THE ARRIVAL IN SWITZERLAND
Receiving no answer to his request to be allowed to travel, Voltaire
prudently resolved to consider that silence gave consent. But he was
still not a little nervous that if he took refuge in a foreign country
Louis XV. might consider himself justified in seizing the pensions of
his truant subject.
And then, where was he to go? It seems most likely that if it had not
been for that unromantic disorder called _mal de mer_ he would have
ended his days in Pennsylvania. He had still his _bizarre_ liking for
the Quakers; and America was the country of the free. To be sure _mal du
pays_ was a worse and a longer lived disorder with him than the other:
and if he had tried Pennsylvania on one impulse, he would quickly have
left it on another.
He looked back lovingly, too, on bold little England, “where one thinks
as a free man.” And on March 19, 1754, he asked M. Polier de Bottens,
who had been a Calvinist minister at Lausanne, if he could assure him of
as much freedom in Lausanne as in Britain. Meanwhile, there was no
reason why, in the near future, that long-deferred and greatly discussed
Plombières visit should not take place.
And, for the time, he was in Colmar. On January 12th of this year he had
sent his Duchess of Saxe-Gotha twelve advance copies of those “Annals of
the Empire” written at her request, and just printed under Voltaire’s
own eye at Colmar by Schoepflin. In return, Madame had done her gracious
best to reconcile him with Frederick. He was anxious to be reconciled.
Frederick could influence France to receive back her prodigal, as could
no one else. “Brother Voltaire,” as he signed himself in his letters to
her, also pleaded his cause once more with the Margravine of Bayreuth;
and then sent Frederick himself a copy of those “Annals” as a tentative
olive branch. Frederick accepted the book, and declined the peace
overtures in a letter, dated March 16, 1754, which contained bitter
allusion to the Maupertuis affair and showed that the kingly heart was
still sore and that the kingly soul still angrily admired the great
gifts of his Voltaire.
The famous suppers “went to the devil” without him. But if the King
missed his wit much, he dreaded it more; and if Voltaire wanted the
King’s powerful friendship--he did not want the King’s society. They
were better apart. And, for the first time, both were wise enough to
know it.
To this spring belongs a very active correspondence between Voltaire,
the most voluble correspondent who ever put pen to paper, and Madame du
Deffand. Blind, bored, and brilliant, the friend of Horace Walpole, a
courtier at Sceaux, and the head of one of the most famous salons in
Paris, Madame du Deffand had long been a friend of Voltaire’s, and had
visited him in the Bastille in 1726, just before his exile in England.
If she thought, as Frederick the Great wrote to Darget on April 1st of
this same year 1754, that Voltaire was “good to read and bad to know,”
her cynic old soul loved his wit if she feared it. Perhaps she even
loved him--though mistrustingly. Blindness had just fallen upon her. And
“the hermit of Colmar”--neither now nor ever only _méchant_--wrote to
her with the finest sympathy and tact, cheering, amusing, rallying her.
“My eyes were a little wet when I read what had happened to yours.... If
you are an annuitant, Madame, take care of yourself, eat little, go to
bed early, and live to be a hundred, if only to enrage those who pay
your annuities. For my part, it is the only pleasure I have left. I
reflect, when I feel an indigestion coming on, that two or three princes
will gain by my death: and I take courage out of pure malice and
conspire against them with rhubarb and sobriety.”
As Voltaire could have had nothing to gain by continually writing to
amuse this blind old _mondaine_, it may be conceded that he did it out
of kindness; and that if he loved her cleverness, he also pitied her
misfortune. The eighteenth century, which failed so dismally in all
other domestic relationships, perfectly understood the art of
friendship.
