures.
In 1710, at the midsummer prize-giving, Arouet, runs the story, took so
many prizes as to attract the notice of the famous J. B. Rousseau, the
author of the “Moïsade,” the first poet in France, and once shoemaker to
the Arouet family. The great man congratulated and encouraged the boy
who was to be so much greater. To be sure he was an ugly boy for all
that keen look of his! Ugly boy and mediocre poet were to fight each
other tooth and nail hereafter, with the ugly boy the winner for ever.
If young Arouet was anything like an older Voltaire, he knew how to play
as well as how to work, and how to work gaily with a jest always ready
to relieve the tedium.
The defeat of Blenheim had shadowed the year 1704 when he went to
school. In 1711, when he left it, three heirs to the throne died one
after the other as if the judgment of God had already fallen upon their
wicked house. Abroad, were Marlborough and defeat; at home, death,
hunger, and religious persecution. Arouet had a heart always sensitive
to misfortune, but he was gay, seventeen, and fresh from drudgery.
When he came home from St. Louis-le-Grand in that August of 1711 it was
with every intention on his father’s part, and no kind of intention on
his own, that he should become _avocat_.
Was it the passing success of that poetical petition to the king which
had put the idea of literature as a profession into his head? Was it
Ninon’s pension? or the approval of poet Rousseau? The love of letters
had been in this boy always, a dominant taste, a ruling passion, which
he could no more help than he could help the feebleness of his body or
the astounding vigour of his mind.
He took the earliest opportunity of announcing to his father that he
intended to devote himself to writing.
M. Arouet received the announcement exactly as it might have been
expected he would. Literature! Better be a lackey or a play-actor at
once. Literature! What did that mean? The Bastille for a couplet, ruin,
poverty, disgrace. Rousseau himself had just been degraded from the
highest place to the lowest for verses he was only supposed to have
written. “Literature,” said Maître Arouet with the irate dogmatism which
takes no denial, “is the profession of the man who wishes to be useless
to society, a burden to his relatives, and to die of hunger.” The
relatives, fearing the burden, vociferously agreed with him.
Arouet _père_ had most unluckily once taken wine with the great
Corneille and found that genius the most insufferable old bore, of the
very lowest conversation. The indignant parent made the house of Arouet
exceedingly unquiet with his fumings and growlings. Pressure was very
strong and François Marie was eighteen. The youth who said that his
motto was “To the point” was soon engaged in the matchless intricacies
of French law, as yet unsimplified by a master mind into the Code
Napoleon.
What would be the natural result of a distasteful occupation, youth,
wit, and gaiety in eighteenth-century Paris? Such a result supervened
with young Arouet almost at once. Boy though he was, Châteauneuf had
already introduced him into a brilliant, libertine society called “The
Epicureans of the Temple.” At its head was the usual abbé--one
Chaulieu--“the dissolute Anacreon” who drew a revenue of thirty thousand
francs from his benefices to pay for his excesses. Vile, witty, and
blasphemous, he was not more so than the noble and titled company over
which he presided. It had every vice but one--that of dulness. Most of
its members were old men, and as literary critics of the evanescent
literature of the hour, unrivalled. To them, it is said, virtue and
faith were alike the prejudices of fools. The notary’s son, who was
nobody and had done nothing, had but two claims for admission to such a
society: one was the mental emancipation he had received from his
godfather, and the other the daring brilliancy all his own. The Temple
suppers were soon incomplete without him. Young Arouet was already
showing himself a versifier of astounding audacity. The company of dukes
and nobles, of men vastly his superior in age and acquirements, did not
daunt him in the least. A penniless boy, he had that careless ease with
great people--a certain charming air of familiarity--which never
offended if it made old men smile at a boyish vanity, and which he never
afterwards lost. Some of his _mots_ at those suppers have come down to
posterity, and were not less acceptable to the Temple because they are
no longer transcribable. At an epicurean supper at the Prince of
Conti’s, young Arouet could turn to the company and exclaim, “Here we
are all princes or poets!”
One poet received very short shrift from respectable, sensible old M.
