THE RIFT WITHIN THE LUTE
ON November 6, 1750, at Potsdam, and after he had been in Prussia rather
less than three months, Uncle Voltaire took his versatile pen in hand
and wrote to Louise Denis a famous letter--the letter of Buts. Prussia
had fulfilled all his hopes, nay, had exceeded them, but--. “The King’s
suppers are delightful, but--.” “My life is at once free and occupied,
but--.” “Operas, comedies, carousals, suppers at Sans-Souci, military
manœuvres, concerts, study, readings, but--.” “Berlin splendid with its
gracious queens and charming princesses, but--.” “But, my dear, a very
fine frost has set in.”
That letter might serve not only as a description of life at Potsdam,
but of all human life. A most delightful world, but--. The truth was
that Voltaire had begun to feel the grip of Frederick’s iron hand. On
November 17th he wrote again to his niece and told her a little, ugly
story. Secretary Darget had lost his wife. And the great Frederick wrote
to him a letter of sympathy, “very touching, pathetic, and even
Christian”; and the same day made a shameful epigram upon the dead
woman. “It does not bear thinking about,” wrote Voltaire. Whose turn
might it not be next? “We are here ... like monks in an abbey,” he
added. “God grant the abbot stops at making game of us!”
There was another source of trouble going on at the same time. Who could
have expected that a Voltaire and a d’Arnaud could share a kingdom in
peace? “Do you not know,” Voltaire said once, “that when there are two
Frenchmen in a foreign court or country one of them must die?” He had
forgiven that “rising sun” affair; but he had not forgotten it. This
d’Arnaud, too, was the most absurd, conceited, ungrateful simpleton
imaginable.
Voltaire had not only lent him money. He had done much more than that.
He had tried to make his _protégé_ fit for some good post--to make him
improve, for instance, a shameful handwriting. He had introduced him to
Helvétius. He is “as my son,” “he has merit,” “he is poor and virtuous.”
In return Baculard had paid his master some fine compliments; and in
1739 had written a preface for a new edition of M. de Voltaire’s works,
in which the flattery was so fulsome that M. de Voltaire himself cut
out, or toned down, some of the most eulogistic passages.
Then came Baculard’s invitation to Prussia. He gave himself the finest
insolent airs. He pretended to be surprised at the smallness of the
handsome pension Frederick had given him. If he was not of the suppers,
he had every other honour. He was received by the princes, and
play-acted with them. The story goes that being given a part in
“Mariamne” too small for his conceit, he did it as badly as he could;
and Voltaire lost his temper with him and cried out “You are not clever
enough for the _rôle_; you do not even know how to speak the words!” But
Baculard’s hot head was turned. The princes, and that negligible
quantity, Frederick’s wife, had taken him up and were playing him off
against Frederick’s Voltaire. Then the misguided young man was
positively foolish enough to ally himself with Voltaire’s enemy, Fréron,
and to attack the wickedest, cleverest foe that ever man had. Baculard
wrote Fréron a letter to be shown about Paris, in which he not only
denied the authorship of that flattering preface written in 1739, but
added that Voltaire himself had inserted therein “horrible things”
against France.
And of a sudden, Voltaire flung off the encumbering mantle of
comfortable prosperity he had worn for so short a time and was at his
foolish bombastical minor poet, tooth and nail.
On November 14, 1750, he wrote to tell his Angel of the affair. Then he
wrote to King Frederick and insisted on Frederick taking his part--cool
Frederick who would fain have conciliated both parties. “I cannot meet
the man, Sire! He is going to-day to Berlin in Prince Henry’s carriage,
why should he not stop there to study, to attend the Academy--whatever
you like! I do not mention the word _renvoi_, but that is what I mean.
And I leave all to the goodness and prudence of your Majesty.”
On November 24th a very triumphant uncle wrote to his niece that “the
rising sun has gone to bed.” D’Arnaud in fact had been ordered to leave
Berlin in twenty-four hours and--the King had forgotten to pay the
expenses of his journey. Voltaire was victorious. Most of his friends
and all his enemies both in Paris and Berlin had been watching that
quarrel with a scrutiny seemingly out of all proportion to its
importance. D’Arnaud had gone into obscurity for ever. But the easily
elated Voltaire was not long elated this time somehow. Here again was
food for thought. If one favourite was lost as suddenly as a bright
exhalation in the evening and no man saw him more, why not another? “And
when he falls, he falls like Lucifer, never to hope again.”
