THE INTERFERENCE IN THE SEVEN YEARS’ WAR, THE “GENEVA” ARTICLE, AND LIFE
AT DÉLICES
On January 5, 1757, Damiens, an unfortunate lunatic, made a very feeble
attempt upon the life of Louis XV. As is usual in such cases, the King
was accredited with infinite calm and courage, though his heroism had
consisted entirely in being the unwilling victim of a very small wound
from a very small penknife. However, he took the penknife to be the
chosen instrument of the wrath of heaven; went to bed; sent a contrite
message to the Queen; and for ten days declined to have any dealings
with the lively Pompadour.
On January 6th, d’Argenson wrote Voltaire a very courtier-like account
of the affair. To say that when Voltaire heard that a New Testament had
been found in the poor lunatic’s pocket he was delighted, is to express
his sentiments feebly. A Testament! I told you so! All assassins have “a
Bible with their daggers.” But have you ever heard of one who had a
Cicero, a Plato, or a Virgil?
He turned, twisted, and tossed the subject with all that gibing
buffoonery which was his _forte_ and other men’s fear. Damiens died
under tortures which were a disgrace to civilisation. D’Argenson,
Secretary of State, and Machault, Keeper of the Seals, who had been bold
and foolish enough to suppose that the King would be able to kill time
without his Pompadour, united, in her brief disgrace, to crush her. With
her return to power, she crushed them. On February 1st they were both
exiled. A few days earlier, the other brother d’Argenson (the better
friend of the two to Voltaire) had died. Voltaire might well say that
his own fate was more worth having than that of a Secretary of State
who was banished; and that he would rather scold his gardeners than pay
court to kings. In February he received a very flattering invitation
from Elizabeth, Empress of Russia, to go to Petersburg to write “The
History of Peter the Great,” her father. He undertook to write the
history. But he declined the invitation. Frederick, too, was trying
coquetries on him--such a tender letter, for instance, from Dresden on
January 19th! But here again he was firm: “I want neither king nor
autocracy. I have tasted them ... that is enough.”
The early months of the year 1757 were passing, indeed, not a little
pleasantly at Monrion.
The society of Lausanne, living up to its character of being more
liberal than that of Geneva, was only too delighted to welcome such an
amusing person as Voltaire in its midst. Many Lausannois were
French--all French in their social charms and their language--and only
Swiss in their sincerity and simplicity. Voltaire said that, as an
audience, there were a couple of hundred of them who were worth the
whole _parterre_ of Paris, and who would have hissed Crébillon’s
“Catilina” off the stage. What higher praise could he have given to
anybody? Lausanne, indeed, would not have been Swiss if there had not
been a certain section of its society who held themselves aloof from
this volatile Deist and his more volatile entertainments. Nor would it
have been a country town if there had not been in it some touchy and
discontented persons who were offended with M. de Voltaire because he
had not asked them often enough or had asked someone else too often.
Voltaire gaily divided the society into two parts: first, the Olympe,
which included both the strait-laced and the offended; and, second, the
Sensible People. That classification spoke for itself. He was not a
little amused one day when, hearing that an Olympe lady had had a parody
of “Zaire” acted at her house, he said to a young girl of the same name,
“Ah! Mademoiselle, it is you who have been laughing at me!” and the
naïve girl replied, “Oh no, Monsieur, it was my aunt!”
But, Olympes notwithstanding, Lausanne as a whole was only too
delighted to come to M. de Voltaire’s theatricals, and the excellent
suppers prepared by his first-rate cook. It did not expect him to pay
visits, which he hated. So he and Madame Denis spent all their leisure
hours learning parts and coaching their company. Madame Denis lived in a
whirl of “tailors, hairdressers, and actors,” and being well amused was
entirely amiable.
The plays acted were “Zaire,” “Alzire,” and the “Enfant Prodigue,” and a
new play of Voltaire’s which he now called “Fanine,” and which was
afterwards called “Zulime.”