Arouet _père_, when he came home in the small hours of the morning from
these orgies. The determined old man locked the house and went to bed,
and behold! François Marie must pay for his amusements by walking the
streets till morning. That did not daunt him. Nothing daunted him. He
was young and enjoying himself, with the keenest sense of the ludicrous,
and perfectly willing to take his pleasures--at a cost. One day, finding
himself shut out as usual, he went to sleep in the porter’s chair in the
Palais de Justice, and was carried, still asleep, the next morning, into
a café hard by, by two legal wags, his friends. The recollection of
Brother Armand’s long, disapproving face at home only lent additional
piquancy to Arouet’s revels abroad. Another day, a noble lady with
literary aspirations gives him a hundred louis for tactfully correcting
her bad rhymes. Young Arouet, idly watching an auction, bids for a
carriage and pair and has them knocked down to him. He drives about
Paris all day with his friends, and at three o’clock in the morning
takes the carriage home and tries to get the horses into his father’s
stables. The noise wakes up Maître Arouet, who turns his scapegrace out
of doors there and then, and sells the horses and carriage the very next
day. One likes the peppery old father with his dogged determination. He
would have won the battle over any other son but this one, and deserved
to win. He sent the prodigal to Caen in disgrace, and Caen fell in love
at once with a youth so clever and amusing, and turned the exile to a
delight. There was a charming literary lady here also, who abandoned her
_protégé_, however, when she found he could write indecorous verses too,
and there was a Jesuit Father who prophesied a great future for this
brilliant madcap. Then the old notary at home sent a message to his
François Marie--if he would come back and settle to work he would buy
him a good post; in time, get him made Counsel to the Parliament of
Paris. “Tell my father,” was the answer, “I do not want any place that
can be bought. I will make one for myself that will cost nothing.”
Twenty-six years after, one Voltaire, in his “Life of Molière,” wrote
that all who had made a name in the _beaux-arts_ had done so in spite of
their relations. “Nature has always been much stronger with them than
education;” and again, “I saw early that one can neither resist one’s
ruling taste, nor fight one’s destiny.” It was so in this boy’s case at
any rate. Some of the monetary prudence inherited from the old notary,
and which was so greatly to distinguish a later Voltaire from most of
his brothers of the pen, was in embryo within him now. Yet when he got
back to Paris after those few months at Caen he was as gay, wild, and
determined as ever, and M. Arouet, in despair, procured for him the post
of page or _attaché_ to the Marquis de Châteauneuf (brother of the abbé)
and shipped him off with that ambassador to the Netherlands in the
September of 1713.
The Marquis de Châteauneuf and suite reached The Hague on September 28,
1713, but did not formally enter the town until later. “It is amusing,”
one of the suite wrote, “to make an entry into a city where you have
already been living several weeks.”
Page, _attaché_, or diplomat, whichever people called him, _this_ page,
_attaché_, or diplomat was going to enjoy himself. Before they were well
established at The Hague he must needs fall head over ears in love with
a certain Olympe Dunoyer, the daughter of an adventurous mother who
lived by her wits and an audacious society periodical called _The
Quintessence_. Olympe, or, more endearingly, Pimpette, was
one-and-twenty. She knew something of the world already. With such a
mother and the impecunious roving life they had led, that was
inevitable. She was not pretty, her lover said long after. She was what
is a great deal more dangerous--fascinating and impulsive. He gave her
from the first a boy’s honest ardent affection. He wrote her immensely
long, vigorous, passionate epistles. He originated the most beautiful
youthful scheme by which Protestant Pimpette (Madame Dunoyer and her
daughter were Protestant) was to be brought back to the true Church, and
to Paris, where her Catholic father and sister were living. For a couple
of months, the worldly mother not suspecting its existence, the course
of true love ran smoothly. But one fatal night Arouet coming home late
after a blissful interview, encountered his chief. Madame Dunoyer will
certainly disapprove of the addresses of a penniless boy of nineteen!