On the Easter Day of this 1754, Voltaire, having first confessed to a
Capuchin monk, received the Sacrament. _Faire ses Pâques_ declares the
laxest Catholic to be still a son of the Church. What Voltaire’s motives
were in this action, it is not easy to see. It is said that his anxious
friends in Paris recommended the action as an answer to the charges of
unbelief brought against him. But a Voltaire must have known well enough
that such an answer as that would impose on no one. Besides, it was not
like him to be governed by the advice of fools--even if they happened to
be his friends. The reasons he himself gave for the action were that at
Rome one must do as Rome does. “When men are surrounded by barbarians
... one must imitate their contortions.... Some people are afraid to
touch spiders, others swallow them.” “If I had a hundred thousand men, I
know exactly what I should do: but I have not, so I shall communicate at
Easter, and you can call me a hypocrite as much as you like.”
The hypocrisy was but ill acted. Voltaire received the Sacrament with an
irreverence painful to believers and harmful to his own reputation. To
him the thing was a jest--“the contortions of barbarians.” He was quite
mocking and gay. When he got home, he sent to the Capuchin convent a
dozen of good wine and a loin of veal. I despise you too much to be
ill-natured to you! If you believe in this mummery, you are fools! If
you connive at it, unbelieving, you are knaves! Knaves or fools, I can
laugh at you quite good-humouredly. If ever present conveyed a message,
this was the message conveyed by the dozen of wine and the loin of veal.
To justify Voltaire for this act is not possible. It was at best a
_méchanceté_. It was the mocking, jesting nature of the man getting the
upper hand alike of his prudence and of his consideration for others. He
was himself a Deist, and a firmly convinced Deist. To him the religion
of Rome was not merely a folly but the stronghold of tyranny and of
darkness. The fact that millions of faithful souls had found in her
bosom consolation for the sorrows, and a key to the mysteries of life
and of death, did not soften him.
In Voltaire was lacking now and ever that “crown of man’s moral
manhood,” reverence. To find in “the last restraint of the powerful and
the last hope of the wretched” only subject for a laugh was the greatest
of his faults. If he had been a nobler nature, he would have seen the
beauty and the virtue which lie even in the most degrading theologies:
and respecting them, would have stayed his hand from the smashing blow,
and for the sake of the virtue which sweetens corruption, have let
corruption alone.
It has been done many times. “No man can achieve great things for his
country without some loss of the private virtues.” A reverent
Voltaire--what a contradiction in terms!--to spare some goodness, must
have spared much vice. To arouse eighteenth-century France, steeped to
her painted lips in superstition, and the slavery which had debased her
till she came to love it, the shrieks and the blasphemies of a Voltaire
and a Rousseau were necessary. No calmer voice would have waked her from
her narcotic sleep. “Without Voltaire and Rousseau there would have been
no Revolution.” No honest student of eighteenth-century France can doubt
that that Revolution, though it crushed the innocent with the guilty and
left behind it some of the worst fruits of anarchy, left behind it too a
France which, with all its faults, is a thousand times better than the
France it found.
By the middle of April the Plombières arrangements were well advanced.
The d’Argental household was to be there; and Madame Denis, more or less
penitent and more or less forgiven, had asked to join the party. The
waters would be good for a health--ruined, said her temperate uncle, by
“remedies and gourmandising.” Voltaire would come, with a couple of
servants at the most. He was anticipating the change with pleasure when
at the very last minute Madame Denis wrote to tell him that Maupertuis
was at Plombières too. It was certainly not big enough to hold both him
and his enemy. The events of the last months had taught even Voltaire
some kind of caution. He was absolutely _en partant_ when Madame
Denis’s letter came; but on June 8th, though he left Colmar, it was to
stop halfway between it and Plombières, at the Abbey of Senones, as the
guest of Dom Calmet, who had himself been a visitor at Cirey. Calmet had
a splendid library. His visitor, who was condemned, as he said, to work
at a correct edition of that “General History, printed for my
misfortune,” made good use of it, during his three weeks’ visit. Absurd
reports were noised abroad--which the Dom did not contradict--that he
had converted “the most pronounced Deist in Europe.” But, as the Deist
himself said, his business was with the library--not with matins and
vespers. Directly Maupertuis left Plombières, Voltaire took leave of
Calmet and his monks, and on some day not earlier than July 2d left for
Plombières, where he found not only his dear d’Argentals and Madame
Denis, but her sister, Madame de Fontaine, as well.
