EPIGRAMS AND THE BASTILLE
At the death of Louis XIV. Paris was still the typical Paris of the old
_régime_. Magnificence and squalor, dirt and splendour, a few men living
like gods and most men living like beasts; narrow and filthy streets,
and the sumptuous glory of the Court of the Sun King; a hungry
_canaille_, and a _noblesse_ whose exquisite finish of manner concealed
the most profound corruption of morals the world has seen. Such was the
Paris of 1715.
For the last few years of his life a woman and a priest had absolutely
ruled the absolute King. “France forgave Louis his mistresses,” said
Arouet, “but not his confessor.” The great Bull Unigenitus, that
thunderbolt hurled at once against Jansenism and liberty, was the first
rock on which the French monarchy struck. Everybody was to think as the
King did! And France, who had starved patiently to pay for his conquests
and his pleasures, received with open joy the news of the death of the
man who had tried to strangle her soul with Unigenitus. Paris was
flooded with satires as it had never been flooded even with panegyrics.
The Court shook off the mantle of austerity which it had of late been
wearing over its depravity. The flagrant vice of the Regency flaunted
boldly in daylight, and men laughed openly at a religion in which for
years they had concurred devoutly--with the tongue in the cheek.
The world wagged thus when Arouet came up from Fontainebleau. The great
majority of men go through life accepting what they find in it without
question--supposing that because things are, they will be and ought to
be. But this boy had the order of mind which takes nothing for granted.
A state religion? Well, what had it done for that state and for the
souls of men? A paternal government that left its children to starve?
Arouet had from the first “lisped in numbers, for the numbers came;” but
when he saw on the one hand the crowded prisons and brutalised
peasantry, and on the other the luxurious debauchery of the Regent’s
Court, the numbers began for the first time to have a careless little
note in them of a most piquant satire.
Louis died on September 1, 1715. Arouet was at his funeral--that funeral
which was gayer than a _fête_. When a burlesque invitation to the
obsequies of the Bull Unigenitus appeared, there were not wanting
fingers to point at the notary’s son of one-and-twenty, who had come
back to Paris more audacious than ever, and had immediately resumed his
connection with his wild friends of the Temple.
He read aloud his “Œdipe” to them presently. That, and his epigrams,
quickly opened to him half the salons in Paris. Then Chaulieu--President
of the Temple--introduced him to the magnificent Duchesse du Maine,
“that living fragment of the Grand Epoch,” and mistress of the famous
“galères du bel esprit” at Sceaux. Madame must have him, and at once, in
her salon. To be sure the boy has nothing but his play in his pocket and
is of no birth at all! But what a wit and daring in his spirit! What a
matchless sarcasm in those piercing eyes! The Duchess and her set
worshipped cleverness and hated the Regent. It was the only religion
they had. What could they do but fall in love with this “little Arouet”
who could hardly have been dull if he had tried; and was much more than
suspected of the authorship of a too-telling epigram on Philip of
Orleans and his infamous daughter, du Berri?
“Little Arouet” read aloud “Œdipe” to the Duchess’s court. He was at
ease in this society as he was at ease in all societies. “Men are born
equal, and die equal.” “It is only externals which distinguish them.”
Those were the sentiments of one Arouet de Voltaire. He must have known,
not the less, that here, there was no one who was _his_ equal. But he
sentimentalised gaily in the moonlit gardens of Sceaux--her “white
nights” the Duchess called them--and watched senile old Chaulieu making
love to the Duchess’s companion, Mademoiselle de Launay; wrote wicked
satirical poems to please his hostess; and was so clever and daring that
at last all the bold brilliant things that were whispered in Paris were
fathered on the presumptuous youth, the son of Saint-Simon’s notary.
In the spring of 1716 he stayed with Saint-Ange again. In May he was
back in the capital. He did say, no doubt, when the Regent put down half
the horses in the royal stables, that he would have done better to have
dismissed half the asses who had surrounded the late King. Then a
shameful epigram on the shameful du Berri came to the ears of the
persons chiefly concerned. Young Arouet was exiled to Tulle--Tulle being
changed pretty easily, at his father’s request, to Sully. No reason was
assigned by the Government for this order of exile.
The Duke of Sully readily became a most hospitable host. The Duchess had
a most charming poor companion, Mademoiselle de Livri. It was but an
exile _pour rire_, after all--a warning fatherly rap from that paternal
Government on the knuckles of an impertinent child.
It is strange to see how the boy chafed under that agreeable courtly
life of hunting and conversation. “It would be delightful to stay at
Sully,” he wrote, “If I were only allowed to go away from it.” The Duke
was the most delightful of hosts, and his estate most charmingly
situated. The young people of the château, in pairs, sonneted the
midsummer moon in the gardens; and wrote each other dainty little
quatrains and flatteries. Arouet loved verses and the society of
charming and vivacious young women in general, and, here, of one
charming and vivacious young woman in particular; and he was
two-and-twenty. But he wrote himself back to Paris by poetic compliments
to the Regent so finely turned that the author must have had some
unusual spur on his imagination. He was, in fact, beginning to wonder if
there was not a work waiting for him in the world.