Having a wholesome fear of that libellous “Quintessence,” the ambassador
felt bound to disapprove too. The _attaché_ must go back to France
to-morrow. The _attaché_, with his irresistible energy and daring, got
forty-eight hours’ grace. His valet, Lefèvre, was his accomplice; a
certain shoemaker was Pimpette’s. A further unavoidable delay in the
time of Arouet’s departure came to the lovers’ assistance. One moonlit
night Arouet disguised himself, signalled beneath his mistress’s window,
and drove her away to Scheveningen, five miles off, where he made her
write three letters which were designed to help his scheme of getting
her to Paris. Sometimes they met at the obliging shoemaker’s, daring,
frightened, and happy, with the shoemaker’s wife for a sentinel outside.
Of course the ambassador got wind of the interviews and forbade his
_attaché_ to leave the embassy. But the irrepressible lover _would_ see
his mistress--“though it bring my head to the block.” He let himself
down from a window by night, and met a trembling Pimpette who had
escaped, heaven knows how! from the Argus-eyed mother--outside her home.
Then the ambassador offered this impossible _attaché_ his choice--to
leave Holland immediately--or in a week’s time with a solemn vow not to
leave his quarters meanwhile. Arouet chose the week and the vow. He sent
Lefèvre with a letter to Pimpette. “If I cannot come to you, you must
come to me! Send Lisbette at three o’clock and I will give her a parcel
for you containing a boy’s dress.” The mad night came, and Pimpette, the
most endearing boy in the world, with it. The whole escapade was wild
enough. It says something for this impassioned Arouet of nineteen that
at its worst it was nothing but an escapade. “My love is founded on a
perfect esteem,” he had written, and “I love your honour as I love you.”
He rallied her, not a little gaily, in prose and verse, after that dear
meeting. She was such a pretty boy! “I fear you did not take out your
sword in the street, which was all that was needed to make a perfect
young man!” “But while I am teasing you I learn that Lefèvre suspected
you yesterday.” Of course he did. But Lefèvre would not betray his
master to the ambassador, who had more than a suspicion of the
interview. And the next night Arouet broke his parole, got out of the
window, and met Pimpette outside her house once more. The ambassador
heard of this too, wrote a furious letter to Maître Arouet describing
the whole affair, and on December 18, 1713, the lover was despatched
home.
He went on writing to Pimpette, of course. It was _her_ fate that
agitated him--not his. She must be sure to burn his letters--she must
not expose herself to the fury of that termagant of a mother. She must
take heart; she must be true to him! The letter from the boat which was
carrying him to France was full of that capital, clever plan for
bringing her over to the Jesuits--to be converted, as near to Arouet as
possible, in Paris. All these love letters to Pimpette are much more
loving than witty. They are so enthusiastic and earnest and young, so
energetic and devoted, so unselfish and hopeful! They make one feel
young to read them. It has been said that they are not the letters of
Mirabeau. They are those of an honester man.
The very first thing Arouet did when he reached Paris on this Christmas
Eve of 1713 was exactly what he had told Pimpette he would do. He went
straight to his old master, Father Tournemine, at St. Louis-le-Grand, to
whom he had already written some of the circumstances, to arrange with
the Jesuits for bringing back the lost Protestant sheep to the Roman
fold. Arouet did not think it necessary to mention that the lost sheep
was, in point of fact, a lamb--charming, and one-and-twenty--or that he
had ever seen her. Good Tournemine promised to do his very best to get
Pimpette’s father to take her in. In fact the whole scheme was working
beautifully when that irascible and dogged old Maître Arouet, who had
received not only the ambassador’s version of the affair but the furious
Madame Dunoyer’s, positively obtained a _lettre de cachet_ for his
scapegrace son, with which to get him arrested and imprisoned.
