THE AFFAIR DESFONTAINES
In 1724, when Voltaire was thirty years old and in Paris, Theriot had
introduced to him Desfontaines, then a journalist, and an ex-abbé. Their
acquaintance was of the slightest. It had lasted only a few weeks when
Desfontaines was accused of an abominable crime (then punished by
burning), arrested, and cast into the Bicêtre. The impulsive Voltaire
must needs get up off a sick bed, travel to Fontainebleau, and throw
himself at the feet of the influential Madame de Prie and obtain
Desfontaines’s discharge--on the sole condition that he should not live
in Paris. Not content with this good office, he obtained from his friend
Madame de Bernières the permission for Desfontaines to reside on her
estates. Finally, he procured the revocation of the edict of banishment.
Desfontaines could live in Paris and pursue his calling as before. All
this for a man he hardly knew, who was an ex-priest, and a very bad
writer, if not a very bad man. It was generous, unnecessary and
imprudent. In brief, it was Voltaire.
He might have expected gratitude. He did expect it. Desfontaines wrote
him a letter of warm thanks. Eleven years later he was scoffing in a
weekly Parisian paper at Newtonianism, as revealed to the French in
Voltaire’s “English Letters.” Then he must translate the “Essay on Epic
Poetry,” which Voltaire had written in English, into French, very badly,
so that the tireless author felt the necessity of re-translating it
himself. Then, forsooth, M. l’Abbé must damn with faint praise “Charles
XII.” and the “Henriade.” Even a sensitive Voltaire could only laugh at
bites from such a miserable gnat. “I am sorry I saved him,” he wrote
lightly in 1735. “It is better to burn a priest than to bore the
public. If I had left him to roast I should have spared the world many
imbecilities.” But even a gnat may hurt if it sting often and long
enough. The early bliss of Cirey was disturbed by that petty malice. Now
in one way, now in another, Desfontaines showed the truth of the shrewd
saying that the offender never pardons. The gnat bites grew feverish and
swollen. Voltaire had reason to believe, though he still found it hard
to believe, that Desfontaines was in league with those other enemies of
his, Jore and J. B. Rousseau. Was it possible? Could there be such
ingratitude in the vilest thing that lived? It is to the credit of
Voltaire’s character, that he gave his abbé the benefit of the doubt
till there was doubt no longer. It was in 1736 he wrote that memorable
“I hear that Desfontaines is unhappy, and from that moment I forgive
him.” And the Thing stung again in a criticism on Voltaire’s “Elements
of Newton”--meant to be offensive. He was again forgiven. Then he stung
once more, and turned his benefactor into the liveliest, keenest,
deadliest foe that ever man had.
When Algarotti was at Cirey in the November of 1735, Voltaire had
addressed to him a few gay and graceful lines, meant only for his own
eye, and in which the real nature of the relationship between the poet
and Madame du Châtelet was plainly acknowledged. The verses fell into
the hands of Desfontaines. He wrote to ask permission to publish them in
his journal. Publish them! If all the world knew that Voltaire was
Émilie’s lover, all the world had at least the decency of feeling to
pretend that it knew nothing of the kind. Publish them! Voltaire,
Émilie--nay, the dull _bonhomme_ himself--protested passionately.
Publish them! Not for a kingdom! But they were published. And Voltaire
woke to revenge.
He would have been a worse man than he was if every bitter feeling in
his soul had not been stirred now. He was always acutely sensitive to
any slight put on his mistress’s name, honour, intellect--on anything
that belonged to her. If he was a good fighter when he was roused on his
own account, he was a ten times better fighter when he was roused on
hers. He was roused now. And he wrote the “Préservatif.”
It begins by a collection of all the slips, mistakes, misstatements,
printers’ errors and illiteracies which he was able to find in two
hundred numbers of Desfontaines’s weekly paper which was called
“Observations on New Books.” They were grouped together with all a
Voltaire’s ability--never a point missed, and so arranged as to make M.
l’Abbé supremely ridiculous. The “Préservatif” purported to be by a
Chevalier de Mouhy, a real person. At the end, the Chevalier presents to
the public a letter he has received from M. de Voltaire giving the whole
history of the Desfontaines affair in 1724--only not mentioning the
nature of the crime of which the abbé had been accused.