Voltaire persistently declared that Madame Denis acted “Zaire”
infinitely better than Gaussin, “though she has not such fine eyes”;
which was a very delicate way of describing her squint.
In March they “preached the ‘Enfant Prodigue,’ with an opera-bouffe
(‘Serva Padrona’) for dessert.” Also in March, they played “Zulime”
“better than it will be played in Paris,” said its author. He proudly
numbered among the audience on its first night twelve Calvinist
ministers and their young students, studying for the Church. Here was
liberal-mindedness indeed! Besides acting plays, there was the house to
improve or to alter. Its master was surrounded with workmen. He had also
a parrot and a squirrel. He had turned to play-acting, he said, because
though “tranquillity is a beautiful thing--ennui is of its acquaintance
and family.” But he knew too well, by that old courtly experience, that
the worst of all boredoms is perpetual amusement. He was happy at
Monrion because there, as everywhere, he knew how to work as well as to
play. In articles for the “Encyclopædia,” rewriting “Zulime,” and
beginning “The History of Peter the Great,” he justified his existence.
He had much to do, so he enjoyed his theatricals and the lovely country
in which he found himself, as only the busy can enjoy anything “From my
bed I can see the lake, the Rhone, and another river. Have you a better
view? Have you tulips in March?... My vines, my orchard, and myself owe
no man anything....”
Was it glamour again? If it was, it was a better glamour than had made
him dream Prussia heaven, and Frederick the Great a faithful friend.
On June 3th, he went back to Délices for the summer. Madame Denis was
still in high good-humour--furnishing the house, entertaining, acting.
Voltaire said she was “a niece who made the happiness of his life.”
Everything was _couleur de rose_. Switzerland had proved a successful
venture indeed. By August the man who now signed himself the Swiss
Voltaire had acquired yet another house in Lausanne--Chêne, in the Rue
de Lausanne, which was the last street in the town on the Geneva side,
and from where he had exquisite views of the lake. He rented it for nine
years. Quite near it was a house called Mon Repos, which belonged to two
of Voltaire’s amateur dramatic company, the Marquis and Marquise de
Genlis. Very soon these two enthusiasts made, in a barn adjoining their
house, a theatre which practically belonged to Voltaire, and where in
future nearly all his theatricals were held. His first letter from Chêne
is dated August 29, 1757. Here he soon received with great gravity the
Lord Bailiffs of Berne: good, sober, pompous people, with a very amusing
idea of their own importance, and a strictly limited sense of humour.
“What the deuce, M. de Voltaire,” said one of them one day, “are you
always writing verses for? What is the good of it, I ask you? It leads
to nothing. Now _I_, you see, am a Bailiff.” And another day, a second
observed solemnly, “They say you have written against God. That is bad,
but I hope He will pardon you; and against religion, which is worse; and
against our Lord, which is worse still: but He will forgive you in His
mercy. Only take care, M. de Voltaire, you do not write against their
Excellencies the High Bailiffs, for _they_ will never pardon you!” It is
not difficult to imagine the zest and delight with which Voltaire
repeated these stories.
These good Swiss had not only charming scenery, cultivated society, and
some kind of freedom, but they were also, without intending it,
positively amusing! It would have been well for Voltaire’s peace of mind
if he could have engrossed himself entirely in their small world, and
forgotten wholly that vaster, louder one, which stretched wide beyond
Délices, Monrion, and Chêne. But he had ever itching fingers for a
fight.
In the August of 1756 had begun the third, longest, and greatest
struggle for Silesia, the Seven Years’ War. Voltaire did not choose to
remember that, though he had tried diplomacy before, he had never tried
it successfully. He flung himself, head foremost in every sense, into
the contest. He began in the spring of 1757 by inventing a war machine:
“an engine of massacre upon the plan of the Assyrian war chariots of
old.” Certainly, he was a peace advocate. But if men must destroy each
other, let them do so by the best and quickest of possible means. He had
had, too, a dozen careers already without adding to them that of a
scientific inventor. It is marvellous, but true, that this “paper
smudger’s” idea--the appellation was his own--was really very excellent.