Young Arouet had not been home, which was very prudent of him. His
presence would only have further exasperated his father. The _lettre de
cachet_ was not put into effect. The lover went on loving, adoring, and
writing to his mistress. What was an angry father after all? A necessary
rôle in the comedy. What was distance or opposition, what was anything
or anybody to Arouet if Pimpette only loved him? Of the two, she was far
the more cool and reasonable. She urged him to study law as his father
bade him. And for her sake he did even that. A year or two later she
became Countess of Winterfeld. Some years later still, he had the
pleasure of seeing some of his own love letters to her figuring in a
scandalous work of her mother’s called “Lettres Historiques et
Galantes.” Even these events did not disturb a certain tender respect
for her memory which he bore to the end of his life. When he was
imprisoned in the Bastille four years later, he still carried about with
him a little, undated, misspelt letter about one of those dear, stolen
interviews--half maternal, half tender in tone--the only letter of
Pimpette’s which has come down to posterity.
January, 1714, then, beheld Arouet at the bidding of Pimpette, and
having made the most abject apologies to his father (François Marie was
nothing if not thorough), installed as clerk to a Maître Alain, and
living with that dull and worthy solicitor and his wife. He learnt
something of law here, no doubt. Nay, he must have learnt a great deal
to be hereafter that shrewd and capable man of affairs he proved
himself. But it was a dull time and an unfortunate. Maître Arouet kept
his prodigal very close in the matter of money; and his prodigal affixed
his name to certain bills which gave him trouble hereafter. Pimpette’s
letters were getting fewer and fewer. Pimpette was false. Then, in the
August of this 1714, young Arouet tried for a prize offered by the
French Academy for a poem celebrating the King’s generosity in giving a
new choir to Notre Dame; and failed. The failure attacked La Motte, the
judge--the unjust judge, Arouet thought him--with epigrams, and then
wrote a satire, called “Mud,” on La Motte’s “Fables.” Old Arouet was
furious again, and young Arouet’s only consolation in life was the
friendship of one Theriot, also clerk to the Alains, an idle,
goodnatured, amusing scapegrace, nobody’s enemy but his own, and to be
Arouet’s friend, though not always a faithful friend, for sixty years.
Caumartin, an old Temple acquaintance, reappeared on young Arouet’s
horizon again presently. Caumartin had an uncle, a famous old
magistrate, the Marquis de Saint-Ange, living at Saint-Ange, nine miles
from Fontainebleau. When young Caumartin conveyed an invitation to old
Arouet that his prodigal should go and stay with Saint-Ange and resume
his studies there, the notary naturally supposed an acceptance would be
the best thing for Arouet’s legal prospects.
And not for his legal prospects only. The boy had that satire, couplets,
and epigrams running through Paris. He did not yet know what message he
had to deliver to the world; did not know perhaps that he had any
message. But he was fast learning the language in which it was to be
spoken, and speak in that language he must, were the whole earth peopled
by angry fathers and conscientious Alains.
So it was as well that the autumn of 1714 saw him away from Paris and
established in the fine old château of the Saint-Anges.
The old magistrate, however, was not magistrate only, or chiefly; he was
also a man of the world, and courtier. So it soon came about that,
instead of learning maxims of the law, the keen-witted visitor sat and
listened, a most eager and intelligent audience, to gossip, scandal,
_bons-mots_ of the Court of a bygone day--anecdotes of Henry of Navarre
and personal recollections of Louis XIV. The château had a splendid
library. But it was hardly needed--“Caumartin carries the living
history of his age in his head,” said his courtly young guest in a
quatrain.
It was while he was at Saint-Ange he dashed on to paper the beginning of
what was afterwards the “Henriade”; and started that vast collection of
anecdotes which formed the material for the “Century of Louis XIV.”
Arouet stayed several months in the château, occasionally paying a
flying visit to the capital. The end of the Sun King’s reign was fast
approaching. The famous Bull Unigenitus was the one great topic of all
men’s conversation; and no doubt was freely discussed at Saint-Ange. If
the young visitor had come there meaning to be author, he left a hundred
times more fixed in that idea. In August, 1715, Louis XIV. was dying.
Arouet hastened to Paris to see the strange things that death would
bring about.
In his pocket he had a play, “Œdipe,” on which he had now been working
for two years.
In his soul were the courage, the conscious power, the clear outlook to
a future all unwarranted by the present, which are the consolations of
genius.
Arouet was beginning the world.