The victory left Arouet strangely pensive.
D’Arnaud had not only wrought mischief, it appears, but left a train of
it behind him. His patron, Prince Henry, had long desired a copy of that
firebrand, that stormy petrel, the “Pucelle.” Just before his dismissal,
the obliging d’Arnaud had helped the Prince to corrupt Voltaire’s
secretary, Tinois; and paid him to copy some cantos of the poem for the
Prince, by night. Tinois was a young man whom Voltaire had taken into
his service when he was at Rheims in October, 1749, for no better reason
than that he had written rather a pretty verse after reading “Rome
Sauvée.” On January 3, 1751, Voltaire wrote to Madame Denis that he had
dismissed Tinois, and that Prince Henry had sworn to keep the “Pucelle”
secret and safe. But if “put not your trust in princes” had long been
the burden of Madame du Châtelet’s and of his niece’s warnings, it had
sunk into Voltaire’s soul now. He was not at ease.
The successor of the faithless Tinois gave him further trouble.
The new secretary’s name was Richier. He had a friend called Lessing
who was to be the great German writer, but who was now obscure, poor,
and unknown, two-and-twenty years of age, and trying to make a
livelihood in Berlin by copying and translating. Richier introduced him
to the great Voltaire; and the good-natured Voltaire gave Lessing work
and became very much his friend. Then the foolish Richier lends Lessing
a volume of Voltaire’s “Century of Louis XIV.”--the work and pride of so
many years--and now almost ready for the press. Lessing leaves
Berlin--with the volume. Considering the fact that the upright character
of Lessing was not then a notorious thing, it is not wonderful that
Voltaire was alarmed. Suppose Lessing should publish the volume on his
own account, and in its imperfect state! Voltaire wrote Lessing a very
courteous letter asking for its return. And Lessing sent back the
manuscript with some very ill-timed jokes. Lessing, it must be
remembered, was nobody, and young; and Voltaire was past middle life and
the most famous literary man of his period. The offender never forgave
Voltaire for having suspected that he would make dishonourable use of
his manuscript. But, after all, Voltaire seems to have been more sinned
against than sinning.
There were, too, going on at the same time various mean domestic
disagreeables--literally storms in teacups. Formey, writer of memoirs,
but not always of reliable memoirs, records how Voltaire complained to
the King of the bad sugar, coffee, tea, and chocolate served to him; how
the King apologised, and altered nothing; and how angry the great
Voltaire demeaned himself to be over these trifles. Did he remember that
he had written hotly to Alliot, King Stanislas’s chamberlain at
Lunéville, in 1749, just before the death of Madame du Châtelet, on a
like subject? “I can assure you at Berlin I am not obliged to beg for
bread, wine, and candles.” And now! The truth is best summed up by the
most thorough and minute of all Voltaire’s biographers, Desnoiresterres.
“He used, and thought he was entitled to use largely, a hospitality
which he had only accepted after many invitations and prayers.” He asked
his friends to dine with him on “the King’s roast” without any fear of
exceeding his rights as a guest. Formey adds that he appropriated the
candle-ends which were the servants’ perquisites; and records that,
through meanness, when the Court was in mourning he appeared in a
borrowed black suit and returned it to its portly owner, cut to the
dimensions of the lean Voltairian figure. The story seems to be that lie
which is part of the truth. True or false, it is not worth examination.
No doubtful anecdotes are needed to prove that Voltaire was the
sensitive philosopher whose delicate body made him singularly
unphilosophic in trifles; or that in money affairs he was at once
exceedingly generous and prudently thrifty.
But he had to do now with a money affair in which his prudence, alas!
was only conspicuous by its absence.
In November of 1750 had begun his too-famous affair with Hirsch, Jew
usurer of Berlin.