The machine was also intended to carry ammunition and forage. The
Minister of War thought well of it. The inventor recommended it highly
to Richelieu. The Assyrian chariots were not tried until they were used
for carrying grape-shot, but they were not the less an uncommonly
bright, ingenious, and Voltairian invention.
The inventor relinquished the idea of their immediate use rather sadly.
But the war, considered apart from war chariots, was becoming of
personal moment to him.
In the spring of 1757, the Petticoats, which were the damnation of
France, swept her into it.
In his old Paris days, Voltaire had known, and scornfully liked, a
certain rosy-cheeked _bon conteur_ of an abbé, called Bernis.
Verse-maker and _bon-vivant_--not yet developed into the shrewder and
wiser personage his “Memoirs and Letters” reveal him--Voltaire had named
the abbé the flower-girl of Parnassus, or Babet, after a famous pretty
flower-seller of the day; and loved to tease him on those rosy cheeks
and that cheerful air. Babet, who was nothing if not audacious, had
asked Boyer (the âne of Mirepoix, who had died in 1755) for a post: and
when Boyer told him that as long as he was in power a Babet had nothing
to hope for, replied, “Sir, I shall wait.” The answer ran through Paris.
It was the beginning of success. Madame de Pompadour turned the smile
on this round-faced wit; pensioned him; installed him in the Tuileries;
and made him ambassador to Vienna, and Secretary for Foreign Affairs.
Frederick, who had received the mistress’s kind regards, sent through
Voltaire, with that curt “I do not know her,” had also laughed at
Bernis-Babet in the fatal “Œuvre de Poëshie du Roi Mon Maître.”
Therefore, on May 1, 1757, “the first minister of the state,” Pompadour,
made her willing tool, Bernis, sign an offensive and defensive treaty
with the ambassador of Austria against Frederick the Great, and plunged
France into the blood of the Seven Years’ War.
Voltaire’s interest in it was varied and conflicting. He was the friend
of Richelieu, of Bernis, and the Pompadour: and he was a Frenchman. He
had strong sympathy with brave Maria Theresa and with Austria--the
allies of his country. Her great enemy, Frederick, was both his friend
and his foe: still loved, still admired, and still unforgiven. All
through these seven years one sees that fatal affair of Frankfort
rankling in Voltaire’s heart; struggling with his admiration for
Frederick as a king and a soldier: with his pity for him when beaten,
with his pride in him when victorious. All through the war Frederick
wrote him prose and verse; the deepest sorrows of his soul, reproaches,
confidences, yearnings. And Voltaire answered half bitterly and half
tenderly, with angry allusions to the past, and brave words to comfort
the King’s sore heart for the future: never consistent, not seldom
spiteful, and yet touched, affectionate, and sympathetic.
Explain the attitude who can.
In July, 1757, Voltaire wrote to Richelieu begging him, if he passed by
Frankfort, to send the four ears of those two _coquins_, Freytag and
Schmidt.
In August he was busy trying to bring about peace, through the medium of
the Margravine of Bayreuth and Richelieu, between Freytag’s master and
France. This first diplomatic interference of Voltaire’s in the war was
not badly planned. In his own words, he “wanted Richelieu to add the
quality of arbitrator to that of general.” The scheme was so far a
success
[Illustration: THE CHÂTEAU OF FERNEY
_From an Engraving_]
that, on August 19th, Wilhelmina replied that her brother was as
grateful for such a proposal as herself. The moment for it was
opportune. Frederick was still bruised and broken by the crushing defeat
he had suffered at Kolin on June 18th. He wrote direct to Richelieu on
September 6th, asking him to act as an arbitrator; and Richelieu replied
that he was very willing. Did the hermit of Délices rub his lean hands
and congratulate himself on a good piece of work? Perhaps he knew the
temper of an offended woman and a piqued Bernis too well. The blood of
her children was as water to these rulers of France. The Court declined
arbitration.
