Читать книгу The life of Voltaire - Evelyn Beatrice Hall - Страница 14

A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,

A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread—and Thou

Beside me singing in the Wilderness—

Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!

The du Châtelet children, little Pauline of eight and Louis of six (the third had died a baby in the January of this year, 1734), kept much in the background, were, if anything, an additional charm to the illustrious visitor. He found Louis a doux and sensible little boy: discovered him a tutor on one occasion: gave him a silver watch on another: and saved his life, for the guillotine, by dosing him with lemonade when he had smallpox. Pauline, early sent to Joinville, sixteen miles away, to be educated, was frequently recalled therefrom when, a little later, she was wanted to act in the Cirey theatricals, for which, like her mother, she had a pretty talent.

Madame la Marquise did not herself pretend at any time to a great interest in her offspring. When her husband foolishly returned presently from his regiment she wrote to her old lover, Richelieu, that her situation was very embarrassing, “but love changes all thorns into flowers.” She and Voltaire both spoke of the Marquis as le bonhomme. Beyond being a sad bore in conversation, and as incapable of appreciating wit in others as he was of originating any himself, he seems to have given no trouble provided he had his meals regularly: and remains for posterity what he was for his contemporaries—a stupid, good-natured, complacent, slip-slop person whom one could neither much dislike nor at all respect.

When he was at home, his wife and her famous guest left him to his sport, his dinner, and his nap, and themselves plunged into work of every kind, but particularly into that intellectual work which was the passion of their lives. It was a strange household in that tumbledown château in the depths of primæval forests—a strange mixture of the laxity and wickedness of the evil Paris of the day and of the highest mental effort and enjoyment—of the meanest sensual indulgence and the noblest aspirations towards light and liberty—the clear voices of children and the biting and dazzling sarcasms of a Voltaire against those who would keep men in bondage and ignorance, children for ever.

In the December of 1734, Madame du Châtelet went to Paris, taking with her to d’Argental a new tragedy Voltaire had written, called “Alzire.”

At the end of 1734, Voltaire first makes allusion in his letters, to one of the most famous—and certainly the most infamous—of his works, the “Pucelle.” The idea of it had been suggested at a supper at Richelieu’s—Richelieu, equally celebrated for both kinds of gallantry—in 1730. The “Pucelle” is Joan of Arc, the Maid of Orleans. Dull Chapelain had spoilt the subject already. It did not occur as a promising one to poet Voltaire. Richelieu and his guests over-persuaded him to try his hand upon it. In a very short time, he was reading aloud to them the first four cantos of that gay masterpiece of indecent satire. How very little he could have guessed then what a plague, danger, torment, solace and delight “my Jeanne,” as he called her, was to be to him for the rest of his days! He had indeed many other things to think of. “Jeanne” could only be an interlude to weightier occupations. He turned to her as one man turns to gaming and another to dissipation. She was the self-indulgence of his life, and it must be owned a very pernicious one.

He must have found Cirey’s neighbourhood to Domrémy inspiring. By January, 1735, eight cantos were complete.

Voltaire received in March the revocation of his lettre de cachet—the end for which his friends had used all their influence. He was told almost in so many words that he might go back to Paris if he would be a good boy. On March 30, 1735, he did go back. The capital was always to him the gorgeous siren who fascinated him from far and disillusioned him near. Cantos of that dangerous “Pucelle” were already flying about the salons. Voltaire busied himself in finding a tutor for little Louis du Châtelet and characteristically engaged that Linant, his unsatisfactory protégé—ignorant and indolent—“for fear he should starve”—and trusting to the Marquise’s Latin to improve the master’s. The Marquis had desired that the tutor should be an abbé. It looked more respectable! But when Voltaire said decisively “No priests chez les Émilies!” the bonhomme contented himself with the stipulation that the youth should have a penchant for religion.