He had been first brought into relations with the shifty Israelite on
November 9th. On the day following he played “Cicero” in his “Rome
Sauvée”--a blaze of jewels, borrowed from the Hirsch father and son. On
November 23d he received Hirsch _fils_ (Hirsch _fils_ transacted all the
business, Hirsch _père_ being well stricken in years) in his room at
Potsdam quite close to the unconscious Frederick; and there, forsooth,
M. de Voltaire, with the aid of M. Hirsch, plans to do on the quiet a
little illegal stock-jobbing. Several years before, the Elector of
Saxony had established a bank in Dresden. It issued such an immense
number of notes that “the currency of Saxony was inflated: for a time a
note of one hundred thalers was worth but fifty.” Frederick, when the
Silesian war made him master of Dresden, stipulated that _Prussian_
subjects holding these notes should be paid in full. This went on for
three years; but in 1748, Frederick, yielding to the remonstrances of
the Elector, forbade his subjects to purchase these notes or to bring
them into the Prussian kingdom at all. Such notes it was, which on this
fatal November 23, 1750, a cunning M. de Voltaire commissioned Hirsch to
purchase, and then to sell again in Saxony, receiving of course their
full nominal value. To effect this purchase, Voltaire gave Hirsch
negotiable bills worth 2,500_l._
One of these bills was a draft on Voltaire’s Paris banker for 1,600_l._,
“not payable for some weeks.” Bill two was a draft for 650_l._ by old
father Hirsch--or Hirschell, as Voltaire called him--on Voltaire
himself. In exchange for these two bills, Voltaire held the borrowed
jewels.
There is nothing more remarkable about Voltaire, considered in his
character of a literary man, than the fact that he was always
speculating, and except on this occasion, hardly ever unsuccessfully.
But a Court is no place for a secret. By November 29th some rumour of
his guest’s little affair had reached Frederick. On December 1st that
procrastinating Hirsch had not even started on his journey to Dresden.
Hirsch is pretty cool about the whole business, it appears, and not
inclined to hurry himself. Voltaire’s dancing, agitated impatience spurs
him off at last. From December 1st to 12th he is in Dresden--delaying,
making excuses and cashing never a Saxon note. (All he _did_ do was to
raise money on the Paris draft for 1,600_l._ Voltaire had given him, and
trade on his own account.) Voltaire entirely loses his temper, stops the
payment of that draft on his Paris banker, and summons Hirsch home at
once. He comes. Still pretty cool is M. Hirsch. Rather injured, if
anything, in fact. It is not pleasant, M. de Voltaire, “to have sold a
bill of exchange which the drawer protested;” and that is what happened
to me about that Paris draft of yours! I have the paper now--entirely
worthless of course. But M. Hirsch takes care to keep it very securely
all the same. For a Hirsch to have such a document signed Arouet de
Voltaire may be rather an awkward thing for the King’s visitor; and so,
a profitable one for a Hirsch, as giving him a hold over his client. He
has, or fancies he has, the whip hand of M. de Voltaire, who cannot make
himself very disagreeable, thinks Hirsch, since the whole affair is
illegal and under the rose.
On December 16th, Voltaire, come to Berlin with King and Court for the
Christmas carnival, receives Hirsch. The two draw up a document, “a
complete settlement.” Hirsch gives back Voltaire his unused drafts “and
expressly engages to return the bill upon Paris.” Voltaire, in exchange,
is to buy
[Illustration: MOREAU DE MAUPERTUIS
_From an Engraving after a Painting by Tourmere_]
some of the Hirsch jewels he holds, and to give Hirsch the expenses of
his journey and “compensation” for his time and trouble. The dangerous
affair is at an end. M. de Voltaire supposes he has done with it for
ever. He and Hirsch part satisfied. Then Hirsch discovers that Voltaire
considers 9_l._ compensation sufficient. The Jew does not. Voltaire
consults another money-lender, Ephraim, the enemy of the house of
Hirsch, who tells him the jewels he holds are not worth what Hirsch said
they were. “Then you must have changed them,” says Hirsch. That is the
declaration of war.
Until the Christmas Day of that 1750, daily stormy meetings between
Hirsch and Voltaire took place in Voltaire’s room in the palace.
Voltaire was convinced the Jew meant to extract money from him by means
of the Paris bill: and return that bill Hirsch would not. No one who
remembers the character of a youthful and middle-aged Arouet will be in
the least surprised to hear that an Arouet of fifty-six chased the Jew
round the room at last, shook his fist in his face, pushed him out of
the door in a rage, and banged it after him like a passionate child.
The “final total explosion” took place at a meeting at “brave Major
Chasot’s” lodging when the _vif_ infuriated Voltaire sprang at Hirsch’s
throat and sent him sprawling.