The unhappy Margravine wrote to Voltaire on September 12th that
Frederick was reduced to frightful extremities. She might well so write.
In October Voltaire sent to the King one of the wisest and kindliest
letters which he ever penned. He dissuaded Frederick from a
contemplation of suicide. He stimulated him by admiration. He deterred
him by insisting that such an act would not only sadden his friends, but
please his foes. When, in this same month, Voltaire read some dismal
verses Frederick had written to d’Argens on the same unhappy topic, he
wrote a second letter to the King, diplomatically lauding the verses to
the skies, and again passionately dissuading such a poet, and such a
man, from the disgrace of suicide.
In those fatal “Memoirs” (meant to be secret) he was now writing at
Délices, Voltaire, indeed, avenged himself for Freytag and Frankfort by
declaring that much of that Epistle to d’Argens was stolen from Chaulieu
and from himself; while that love of justice which was always getting
the better of his malice, in spite of himself, made him add that, under
the circumstances, it was wonderful for a king to have written two
hundred verses at all.
On October 8th, dismal Luc confided to Wilhelmina that he had “laughed”
at the exhortations of Patriarch Voltaire; and the very next day wrote
to the Patriarch a letter owning that those admonitions had had effect,
and ending:
Though the storm beats high
I must fight, not fly,
And a King live and die.
Meanwhile, at Délices, busy Voltaire was trying his hand a second time
at peace negotiations. This time his medium was de Tencin--that crafty
and haughty Cardinal, who, three years before, at Lyons, had found it
impolitic to invite Voltaire to dinner. But the Cardinal loved intrigue,
and hated Austria and the Austrian alliance with France, from his soul.
When, on November 5, 1757, Frederick beat French and Austrians at
Rossbach with “the most unheard-of and the most complete defeat in
history” (the vigorous words are Voltaire’s), all angry France shared
the Cardinal’s hatred of the rosy-cheeked Bernis’s treaty with the Court
of Vienna. De Tencin allied himself with the man he had
despised--Voltaire--“to engage the Margravine to confide to him the
interests of her brother the King,” and so to procure peace between
France and Prussia. Prussia was willing enough. Voltaire was the
intermediary through whom all the letters passed. He said malignly that
he enjoyed the post because he foresaw the disappointment the Cardinal
was preparing for himself. In reality, he was something less
Machiavellian, and really thought the peace he hoped for might be
brought about. De Tencin communicated directly with Louis XV.; and sent
him a letter of the Margravine, written to be so sent. But Maria Theresa
had bowed her pride to flatter Madame de Pompadour; while Frederick had
said “I do not know her.” The Pompadour’s kingly slave answered de
Tencin icily that the Secretary for Foreign Affairs would instruct his
Eminence of the royal intentions. So Babet, the “flower-girl,” the
verse-maker, the _bon-vivant_, dictated to the astute Cardinal the
unfavourable reply he was to make to the Margravine. De Tencin had to
sign it. He died only a fortnight later--of mortification, said
Voltaire.
Thus ended Voltaire’s second interference in the Seven Years’ War. Both
were useless. His interest in the affair was very far from being ended,
or even weakened. But in the meantime there were disturbances nearer
home.
It was sixteen months since d’Alembert had stayed at Délices, and been
charmed by the liberal-mindedness of Calvinism. The result of that visit
was, as has been noted, the famous article entitled “Geneva” in the
storm-breeding “Encyclopædia.” In this December of 1757 the pious
pastors of that town heard that they were therein complimented as no
longer believing in the divinity of Christ or in hell; as having in many
cases no other religion than “a perfect Socinianism,” rejecting all
mystery; as, among the learned at least, having a faith which had
reduced itself to believe in one God, and which was alone distinguished
from pure Deism by a cold respect for the Scriptures and for Christ.