The little party passed here an agreeable fortnight or so. About July
22d, Voltaire returned to Colmar with Madame Denis, who from this time
forth managed, or mismanaged, his house for him till his death. The
“Universal History” greatly occupied him after his holiday. But there
was another subject which was even more engrossing.
It was the idea of living in Switzerland. Since March the plan of
seeking “an agreeable tomb in the neighbourhood of Geneva,” or possibly
near Lausanne, had been growing--growing. There were many reasons why
the little republic was a suitable home for Voltaire. In the first
place, it _was_ a republic. It was quite close to France, though not in
it; and though France might not like to have such a firebrand as
Voltaire burning in her midst, she would not object to be lit by his
light if it were burning near.
Then Switzerland was Protestant--and in Voltaire’s English experience of
Protestantism he had found that faith singularly tolerant and
easy-going--in practice, that is, not in principle. By August he was
negotiating actively with M. de Brenles, a lawyer of Lausanne, about “a
rather pretty property” on the lake of Geneva. It was called Allamans;
and Voltaire was not a little disappointed when his negotiations for
buying it fell through. In October he was inquiring if a Papist could
not possess and bequeath land in the territory of Lausanne. He urged
secrecy on de Brenles; and entered fully into money matters. If he
bought land, it was to be in the name of his niece, Madame Denis. There
was a danger throughout these months of that bomb the “Pucelle”
bursting--into print--“and killing me.” That fear made the Swiss
arrangements go forward with a will.
On October 23d, Voltaire went to supper at a poor tavern of Colmar,
called the “Black Mountain,” with no less a personage than his friend
Wilhelmina of Bayreuth. She overwhelmed him with kindness and attention;
asked him to stay with her; begged she might see Madame Denis, and made
a thousand excuses for the bad behaviour of brother Frederick; so that
impulsive Voltaire jumped once more to that favourite conclusion of his
that “women are worth more than men.” To be sure, if he had seen an
account of the interview his clever Princess wrote to her brother, he
might have thought something less highly of her and her sex. But he did
not see it; nor Frederick’s bitter reply. If he had, neither flattery
nor opprobrium would have moved him now from one fixed resolve--to
shelter in Switzerland.
On November 11th, Voltaire, Collini, Madame Denis, a lady’s maid, and a
servant left Colmar to visit the Duke of Richelieu at Lyons. Voltaire
had lived at Colmar on and off for thirteen months--among Jesuits who
five years earlier had publicly burnt the works of Bayle, the prophet of
tolerance. He could not have left with regret. Just as they were
starting off, Collini declares that his master, finding the travelling
carriage overladen with luggage, gave orders that everything should be
taken out except his own trunk and Madame Denis’s; and that he told
Collini to sell _his_ portmanteau and its contents. The hot-tempered
young Italian refused to do so, and gave notice on the spot. On his own
showing, his impetuous master made at once the handsomest apologies for
his little burst of temper; gave the secretary generous presents of
money as a peace-offering; and made him re-pack his portmanteau and put
it back in the carriage. The storm blew over; but Collini, like almost
all Voltaire’s servants, was beginning to take advantage of his master’s
indulgence, and to trespass on a kindness which Voltaire made doubly
kind to compensate for his irritability.
By November 15th, the party were installed in a very bad inn, called the
“Palais Royal,” at Lyons. Voltaire complained that it was “a little too
much of a joke for a sick man to come a hundred _lieues_ to talk to the
Maréchal de Richelieu.” But he and Richelieu were not only very old
friends but, in spite of little disagreements such as that affair of the
“Panegyric of Louis XV.” at Court in 1749, very faithful friends. The
brilliant author and the brilliant soldier had still for each other the
attraction which had been potent twenty years earlier in those June days
at Montjeu, when Voltaire had negotiated the marriage between
Mademoiselle de Guise and the gallant Duke. The charming wife had died
young; and her husband and Voltaire had met little of late. But Voltaire
received Richelieu in the bad inn, and clever Richelieu made the five
days he stayed at Lyons so infinitely soothing and agreeable for his
much tried and harassed friend, that when Richelieu left, Voltaire said
he felt like Ariadne in Naxos after the desertion of Theseus.