The affair had been noised abroad. If Hirsch still thought--and he did
still think--that it would be so singularly unpleasant and impolitic for
Voltaire to have the transaction made public and that he would submit to
any indignity rather than to that catastrophe, he had mistaken his man.
He had reckoned without the marvellous imprudence, mettle, and vivacity
of the enemy of Rohan and Desfontaines and Boyer. Here was he who never
made a compromise, and in his whole life never once bought peace by
submitting to be cheated.
The fuse had been put to the gunpowder: and on December 30th came a
shock which startled Europe.
The great Voltaire, the guest of the King of Prussia, _versus_ Messrs.
Hirsch & Son, Jew money-lenders of Berlin! Here was a _cause célèbre_
with a vengeance!
Voltaire was quite as active and excited as he had been in the affair
Desfontaines. He engaged the best counsel he could get. On January 1,
1751, he obtained a warrant to throw old Hirsch into prison for wrongly
detaining papers belonging to M. de Voltaire. Hirsch was released
therefrom in a few days on bail--and the lawsuit began.
To unravel the truth from that complex tissue of lies has been the
effort of all Frederick’s and of all Voltaire’s biographers. None have
wholly succeeded. The case is infinitely intricate. The Hirsches lied
very freely, and were inartistic enough not always to adhere to the same
lie. It has been seen that though Voltaire preferred truth and honesty
(which is already something) _he_ was not above lying--when there was
necessity. _His_ case, in brief, was, “I _lent_ Hirsch money to help his
business at Dresden in fur and jewels.” (This was the pretext on which
the Jew had undertaken the journey.) “Some diamonds I took from him in
part payment are not worth what he said they were; and he illegally
retains my draft on my Paris banker, and has not kept to the agreement
he signed.”
Hirsch’s case was, “M. de Voltaire _sent_ me to Dresden to deal in Saxon
notes for him. The diamonds I gave him _were_ worth what I said. He has
changed them for diamonds of less value. The agreement he produces,
signed by me, was altered by him, to his advantage, after I had signed
it.”
Documents were produced on both sides. That famous paper of agreement
which Hirsch had signed and of which he now accused Voltaire of altering
the wording, after he, Hirsch, had signed it, has been reproduced in
facsimile.
It proves nothing. The document _has_ been palpably altered. But who is
to say if those illiterate and careless alterations were made before, or
after, Hirsch had signed it? If after, then Voltaire was the most
blundering and ignorant of forgers. But those early chafing months in a
notary’s office must have given a shrewd head such as his a knowledge of
law and legal documents which would have made him a better swindler than
this forgery proves him. Voltaire’s cleverness, not his virtue,
exonerates him from that crime.
The man’s mind was on the rack while the case lasted. His fury against
the Hirsches blinded him to the folly and indignity of having been drawn
into such a suit at all. “I was piqued. I was mad to prove I had been
cheated,” he wrote penitently afterwards. Wretched old Hirsch died
during the progress of the trial--of a broken heart, said his son
pathetically. King Frederick preserved a very ominous silence indeed.
His guest’s health was miserable. He had a fever--of the soul--and
Berlin and Paris were watching, as at a play.
On February 18, 1751, the case was decided in favour of Voltaire. Hirsch
was condemned on every count with which Voltaire had charged him. The
purpose for which Voltaire had advanced the money was not, said the
court shrewdly, the court’s business. But all the waiting and watching
world knew what that purpose had been, and so did the waiting and
watching Frederick. Hirsch was to restore the Paris exchange bill. The
diamonds were to be valued “by experienced jewellers on their oaths.”
Voltaire’s seizure of the person of Hirsch was declared just and right.
As to the famous agreement, Hirsch was fined ten thalers for denying he
had signed it; and Voltaire was to make an affidavit that he had not
changed its wording.
It is said that he asked upon what book he was to take his oath, and
when he was answered, “The Bible,” cried, “What, on that book written in
such bad Latin! Now if it were only Homer or Virgil!” If the story is
true, it was but a flash of the old mocking spirit. Voltaire was in no
mood for jesting. He had won, it is true. But his victory was a sorry
one.
It was such a sorry one that the unlucky victor had perforce to go about
congratulating himself loudly thereon, if only to make other people
congratulate him too. Even now, the settlement was not complete.