It is not difficult to fancy what an effect such statements, uttered by
a d’Alembert, and in what was then the most famous book in the world,
would have on that strict, simple, pure-living sect. Was it true? Could
any of it be true? The dreadful fear that it might be--that that stern,
narrow creed, with its brief assertions and its wide negations, might
lead, or tend, unknown to its followers, to something very like a barren
Deism--appears to have taken possession of their souls.
On December 12th, Voltaire, who had been waiting sixteen months for this
_dénouement_, began to enjoy himself. “These droll people,” he wrote to
d’Alembert “actually dare to complain of the praise you have given
them--to believe in a God and to have more reason than faith. Some of
them accuse me of having a profane alliance with you. They say they will
protest against your article. Let them, and laugh at them.”
On December 23d, at a meeting of Calvinistic pastors, they made, with
deep heart-searchings, a formal inquiry to assure themselves that none
of them had given ground for d’Alembert’s--compliments. They then drew
up a commission, which appointed Dr. Tronchin, not less a sincere
Christian than he was a sincere friend of the Deist Voltaire, to reply
to the article in the “Encyclopædia” and “to wipe away the stain” that
d’Alembert had affixed to their character. It was Tronchin’s charm as a
writer that he touched the heart as well as appealed to the head. He
refuted the imputations of d’Alembert in terms not a little touching.
From Paris, on January 6, 1758, d’Alembert replied, as he could but
reply, that he was convinced of the truth of his words: and what he had
written, he had written. When Geneva further asked him to name the
pastors who had given rise to such opinions, he very honourably
declined. On February 8th, the commission produced its Confession of
Faith. As it did not insist on the doctrine of Everlasting Punishment,
or declare that Christ was equal to His Father, or lay stress on the
worship of Him, Voltaire said with some truth, when he wrote to
d’Alembert, that they had declared themselves Christian Deists after
all, and justified the article in the “Encyclopædia.”
“Geneva,” in fact, brought home to the thoughtful Calvinist the logical
outcome of his religion. The shock was great. To stand face to face with
the ultimate consequences of their belief would indeed startle the
votaries of many other creeds besides Calvinism.
Their difference on the most vital of all subjects did not affect the
friendship of the great Voltaire and the great Tronchin.
During this winter of 1757-58, the Doctor was, for the time being,
almost the greater man of the two. He had just returned from Paris,
where he had prescribed for all its rank, wit, and fashion; and where he
and his inoculation had become a _furore_ and the mode. In Geneva he now
started a cure, to which flocked all the _mondaines_ of Paris to learn
the rudiments of hygiene, of temperance, and of common-sense; to be
taught for the first time in their lives the value of simple living; and
to undergo inoculation.
Voltaire always loved the bold and sensible regimen of this good
physician. Like the women, he was also not a little influenced by the
great Doctor’s charming manner, handsome face, and splendid six feet of
height. Then, too, supposing ennui _should_ be “of the acquaintance and
family” of retirement, this “cure” brought half the wit of the capital
to the very doors of the Hermit of Délices. The year 1757 was not over,
and their acquaintance was of the briefest, when Voltaire, with his
usual impulsiveness, was already in the midst of a delightful intimacy
with one of the cleverest and most sympathetic of the Tronchin patients,
Madame d’Épinay. Bright, black-eyed, about two-and-thirty years old, the
ill-treated wife of a Farmer-General, the head of a salon, and the
coquettish friend of Rousseau, Madame d’Épinay reflected in her
sparkling little French mind the cleverness of a clever age, and,
without ever saying or doing anything which gave substantial evidence of
a superior intelligence, had a great deal of that vague quality which is
now called culture. Voltaire delighted in her; played with her; laughed
with her; talked with her; called her his Beautiful Philosopher; wrote
her innumerable little notes about innumerable little nothings; welcomed
her constantly at Délices; and in January, 1758, had her to stay there
for two or three days with her doctor. Madame’s complaint was of the
nerves, and the very best cure for that kind of disease is to be amused,
as everybody knows. So she was delighted to come to Délices, where
Madame Denis was “entirely comic,” and “fit to make you die of
laughing”; short, fat, ugly; quite good-natured; a liar, simply from
habit; clever enough to seem so without being so; always gesticulating,
talking, and arguing, especially when that “Geneva” article--just now
very much on the _tapis_--was mentioned, when she threw her arms and
hands about, abused republics and their laws with a fine generality, and
was entirely absurd.