While he was at Lyons the enterprising traveller also went to call on
Cardinal de Tencin, head of the Church there, uncle of d’Argental, and
brother of that famous Madame de Tencin who had played Thisbe to
Voltaire’s Pyramus when Voltaire was in the Bastille in 1726. The wary
Lord Cardinal stated to M. de Voltaire that he could not ask a person in
such ill-favour with his Majesty of France to dine with him. Voltaire
replied that he never dined out, and knew how to take his own part
against kings and cardinals; and, so saying, turned his back on his
Eminence and went out of the room. As he and Collini were returning from
that brief visit, the visitor observed absently that this country was
not made for him. The officer in command of the troops in Lyons received
him in much the same way. All the authorities were cold, in fact, to
propitiate that Highest Authority at the Court of France, who was colder
still. However, their disapproval was not very afflicting. The town of
Lyons saw Voltaire with bolder eyes. It acted his plays at the theatre;
and when he appeared in his box there, loudly applauded him. On November
26th, he formally took his seat in the Lyons Academy, of which he had
long been an honorary member. Then, too, Wilhelmina was in Lyons; and
Wilhelmina used her shrewd influence with de Tencin, and at a second
interview, behold! the Church and Deism on quite friendly terms.
As a whole, the Lyons visit was a success; or would have been but for
Voltaire’s ill-health and “mortal anxieties” about “that cursed
‘Pucelle.’” He was afraid that it was in the possession of Mademoiselle
du Thil, once companion to Madame du Châtelet, who had found it among
Émilie’s effects. The ill-health, too, which took the form of gouty
rheumatism this time, was so painful and annoying that many of his
friends had strongly recommended him to try for it the waters of
Aix-in-Savoy. In the meantime he had been lent “a charming house
halfway.” On December 10, 1754, he, Madame Denis, and Collini left Lyons
for ninety-three miles distant Geneva, which they reached on December
13th and found gaily celebrating a victory gained in 1602 over the Duke
of Savoy. The gates of the city were shut for the night when they
arrived. But the great M. de Voltaire was expected: and they were flung
open for him. He supped that night in Geneva with a man who was to be
till his death one of the best and wisest friends he ever had, the
famous Dr. Tronchin.
No account of Voltaire’s life in Switzerland could be complete without
mention of that honourable and celebrated family, who in the eighteenth
century nobly filled many important posts in the Swiss republic and
whose descendants are well known in it to the present day. One Tronchin,
the Swiss jurisconsult, is celebrated as having provoked, by certain
“Letters from the Country,” the famous “Letters from the Mountain” of
Jean Jacques Rousseau. Another, the Councillor François Tronchin, the
most delightful and hospitable of men, was at once the constant
correspondent, the legal adviser--in brief, the factotum of Voltaire.
But the most famous of the family, as well as the one most intimately
associated with Voltaire, was Theodore Tronchin, the doctor. Handsome
face, noble mind, fearless spirit, with the stern uprightness of the
Puritan, and an infinite benevolence and compassion all his own--if
greatness meant only goodness, friend Theodore was a greater man than
his great patient, Voltaire.
Yet, though no spark of the Voltairian genius was in him, he was the
most enlightened doctor of his age. It is not only as the intimate of
that “old baby” as he called him, the Patriarch of Ferney, that Tronchin
may well interest the present day: but as the earliest discoverer--after
eighteen centuries of stuffiness--of the value of fresh air; as the
first of his class who preached the Gospel of Nature; recommended
temperance, exercise, cleanliness in lieu of the drugs of the
Pharmacopœia; and, after years of labour, taught the woman of his age to
be very nearly as good a mother to her children as is the lioness to her
cubs. Tronchin deserves to be famous.