The jewels had to be valued. That would take time. Voltaire was worn
body and soul by a case which had kept him at a fever heat of passion
from December 1, 1750, until this February 18, 1751. And in a deadly
silence the King sat aloof in a rage. Voltaire’s friends implored him to
end an affair which had been degrading to everyone concerned in it. And
at last he did come to some sort of compromise with the determined
Hirsch. A few minor points appear to have been still undecided as late
as the December of 1751.
Throughout a whole three months Frederick had uttered never a word.
His attitude towards this case was at once natural and justifiable. It
was a poor, mean, despicable business at the best. Kingly hands, of all
hands in the world, if they touch pitch are defiled therewith. Frederick
shut ears and eyes to the shriekings and the cheatings of this pair of
low money-lenders--and his guest. At first, indeed, his fury with that
guest had got the better of him. On January 12, 1751, the King of France
announced at his _levée_ that the King of Prussia had dismissed
Voltaire. Angry Frederick _had_ turned to Darget, saying, “Write and
tell him that he is to be out of my dominions in four-and-twenty hours.”
Well for Voltaire that he had cultivated the friendship of the discreet
secretary! Darget pleaded for him. “Wait till the case is tried, Sire!
If he is guilty, then will be time enough to send him away.” Frederick
agreed; but during January and February they never met. Voltaire was for
the most part in Berlin, and the King at Potsdam, but sometimes they
were in the same palace divided by a few planks of wood--and the Jew
lawsuit.
The versatility of Voltaire had hardly ever been better exemplified than
by the fact that during this very December and January when rage and
anxiety were tearing him to pieces, and he was breathlessly waiting the
judgment of his case, he was play-acting with the princesses in Berlin
exactly as if nothing were happening, and as if he were in full favour
with the King. On January 5th, “Zaire” was acted and Voltaire played
Lusignan as he had done in happier days at Madame de Fontaine Martel’s:
the Princess Amelia was Zaire; the Princes Henry and Frederick also took
parts; and the Queen was enchanted. “The Death of Cæsar” was also acted,
and other plays. Throughout the winter too Voltaire gave audiences to
great persons; and received marshals, princes, statesmen, and nobles.
Yet, through it all, the man was appealing passionately to the King by
Darget. “Throw yourself at the King’s feet and obtain for me that I may
retire to the Marquisat” (a country house near Potsdam). “My soul is
dead and my body dying.”
When he was not drawing tears from the spectators in that moving part of
the old father, tears of rage and bitterness were very near his own
eyes. “It is not sufficient to be courageous,” he said himself; “one
must have distractions.” He had need of them if any man had.
On January 22d, the King summed up the case to the Margravine of
Bayreuth as “the affair of a rascal who is trying to cheat a sharper....
The suit is in the hands of justice, and in a few days we shall know who
is the greater scoundrel of the two.” On January 30th, Voltaire himself
wrote to the Margravine with a very wry face: “Brother Voltaire is here
in disgrace. He has had a dog of lawsuit with a Jew, and, according to
the law of the Old Testament, he will have to pay dearly for having been
robbed.”
Then Voltaire wrote direct to the King and pleaded and argued with him
personally. Only receive me into favour and I will anger you no more!
And on February 2d Frederick wrote again to the Margravine, softened not
at all; and _she_ wrote on February 18th to her friend Voltaire: “Apollo
at law with a Jew! Fie then! that’s abominable.” Then Voltaire appealed
again to Frederick. “All the genius of our modern Solomon could not make
me feel my fault more than my heart feels it.”
Finally Solomon _did_ give Apollo that Marquisat he had asked for; and
Voltaire’s “quarrel with the Old Testament,” as he called it, being
settled, the King wrote to him icily on February 24th from Potsdam:
“D’Arnaud had done nothing. It was because of you he had to go.... You
have had the most detestable affair in the world with a Jew. It has made
a frightful scandal.... If you can make up your mind to live like a
philosopher I shall be glad to see you.” If not ... “you may as well
stay in Berlin.”
On February 27th, Voltaire replied, volubly explaining, regretting,
apologising. He owned himself in the wrong with a candour and humility
rather engaging.