If it was not his fault, it was the fault of the reputation he had made,
that when there appeared in Paris, immediately he returned to it in the
spring of 1717, two stinging satires on the state of France and the
Regent’s manner of life called respectively “J’ai Vu” and “Puero
Regnante,” they should at once be assigned to him.
“Puero Regnante” is a dog-Latin inscription.
A boy reigning;
A poisoner
Administering;
Councils ignorant and unstable;
Religion more unstable;
An exhausted treasury;
Public faith violated;
Injustice triumphant;
Sedition imminent;
The country sacrificed
To the hope of a Crown;
The inheritance anticipated;
France perishing.
The “J’ai Vu” is a short poem.
I have seen ... the prisons full;
I have seen ... the people groaning;
I have seen ... Port Royal demolished--
“I have seen,” in short, everything to which a prudent person with a
proper regard to his safety would have been conveniently blind.
Arouet had not written them. But that did not matter. He might have
written them. They were after his manner. Besides, had he not been in
exile and disgrace, and was he not still so wicked that his good old
father would not have him in the house, and he was living an outcast in
furnished lodgings? These reasonings would have been conclusive alone.
Then he was known to be the moving spirit at Sceaux, and Sceaux was but
another name for disaffection.
A spy, Beauregard, swore to a conversation he had had with Arouet, in
which Arouet, with a most unnatural imprudence, avowed himself the
author of both satires with much circumstantial detail; and added
“things not mentionable” about the Duchesse du Berri.
He went his way quite gaily for a while, however. His “Œdipe” had been
accepted, and was actually in rehearsal at the theatre. Here was a
triumph indeed. He was still beloved of all the salons and the
women--dear, delightful, dangerous. He had the keenest sense of humour
to help him through these little _contretemps_ of existence. He would,
now at least, hardly have missed his _mot_ to save his skin--and he held
that dear, as the physically weak are apt to do. He was sauntering one
day, on May 15, 1717, through the Palais Royal Gardens, runs the story,
when he was called into the presence of the Regent, also sauntering
there.
“I bet you, M. Arouet,” says Philip, “I will show you something you have
never seen before.”
“What is that, Monseigneur?”
“The inside of the Bastille.”
“I take it as seen,” replies Arouet airily.
He could, all things considered, have been very little surprised when on
May 16th, Whitsunday, while he was still sleeping calmly in bed, he was
served with a _lettre de cachet_, his room and person ignominiously
searched, and himself removed the next day to that historic prison.
Perhaps he smiled a little, but not bitterly, when they discovered on
him Pimpette’s poor little note. “I am not made for the passions,” he
said a year or two later. He was not. A great work and a great passion
seldom run together. The work must be the only passion one has.
The prison was not very painful, it appears. Arouet was allowed an
excellent room, books, a fire, good wine, first-rate coffee, the use of
the bowling-green and the billiard-room, visitors, to a reasonable
extent, and often a seat at the governor’s dinner-table. Some of the
King’s guests might be rotting forgotten for unknown crimes in the
dungeons beneath; but, although almost all the literary men of the
period were bastilled some time or other in their lives, they unite in
praising the prison as very reasonably comfortable.
The present prisoner was nothing if not a philosopher. Since I am here,
I may as well be as easy as I can! The captives were allowed to make
purchases. Arouet entered the Bastille, Monday, May 17, 1717. On the
following Thursday he signed a receipt for a couple of volumes of Homer,
two Indian handkerchiefs, a little cap, two cravats, a nightcap, and a
bottle of essence of cloves. He had everything he wanted, in fact, save
two things. For the first few weeks of his imprisonment it seems almost
certain that he was not allowed pen and ink.
But if he could not write, he could and did compose. There was that
poem. Should it be called the “League,” the “Henriade,” or “Henry of
Navarre,” or what? What’s in a name after all? He had a memory so
marvellous and so exact that he could not only invent, without
committing to paper, whole cantos of that infant epic, but remember
them. The subject possessed him. He said he dreamt in his sleep, in the
Bastille, the second canto on the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew exactly
as it stands to-day. It is not unlikely. Now and ever when he was
writing, _what_ he was writing was to him food, air, warmth, light,
life. “His prison became his Parnassus,” said Frederick the Great in his
funeral oration on Voltaire. Hundreds of projects besides that epic, to
be called the “Henriade” finally, coursed through that brain, which was
surely the most active ever given to man. From his captivity he could
look out on his world. What was there not to do there? He must have
asked himself a thousand times what part his was to be on the great
stage of human existence.