The “Préservatif” ran through Paris at the end of 1738 as such a
pamphlet would. With it, there ran a deadly epigram, and then a
caricature, with another epigram beneath. Neither epigrams nor
caricature would be tolerated by a decent age. They were all from the
pen of M. de Voltaire. They told the nature of the abbe’s crime. They
were a shameful weapon, shamefully used: and most deadly. Voltaire gave
Madame de Graffigny the “Préservatif” to read. To mention the name of
Desfontaines to him had soon the same effect as a red flag on a bull. He
was beside himself when he thought of the man’s base treachery and
ingratitude. He was beside himself when he wrote the epigrams and drew
the caricature. It is their only excuse. They need one.
He also wrote against Desfontaines, anonymously, a little comedy called
“L’Envieux”: but it was never played.
On that Christmas Day of 1738, Madame du Châtelet received a document by
the post. She read it alone and said nothing about it to Voltaire.
Whatever else she was, she was a woman of very strong sense and very
just judgment. The document she had received was the “Voltairomanie” by
Desfontaines--the retort to the “Préservatif”--the blasphemous shriek of
a lunatic--“the howl of a mad dog.” She herself wrote a reply to
it--still preserved. Voltaire must not see it! His health was wretched
as ever. He had just had an access of fever. He was acutely sensitive.
She did right to hide it from him. He was not less considerate. He had
also received a copy of that “gross libel” and was hiding it from _her_.
There must have been something good in the feeling these two people had
for each other--in spite of quarrels and bickerings and the testimony of
all the old women visitors in the world--they were so anxious to save
each other pain. They discovered their mutual deception on New Year’s
Day, 1739, and were the easier for being able to talk over the affair
together.
The “Voltairomanie” is too savage to be sane. It brought that old
accusation against Voltaire--a lack of personal courage. It recalled the
affair of the Bridge of Sèvres and the affair of Rohan in terms which
practice had made perfect in falsehood and offensiveness. It declared
Voltaire liar as well as coward. In the “Préservatif” he had said that
Theriot had shown him a libel Desfontaines had written against his
benefactor, while Desfontaines was staying with the Bernières at Rivière
Bourdet and only just released, by that benefactor’s efforts, from
Bicêtre. “And behold!” says Desfontaines in the “Voltairomanie,” “M.
Theriot has been obliged to deny all knowledge of the affair.”
Cirey at first was pretty calm, even under the matchless audacity of
this last statement. Theriot had been staying at Cirey last October and
had told with his own lips that very story just as Voltaire had told it
in the “Préservatif.” Voltaire did not take the matter so much to heart
as Madame du Châtelet had feared. He decided at once to treat
Desfontaines’s attack as a criminal libel, and to take legal proceedings
against him. He had witnesses as to the truth of _his_ story. Madame de
Bernières herself was one of them and prepared to write the most violent
letters on behalf of a friend. And Theriot--Theriot whom Voltaire had
made, loved, and trusted--why, Theriot had nothing to do but tell his
tale as he had told it in letters to Voltaire and over the Cirey
supper-table last autumn.
And Theriot never uttered a word. How hardly and slowly the conviction
of his treachery took possession of Voltaire’s mind, there is evidence
in his letters to show. Theriot false! Theriot time-server, coward,
frightened of the sting of a Desfontaines--impossible! The softest spot
in Voltaire’s heart was for this easy-going ne’er-do-weel who had been
the friend of his youth--confidant and intimate for five-and-twenty
years. Another man convinced of such a baseness as that, would have
shaken the creature off--flung himself free of the traitor who had eaten
his bread, accepted his money, lived on his fame, fattened on his
benefits--and denied him.
And Voltaire wrote pleading, persuading, imploring: counselling
repentance, eager to forgive: as a woman might have written to a
scapegrace son whose sin she knows, whose reformation she hopes, and
whom she must needs love for ever.
“Will you not have the courage to avow publicly what you have written to
me so many times?... My honour, your honour, the public interest demand
... that you should own that this miserable Desfontaines _did_ write an
abominable libel called the “Apology of Sieur Voltaire” and had it
printed at Rouen, and that you showed it me at Rivière Bourdet.”
“I am your friend of twenty years.... Will it be to your honour to have
renounced me and the truth for a Desfontaines?”
“Once again, do not listen to anyone who will counsel you to drink your
champagne gaily and forget all else. Drink, but fulfil the sacred duties
of friendship.”
“Make reparation, there is still time.”
“Everybody helps me but you. Everyone has done his duty, save you only.”
And at last, “All is forgotten, if you know how to love.”