“I have committed a great fault. I ask pardon of your Majesty’s
philosophy and goodness.... Do with me what you will.” His health was
suffering dreadfully at the time. “The winter kills me”--especially the
winter of our discontent. Even hard work at “Louis XIV.” could not make
him forget that. He pleaded very hard indeed.
On February 28th, Frederick accorded a cold permission to him to come to
Potsdam if he would.
By March 11th he was established at the Marquisat with, as he said,
“pills and pill-boxes” and the fifth canto of a poem by King Frederick
entitled “The Art of War.”
The King no doubt had missed Voltaire’s conversation. He had missed too
his brilliant, delightful, inconsequent, unreliable personality. The old
subtle charm drew the two men together--in spite of themselves, and the
imprudence of their connection. They were sure to quarrel! But, like
many a lover and his mistress, they were dying to see each other, if it
were only to discover fresh reasons for disagreement. “I have committed
a folly,” wrote Voltaire to Madame Denis, “but I am not a fool.” He was
something so infinitely removed from a fool that his living touch of
genius alone could raise, if anything could raise, Frederick’s poems
from a dead mediocrity and the dreadful limbo of dulness. “To the
Prussians” and “The Art of War” were very important factors in the
Treaty of Peace.
Very early in his stay in Prussia the indefatigable Voltaire had begun
learning a little of the despised German language--of which, says
Morley, he never knew more “than was needed to curse a postilion.” To
correct the King’s works, he needed none. By October 28, 1750, he was
busy overseeing the second edition of Frederick’s history of his
country, written in French and entitled “Memoirs of the House of
Brandenburg,” and trying to modify the royal author’s round abuse of his
own grandfather. But Frederick only loved truth the better if it burnt.
“After all,” said Voltaire with a shrug of his lean shoulders, “he is
your grandfather, not mine; do as you like with him.”
The critic was not generally so accommodating, however. He was not a
critic _pour rire_. He gave himself an enormous amount of work. He ran
a thousand risks of offending his royal pupil. He cavilled at this,
queried that, suggested endlessly. The manuscript of “Aux Prussiens” is
still extant, with remarks in Voltaire’s little handwriting all over it.
His minuteness and care were extraordinary. It would have been at least
a hundred times easier for him to have praised lavishly and
indifferently. Any author will accept flattery--on trust. It is only for
blame and disagreement that the critic must give clear reason and proof;
and chapter and verse for his alterations and amendments. If Voltaire
had been a toady and had not loved his art better than all monarchs, he
would have wasted much less of his dearly prized time in “rounding off a
little the works of the King of Prussia.” His “official fidelity,
frankness, and rigorous strictness” are a high testimony to his
character. “The Art of War” is a much more ambitious work than “To the
Prussians” and was subjected to the same relentless criticism. The eager
critic wanted, he said, to enable his royal master to do without his
help. Sometimes Frederick would leave a wrong word purposely. “We must
give him the pleasure of finding some fault,” he wrote to Darget. But on
the whole he accepted not only verbal emendations, but alterations of
his very opinions with a generosity and fairness which prove the true
royalty of the royal soul. This quick, thorough, breathless, aggravating
schoolmaster would be satisfied with nothing less than his pupil’s best.
If a man could be made a great writer without being born one, Frederick
the Great’s literary efforts would not be mouldering in the libraries
to-day.
The reconciliation between the teacher and the taught seems for a while
to have been complete. The worry of the Hirsch affair had made Voltaire
really ill. But Frederick was all goodness to the sufferer. He had a
room kept for his use at Sans-Souci. Formey records how one day he went
to the Marquisat to call upon Voltaire and found him in bed. “What is
the matter with you?” “Four mortal diseases,” answers the invalid. “Your
eyes look nice and bright though,” says the ill-advised Formey, meaning
consolation. “And don’t you know,” shouts the sick man with all his
strength, “that in scurvy people _die_ with their eyes inflamed?” It
must be conceded that though Voltaire never allowed his ailments to stop
his work, he liked to have full credit for them, and took care never to
be ill without impressing upon his friends that he was dying. All the
same, he began to attend those gay, frugal, philosophical little suppers
once more--and was once more permitted to dispense with the ponderous
dinners. Yet once more too, except for that ill-health, the life here
was all he dreamed it. Frederick wrote him little friendly notes--“I
have just given birth to six twins.... The ‘Henriade’ is engaged to be
their godmother. Come to the father’s room at six o’clock this
evening”--the six twins being six cantos of “The Art of War.” And
Voltaire would answer, “Sire, you have the cramp, and so have I; you
love solitude, and so do I.” The pair were again as lovers, in fact;
writing nothings, only for the sake of writing something. The winter was
past, and the summer blossoming again.