The little, shrewd, shallow visitor was not quite so sure about the
great Voltaire. He might have been fifteen, he was so gay, lively, and
inconsequent! But then he had a number of quite childish prejudices; and
an air of laughing at everybody, even himself. Madame d’Épinay was not
at all certain she liked _that_. In Paris she had been taken gravely as
a clever woman. The owl of Délices, looking at her through those little,
cynic, half-shut and all-seeing eyes of his, regarded her as an
ingenious little mechanical toy, whom it amused him to set in motion.
That he was very gallant with her was true enough. But gallantry is
hardly a compliment to a woman who wants to be looked upon as _savante_.
Madame d’Épinay was not the only one of Tronchin’s patients who visited
Voltaire. Almost all of them came to peep at him. Here was the Marquise
de Muy--“a very little soul in a very little body much debilitated by
remedies,” said Tronchin--but the _chère amie_ of Choiseul the minister,
and so to be cultivated by a far-seeing Voltaire.
Here, too, came the nephew and niece of de Tencin, the Montferrats--whom
Voltaire received very kindly though he liked neither them nor their
uncle.
Among neighbours who were not of Tronchin’s “cure,” Huber, celebrated as
a painter and wit, had been one of the most constant visitors at Délices
from the first, and was fast dropping into the position he never
afterwards relinquished, of _ami de la maison_. Madam Tronchin--as plain
and disagreeable as her husband was handsome and charming--was a guest
too. “Et que fait Madame Tronchin?” said someone one day to the
sprightly Madame Cramer, herself a visitor. “Elle fait peur,” was the
answer. Madame Cramer, as the wife of Gabriel Cramer, one of Voltaire’s
publishers, and as, in her own person, gay, naïve, and witty, was always
a _persona grata_ at Délices. Her husband and brother-in-law were as
successful socially as in their business; acted in their client’s
theatricals, and were delightfully good-looking and pleasant.
Voltaire’s nearest neighbours at Délices, a Professor Pictet and his
wife and daughter, were constantly of his parties. The daughter
Charlotte was a gay and pretty little person, who had aroused the
jealousy of Madame Denis by embroidering Voltaire a cap to wear on the
top of the great peruke he always affected. Voltaire repaid the present
by trying to find Mademoiselle what he always considered the _summum
bonum_, a husband; and Madame Denis was not precisely pleased when
Charlotte married a handsome major of eight-and-twenty, for whom the
foolish niece herself had had a _tendresse_. In 1757, a Baron Gleichen,
who wrote Souvenirs, also visited Délices.
It is no contradiction to say of Voltaire that he was all through his
life both the most unsociable and the most sociable of men.
At Délices there were nearly always seven or eight persons to supper. On
one occasion at least, the house was so full of guests for theatricals,
that Madame Denis, having no bed, sat up all through the night playing
cards. When he met his guests no host could have been more agreeable
than Voltaire. He had a hundred stories to tell. He made so many _mots_
that half the _mots_ of the eighteenth century have been fathered upon
him by posterity. Sometimes he read aloud, or quoted from memory. He was
inimitably gay, good-natured, and courteous. One woman (who did not love
him) said that he alone of his age knew how to speak to women as women
like to be spoken to. That old quality which had made him revere the
intellect of Madame du Châtelet made him respect now whatever was
respectable in the intellect of his female companions. That surest sign
of inferiority--to be afraid of mental superiority in the weaker
sex--was certainly never to be found in Voltaire. If he toyed with a
d’Épinay, it was because she was but a toy after all. He searched so
diligently for cleverness in his nieces that he actually thought he had
found it. Some of the best and most careful letters he ever wrote are
those to Madame du Deffand--who was old, poor, blind--but splendidly
intelligent.