There are many such letters of the early days of this year
1739--generous and pathetic enough. It was certainly Voltaire’s interest
to make Theriot speak the truth. But it may be believed that it was
Voltaire’s heart that was hurt by his silence. Émilie wrote to the false
friend, imploring: so did the easy-going Marquis, and the fat lady
watered _her_ letter with her tears. The affair would not have been
Voltaire’s if he had left a single stone unturned. Madame du Châtelet
wrote for him to obtain the influence of his prince--Frederick of
Prussia. And all the wretched Theriot would say was, that if the episode
had occurred, he had forgotten all about it. Madame de Graffigny
recorded how, when she was at Cirey in that February of 1739, Voltaire
received letters which threw him into a sort of convulsions, and Émilie
came into her guest’s room (“with tears in her eyes as big as her fist”)
to say the comedy they were to have played must be put off. The
Graffigny was too graphic a writer to be literally accurate. But there
is no wonder if Voltaire and Madame were greatly agitated and harassed
as to what course to pursue next. The mission which took Madame de
Champbonin, who must certainly have been one of the most good-natured
women who ever breathed, to Paris in January, 1739, was to try the
weight of _her_ moral influence on Theriot. And at last the wretched
creature, buffeted on all sides by letters at once heart-breaking,
entreating, and indignant, _did_ so far repent of his treachery as to
eat his words and consent to appear in some sort as the accuser of
Desfontaines.
And now Voltaire, having won his Theriot, must move heaven and earth
that in all points his libel suit may be carried to a successful issue.
It was the custom of that day for as many of the complainant’s friends
as possible to appear before the magistrate when the suit was
brought--just to see how they could influence impartial justice.
“Nothing produces so great an effect on a judge’s mind,” the plaintiff
in the present case wrote off plainly to Moussinot, “as the attendance
of a large number of relatives.... Justice is like the kingdom of
Heaven. The violent take it by force.” Voltaire had, then, not a
friendly acquaintance in Paris who was not to be roused to help him. It
was judged best that he himself should remain at Cirey. So Moussinot
became his agent, and a very active agent he had to be. He was to hire
carriages for the friends. He was to pay their expenses. All other
business was to go to the winds. He was to search out nephew
Mignot--Madame Denis’s brother--so that he might be useful in stirring
up _his_ relatives. He was conjured to pursue the affair “avec la
dernière vivacité.” “No _ifs_, no _buts_: nothing is difficult to
friendship,” the energetic Voltaire wrote cheerfully. The Marquis du
Châtelet was sent up to Paris to see what _he_ could do. Voltaire’s old
school friends, the d’Argensons and d’Argental, were not a little
active. Prince Frederick wrote influential letters to his Court at home.
Paris was in a ferment. Europe itself was interested. It was a _cause
célèbre_ of quite extraordinary vivacity. Through January, February, and
March of 1739, Voltaire himself was working feverishly at Cirey. He
rained letters on his friends. He wrote anonymous ones on Desfontaines
to be circulated in Paris, not at all decent and very much to the taste
of the age. He was certainly a matchless foe. He thought of everything.
The resources of his mind were as wonderful as its energy. He had the
gift of making other people very nearly as enthusiastic as he was
himself. To read his letters of this time, in cold blood one hundred and
sixty years after, stirs the pulses still. The most apathetic reader
himself feels for the moment Voltaire’s dancing impatience for revenge,
his hot anxiety for fear miserable Theriot should be false at the last
after all, his throbbing, vivid determination that he _shall_ be true.
The vigour of the man seems to have worn out at last even the malice of
his enemies. Desfontaines was told that he must disavow his
“Voltairomanie”--or go to prison. So the honourable magistrate drew out
a formula in which the honourable Desfontaines repudiated with horror,
and in sufficiently servile terms, all idea of his being the author of
that blasphemy and expressed “sentiments of esteem” for M. de Voltaire!
The whole case may be said to have rained lies. Everybody lied.
Desfontaines’s final lie was “done in Paris, this 4th of April, 1739.”
Moussinot was commissioned to give Madame de Champbonin two hundred
francs--which, to be sure, she deserved--and one hundred to the needy
and complaisant Mouhy, who had been dubbed the author of the
“Préservatif,” “telling him you have no more.”