“I knew how to reap benefit from my misfortune,” he wrote afterwards. “I
learnt how to harden myself against sorrow, and found within me a
strength not to be expected from the lightness and follies of my youth.”
And at Court, honest memoir-writing Saint-Simon was apologising for
mentioning to his readers so insignificant a fact as that one Arouet,
“the son of my father’s notary,” was imprisoned for some audacious
verses; while at home that good old notary announced vindictively: “I
told you so! I knew his idleness would lead to disgrace. Why did he not
go into a profession?”
Something else Arouet did in the Bastille besides dreaming epics. He
changed his name. It is now generally thought that he called himself by
that one with which he has gone among the gods, after a family who were
his mother’s ancestors. Before the existence of this family was
discovered some supposed that Voltaire was an anagram on the paternal
Arouet--Arouet, L. J. (_le jeune_). Others believed that, remembering
not untenderly from a prison those who had called him “le petit
volontaire” in his childhood’s home, he corrupted and abbreviated it
into the Voltaire he was to make immortal. As to the reason for the
change--“I was very unlucky under my first name,” he wrote; “I want to
see if this one will succeed any better.” Beyond the wildest dream that
ever Hope dreamt, “this one” was to succeed indeed.
The real author, a certain Le Brun, confessed to that terrible “J’ai Vu”
presently, and the irrepressible supposed author, who was imprisoned for
it, sat down in his prison and wrote a burlesque and very profane poem
on his arrest, which had taken place, it will be remembered, on
Whitsunday.
As he now had only that dog-Latin epigram, the “Puero Regnante” hanging
over him, Voltaire was released from the Bastille on April 11, 1718, and
exiled merely to his father’s house at Châtenay. The authorities do not
seem to have thought it necessary to apologise for their little
mistake--a mistake which kept a brilliant boy of three-and-twenty shut
up in a prison for eleven months for somebody else’s rhymes. The little
justice there was in France in those days miscarried so frequently that
miscarriage was more the rule than the exception. The ex-prisoner wrote
from Châtenay letters to the authorities begging to be allowed to return
to Paris, and denying that “abominable inscription, the ‘Puero,’” pretty
vigorously. Only allow me to return to Paris, if but for a couple of
hours, and throw myself at the feet of the Regent and explain all! I
have proof now of the double-dealings of the spies who betrayed me! “A
little journey, situated as I am, would be like the drop of water to the
wicked rich man in the parable!” He was permitted to make that little
journey, and to see Regent Philip.
“Be prudent,” said Orleans, “and I will provide for you.”
“I shall be delighted if your Highness will give me my board,” replied
the audacious young wit, “but beg that you will take no further trouble
about my lodging.”
Some authorities place this story at a later date and under different
circumstances. If the present be its true place and time, the _mot_ did
not greatly help Arouet to regain his freedom, though a _mot_ had done
something to lose it. He was allowed to pay flying visits to the
capital, but it was not until October 12, 1718, that he was given
official permission to return to Paris and to stay there as long as he
liked.
Either now, or before the Bastille adventure, he must needs fall in love
with that pretty Mademoiselle de Livri, the Duchess of Sully’s companion
and relative, who would fain be an actress, with a Voltaire to teach her
elocution and tenderness. The pair rode about Paris together in a bad
hackney coach, and had bad suppers together--in Elysium. A friend of
Voltaire’s, de Génonville, fell in love with Mademoiselle presently, and
she with him--to Voltaire’s passing displeasure. He vented his feeling
in a few graceful verses--and it vanished into air. The whole thing was
but an episode after all, a _penchant_ more than a passion, the light
fancy of the senses that touched the deeper soul not at all. But
posterity should be grateful to Mademoiselle. Voltaire had his portrait
painted for her by Largillière, and may be seen to-day as he looked
then--flowing wig, wide mouth, the ruffled hand thrust lightly in the
waistcoat; a lover, young, satisfied with his mistress, himself, and all
the world; and in the eyes and forehead, latent but present, power and
will extraordinary. The mockery, the humour, and the cynicism which make
later portraits of Voltaire like no other man’s, are not in this one.
His relations with women--niece or mistress--always show him in some
respects in his best light; patient, forbearing, and faithful; generous
to the memory of a false woman, giving honour where honour was due,
respecting intelligence, and never weary of trying to turn a fool into a
sensible companion.
But he had now other things to think of besides the sentiments. He had
made his _début_, as has been well said, in epigrams. If he had not
written “J’ai Vu,” he _could_ have written it a thousand times more
damning and deadly. The most beautiful sting that ever wasp concealed
beneath a gay coat, he was keeping for his enemies yet. He was still the
despair of M. Arouet and the spoilt child of salons. He had a reputation
but the more widespread for being evil. He was rather vain and
inimitably amusing. He was so clever--he might surely do anything! He
was, in fact, that most unsatisfactory creature in the world--a youth of
promise.
The performance was to come.