One night when in Paris, Voltaire supped with the famous Mademoiselle Quinault, actress of the Théâtre Français. She told him how she had seen at a fair a dramatic sketch with a good idea in it—and of which she was going to tell Destouches, the comic playwright. The other playwright listened in silence: but the next morning he brought her the plan of a comedy on the subject and vowed her to secrecy. Not only was the idea not to be divulged, but the very name of the author of the play, which was called “The Prodigal Son,” was to be a mystery. Theriot knew of course, and one Berger. “It is necessary to lie like the devil,” Voltaire wrote to them, “not timidly or for a time but boldly and always. Lie, my friends, lie. I will repay you when I can.”

He thought, not wrongly, that if its authorship were known, the play, good, bad, or indifferent, would be hissed from the stage. “I made enough enemies by ‘Œdipe’ and the ‘Henriade,’” he said.

He was weary, as he might well be, of quarrels, of dangers, and of jealousies. The visit to Paris was a very flying one. He left there on May 6th or 7th. On May 15th he was writing to Theriot from Lunéville, soon to be the Court of Stanislas, ex-King of Poland, and where Voltaire now found a few philosopher friends and the charming and accomplished bride, Madame de Richelieu. He was there but a very short time.

How good it was to see the Cirey forest again—the garden growing daily into order and beauty—balconies and terraces being built here—an avenue planted there—and within, everywhere delightful evidence of Madame’s clever touch! He rode about the country on her mare, Hirondelle. He urged on the workmen—and enjoyed doing it. He flung himself with ardour and enthusiasm into small things as into great. He had so many interests and was so much interested in them, no wonder he was happy. There was that idle Linant to spur to industry, and Mesdames de la Neuville and de Champbonin to vary the home party. Cirey was Cirey-en-félicité—Cireyshire, in memory of that dear England. Émilie was still “the divine Émilie,” “the goddess,” the cleverest, the only woman in the world.

In August, 1735, Voltaire’s play “The Death of Cæsar,” imitated from (Voltaire thought it an improvement on) the “Julius Cæsar” of Shakespeare, was played by the pupils of the Harcourt College on the day of their prize-giving. “I have abandoned two theatres as too full of cabals” wrote the author gaily, “that of the Comédie Française and that of the world.” The truth was “The Death of Cæsar” was unsuited to the stage, and of what its author called “a Roman ferocity.” It had no love interest and no female characters.

Voltaire was not a little indignant when the piece appeared in print in Paris—totally unauthorised and shamefully incorrect. “The editor has massacred Cæsar worse than Brutus and Cassius ever did,” said he. Its appearance was the chief trouble of this autumn of 1735. In its November, Algarotti, the Italian savant, and the friend of Prince Frederick of Prussia, came to stay at Cirey. He read aloud his “Dialogues on Philosophy”: and Voltaire read aloud a canto of the “Pucelle,” or “Louis XIV.,” or a tragedy. The rest of the time they laughed over their champagne and studied Newton and Locke. What extraordinary people! The bonhomme, if he was there at all, did not count. The Marquise, who, as has been seen, had learnt English in a fortnight, already translated at sight and had her inborn genius for philosophy and science.

The year waned in such studies. Algarotti left. In eighteen months, besides the seventy-five pages of the “Treatise on Metaphysics” which he had written in answer to Émilie’s question as to what she was to think on life, death, God, man, and immortality, Voltaire had also written a comedy—“my American Alzire,” “my savages”—the three-act tragedy “The Death of Cæsar,” cantos of the “Pucelle,” chapters of “Louis XIV.,” some part of “The Prodigal Son” and at least four of the rhymed “Discourses on Man.” His letters of the period which survive, and which only include a single fragment out of the number he must have written to Madame du Châtelet, fill a fourth of a large volume. Add to this that he was personally supervising the building and decorating, that he was the lover of the Marquise—a position that always occupied a good deal of time with that exigeante lady—correcting the incorrigible Linant, busy making all kinds of chemical experiments and collecting old pictures by proxy in Paris, and it will be seen that he was the living proof of his own saying, “One has time for everything if one chooses to use it.”