The buffeting of that storm left Voltaire panting, feeble, and
exhausted. “There are some men by whom it is glorious to be hated,” was
an axiom of his own. Desfontaines was certainly one of them. But
Desfontaines’s hatred had power to the end of his life to rouse him to a
frenzy of indignation. “Take honour from me and my life is done,” had
not, alas! been the spirit of either defendant or plaintiff in this
case. But it had one good thing about it, though only one,--Voltaire’s
dealing with Theriot. Theriot was forgiven as if Voltaire had been the
Christian he was not.
On May 8, 1739, the two du Châtelets, Koenig (Madame’s mathematical
professor--a very good mathematician and a very dull man), M. de
Voltaire and suite left Cirey for Brussels. Voltaire had been at Cirey
nearly five years. He had learnt to love its solitude, its calm, its
facilities for hard work. He had learnt to dread towns if he had not
learnt to love Nature. But Émilie wanted a change, so was quite sure
that a journey and a different air were the very things for her lover’s
deplorable health. The process of reasoning is not unusual. Was there
not too a certain du Châtelet lawsuit, of which they were always
talking, which was already eighty years old and could only be settled in
Brussels? So to Brussels they went.
Voltaire had to be dragged away from a tragedy, from “Louis XIV.,” from
elaborate corrections which he was making to the “Henriade,” and from
the study of Demosthenes and Euclid. Madame had an iron constitution
herself, and could be at a dance all night and up at six the next
morning studying mathematics--for fear Koenig should find her a dunce.
_En route_ for Brussels, they stopped at Valenciennes, where they were
entertained with a ball, a ballet, and a comedy. They had no sooner
reached their quiet house in the Rue de la Grosse Tour, Brussels, than
they left it to visit some du Châtelet relations, at Beringen, ten miles
distant, and at Hain. They were back in Brussels by June 17th. The city
put herself _en fête_ for them. J. B. Rousseau, who lived there, was “no
more spoken of than if he were dead.” Anyone with a human nature must
have been pleased at _that_. Voltaire exerted himself and had a
beautiful garden-party with fireworks one of those fine days to the Duc
d’Aremberg and all the other polite society in Brussels. Of course he
must needs superintend the firework preparations himself. Two of his
unfortunate workmen fell from the scaffolding on to him, killing
themselves, and nearly killing him. The event affected him not a little.
Then the Duc d’Aremberg invited his entertainers to stay with him at
Enghien. The gardens were so exquisite that they almost reconciled even
a Voltaire and a Marquise du Châtelet to a house where there was not a
single book except those they had brought themselves. They played
_brelan_: they played comedy: and the author of the “Century of Louis
XIV.” listened to the Duke’s anecdotes of the days when he had served
under Prince Eugene. They were back in Brussels by July 18th. Useful
Moussinot was there too. On September 4, 1739, and after an absence from
it of more than three years, Voltaire found himself again in Paris.
If he had not wished to move to Brussels, he had much less wished to
move to Paris. But “the divine Émilie found it necessary for her to
start for Paris, _et me voilà_.” That was the situation. They were both
immediately engulfed in a social whirlpool--suppers, operas and
theatres, endless visitors and calls--“not an instant to oneself,
neither time to write, to think, or to sleep.” Voltaire wrote rather
sorrowfully of the dreadful ennui of these perpetual amusements to
placid old Champbonin, at Cirey. As for Madame du Châtelet--
Son esprit est très philosophe,
Mais son cœur aime les pompons
her lover had written of her to Sade in 1733, in perhaps the most apt
and descriptive couplet ever made. She was enjoying the _pompons_ now.
Paris was _en fête_ for the marriage of Louis XV.’s eldest daughter to a
prince of Spain. Madame was as energetic in her amusements as she was
energetic in acquiring knowledge. She gratified her tastes for dress,
talk, and gaiety and her taste for mathematics all together. Koenig had
come to Paris with them. Poor Voltaire wrote of her, not a little
dolorously and enviously, “Madame du Châtelet is quite different; _she_
can always think--has always power over her mind.” But to compose plays
in this tumult!--it was impossible to the man at this time at any rate.
His health was really as wretched as Madame said. It is not a little
characteristic of him to find him ill in bed being copiously bled and
doctored on Sunday, and gaily arranging a supper party on Thursday. But
even his versatility and courage, even the good-humoured patience with
which he watched Émilie enjoying herself, were not inexhaustible. He had
two plays to be produced in Paris. He did not wait to see either of them
even rehearsed. Early in November, 1739, he and Madame du Châtelet were
spending a week or two at Cirey on their way back to Brussels.