He certainly took very good care during this social winter of
1757-58--as in all other social winters and summers--not to see too much
of his guests, male or female. He worked twelve or fifteen hours a day;
and generally kept his secretary writing part of the night as well. He
never suffered himself to be interrupted in the mornings; and was fond
of saying that he believed less in optimism at that time than at any
other.
As in the old days at Cirey, he was often too busy to join his friends
at dinner, and ate “no matter what, no matter when,” instead.
In January, 1758, he migrated to Chêne, his newly acquired house in
Lausanne; and, in the formal phrase of one of his guests there, by “his
wit and his philosophy, his table and his theatre, refined in a visible
degree the manners” of that town. That guest was an English youth called
Gibbon, who, having been led into Roman Catholicism at college, had been
sent to a minister at Lausanne to be led out of it again--by Calvinism.
In the intervals of falling in love with the _beaux yeux_ of
Mademoiselle Curchod (afterwards Madame Necker), the self-satisfied
young gentleman found time during two winters to pompously approve of M.
de Voltaire in various _rôles_--in “Zaire,” “Alzire,” “Fanine,” and the
“Enfant Prodigue,” played in that theatre in the granary of Mon Repos.
Gibbon wrote hereafter, in that solemn, polished, rewritten, immortal
Autobiography, that M. de Voltaire’s “declamation was fashioned to the
pomp and cadence of the old stage, and he expressed the enthusiasm of
poetry rather than the feelings of Nature”; while Voltaire, in the gay
impromptu of _his_ style, declared of himself he was “the best old fool
in any troupe. I had rage and tears--attitudes and a cap.” He added that
Madame Denis was splendid in the _rôle_ of mothers; and a little later
quite seriously announced that though she had not _all_ the talents of
Mademoiselle Clairon (!) she was much more pathetic and human! The
observing English youth in the audience considered, on the contrary,
that the “fat and ugly niece” quite ruined the parts of “the young and
fair,” and was not nearly clever enough to make the spectators forget
the defects of her age and person. When she was playing the heroine in
“Zaire” she did herself say, hoping for a compliment, “To take such a
part one ought to be young and beautiful!” and a well-meaning _gauche_
person replied “Ah! Madame, you are a living proof to the contrary!”
Uncle Voltaire would have been very _vif_, no doubt, if he had known of
Gibbon’s unflattering criticism on his niece. As it was, he was not too
pleased on his own account when this heavy young genius must needs,
after having heard them only twice, remember and repeat certain lines
which Voltaire had written in the first enthusiasm of settling at
Délices, and which (of course) contained an allusion which would offend
somebody. M. de Voltaire may be forgiven if he wished this blundering
Mr. Gibbon and his prodigious memory--in England.
In May, after the _ménage_ Voltaire had moved back to Délices, another
visitor came to it. She was Madame du Boccage, famous for her learning,
as modest as she was accomplished, and a woman quite after her host’s
heart. He put off a visit to the Elector Palatine to receive her. He
gave up his bed to her as being the most comfortable in the house; and
got up plays for her benefit. As for Madame, she found him everything
that was kind and agreeable, surrounded by the best company--that is,
the intellectually best company--and always singing the praises of his
rural life. In fact, the only thing she had to complain of was that he
was so very hospitable that, like the nieces, she was always having
indigestion. She left after a visit of five days, and long corresponded
with her host.
Between work and play, the Délices, Monrion, and Chêne, Voltaire had
spent more than three years in Switzerland. That they had been happy
enough to have made him altogether forget that a Paris, a Louis, and a
Pompadour existed--and neglected him--is true enough. But he never
forgot. If on one side of his character he was splendidly a philosopher,
on the other he was always an “old baby” crying for the moon.