It was he who discountenanced the idea of Voltaire trying the waters of
Aix. Tronchin’s diagnosis always went through the body to the soul. No
doubt he saw that this _vif_, irritable, nervous patient--torn to pieces
with the quarrels and the excitement of the last five years--wanted, not
the waters of Aix, but of Lethe: peace, quiet, monotony, and a home.
After four days’ stay in Geneva, Voltaire and suite reached the
“charming house” which had been lent him, and which was ten miles from
Geneva and called the Château of Prangins. It stood on very high ground,
overlooking the lake from thirteen immense windows. There was too much
house and too little garden. The house was only half furnished, and
beaten by every wind that blew. And it was mid-winter in Switzerland.
Was it really so charming? Madame Denis was volubly discontented.
Italian Collini, who felt he had been cheated out of going to Paris, was
extremely cross and cold. His master and mistress were always calling
him to make up the fires, shut the windows, and bring them their furs.
The draughts were really abominable. And what was one to do here? “Be
bored; in a worse temper than usual; and write a great deal of history;
be as bad a philosopher as in the town; and have not the slightest idea
what is to become of us.” This was discontented Collini’s account of
Prangins. He was pluming his wings for flight, and not at all in the
mood to make the best of things.
It was Voltaire who did that. Between the grumbling niece and secretary,
acutely sensitive himself to physical discomfort, not a little worried
by the memory of that “abortion of a Universal History,” compelled to
wait for a package of absolutely necessary books that ought to have come
from Paris and had not, so ill that by January 3, 1755, he could not
even hold a pen, he was still, in spite of angry Collini’s insinuations,
the same true philosopher who had astronomised with Madame du Châtelet
sitting by the roadside on a January evening on the cushions of their
broken-down carriage. He was still busy and cheerful. “_They_ have need
of courage,” he wrote of his companions, very justly. As for himself, he
worked and forgot the cold. It was in these early days of his life in
Switzerland that he arranged with the Brothers Cramer, the famous
publishers of Geneva, to bring out the first complete edition of his
writings. Then he heard from d’Argental that the public of Paris
resented his exile. What warmth and comfort in that! “Nanine” was played
there with success; and a play of Crébillon’s was a failure. That would
have made one glow with satisfaction in any climate. And if Prangins was
cold, two at least of the influential persons in the neighbourhood had
written warmly to assure the famous newcomer of their good offices.
And better than all, better a thousand times, through this chill,
discontented January, Voltaire was eagerly looking for a house and
property of his own, in this free little Switzerland, where he might
settle down at last and be in peace. On January 31, 1755, he was in
active negotiation about two houses. On February 1st there appeared in
the Registers of the Council of State of Geneva a special permission to
M. de Voltaire--who alleged the state of his health and the necessity
for living near his doctor, Tronchin, as a reason for wishing to settle
in Switzerland--to inhabit the territory of the republic under the good
pleasure of the Seigneury.
On February 8th or 9th the Councillor Tronchin bought a property quite
close to Geneva, called Saint-Jean, which he let on a life lease to
Voltaire, and which, in a characteristic enthusiasm and before he had
had any practical experience of it, Voltaire rechristened “Les Délices.”
Thus he was enabled to evade the law of the republic, and, Papist though
he nominally was, to live and hold property under the Genevan republic.
A few days later he acquired a second house, called Monrion, on the way
from Lausanne to Ouchy.
He was now sixty-one years old. Strong in his heart all his life had
been his love of a home. For a while Cirey had seemed like one. But it
had never belonged to him. It was, too, in France; and there had been
often the painful necessity of leaving it as quickly as possible, and
without any surety of being allowed to come back again. The man’s whole
life had been a buffeting from pillar to post.
But the fretted youth in Paris, the restless middle age at Lunéville,
Brussels, Cirey, and the angry hurry of Prussia were over for ever.
When he settled in Switzerland Voltaire took a new lease of his life. He
entered upon its last, greatest, noblest, and calmest epoch.