The trip to Italy, postponed from the autumn of 1750, had been arranged
to take place in this May of 1751, but was finally abandoned altogether;
partly on account of the Inquisition, but partly also, it may be
surmised, because Frederick having found Voltaire again, was in no mind
to lose him.
Through the summer host and guest were hard at work with their
respective secretaries. Both knew at least one of the receipts for
happiness. Prussia _was_ heaven. Only--only--there was a delightful
earth called Paris where d’Argental was doing his vigorous best to get
the authorities to permit the performance of “Mahomet”--an earth from
which he wrote on August 6th of this 1751, one last, long, pleading
appeal to Voltaire to return, while he could yet return, with honour.
Madame Denis, resolved not to join her uncle in Prussia, added her
entreaties. The foolish woman, who had a _tendresse_ for handsome young
Baculard d’Arnaud in the days when he was her uncle’s _protégé_ in
Paris, was now coquetting with a certain Marquis de Ximenès, or
Chimenès, as Voltaire called him, and less minded than ever to leave the
capital.
The wild La Mettrie, too, was for ever calling on Voltaire--volubly
homesick for Paris himself. Voltaire would have gone, perhaps; but in
August his “Louis XIV.” was actually in the press of Berlin, he had a
hundred prospective engagements, and--he thought Frederick was his
friend.
It was at the end of this same month of August that La Mettrie, calling
on Voltaire, swore to him that he had heard Frederick say of him: “I
shall want him at the most another year: one squeezes the orange and
throws away the rind.” Voltaire would not believe the story. La Mettrie
redoubled his oaths. Voltaire wrote the scene to Madame Denis on
September 2d in his quick, vivid fashion. “Do you believe it? Ought I to
believe it ... after sixteen years of goodness ... when I am sacrificing
all for him?... I shall be justly condemned for having yielded to so
many caresses.... What shall I do? Ignore what La Mettrie has told me,
tell nobody but you, forget it, wait?” If Voltaire thought he really
could do these things, he could have known little of his own character.
He did try to forget. But that rind of an orange! It rankled, it
rankled. _Could_ Frederick have said it? Impossible! But he had written
the “Anti-Machiavelli” and spilled blood in war like water; condoled
piously with Darget and made an epigram on his wife; caressed d’Arnaud
and ruined him. It made one thoughtful.
On September 30th “Mahomet” was successfully performed in Paris. That
was another voice urging Voltaire to return.
“The orange rind haunts my dreams,” he wrote to Madame Denis again, on
October 29th. “I try not to believe it.... We go to sup with the King
and are gay enough sometimes. The man who fell from the top of a steeple
and finding the falling through the air soft, said, ‘Good, provided it
lasts,’ is not a little as I am.”
On November 11th, the tale-bearer, La Mettrie, died from having consumed
a whole _pâté_ (composed of eagle and pheasant, lard, pork and ginger!)
at Lord Tyrconnel’s house. He would make mischief no more. But, then, he
could not undo the mischief he had made. “I should like to have asked La
Mettrie when he was dying,” Voltaire wrote sombrely to Madame Denis on
Christmas Eve, “about that rind of an orange. That good soul, about to
appear before God, would not have dared to lie. There is a great
appearance that he spoke the truth.... The King told me yesterday ...
that he would give me a province to have me near him. _That_ does not
look like the rind of an orange.”
Between doubting and hoping, mistrusting, fearing he knew not what, in
health always wretched (“my distempers ... make me utterly unfit for
kings”), homesick, uneasy, longing at once to go away and to be
persuaded to stay, Voltaire spent his second winter--in heaven. Hirsch
had made the first something very like pandemonium. But there was life,
interest, excitement in a fight. The dull anxiety, the ugly care to wake
up to in the dead nights and the dark mornings--these were worse a
thousand times. Well for Voltaire that now, even more than ever, he had
to comfort him that best relief from all the fears, doubts, problems,
and presentiments of life--hard work.