Читать книгу The life of Voltaire - Evelyn Beatrice Hall - Страница 9

Table of Contents

Considered as a poem, the “Henriade” is the kind of fighting epic which is the delight of schoolboys and a little apt to bore their elders.

The subject is the life of Henry of Navarre; the chief event, the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. Truth, Discord, and other abstract virtues are embodied, and talk at some length. The poem is modelled on, if not imitated from, Horace and Virgil. Regarded on the surface it is nothing but a dramatic story, easy, swinging, smooth, and with the lilt and rhythm such a story requires.

But beneath that surface, not seen but felt, beneath the easy couplets and running rhymes, there beats a spirit alert for liberty—the wings of the wild bird against the cage which keeps it from life, sunshine, and freedom. The pivot on which the poem turns is that supreme intolerance, the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. Its atmosphere throughout is that of hatred of priestly power, fanaticism, superstition; the love of peace, justice, enlightenment. Its religion is Deism. And its dedication to Louis XV. contains these astounding words: “You are king only because Henry IV. was a great man; and France, while wishing you as much virtue, and more happiness than he had, flatters herself that the life and the throne you owe to him will bind you to follow his example;” and “The astonishment we feel when kings sincerely love the happiness of their people is a thing very shameful to them.” Voltaire himself said afterwards that he had advocated in it peace and tolerance in religion and told Rome many home truths. No wonder the censor damned it.

If anything had been needed—but nothing was needed—to make Voltaire more alert, eager, and determined to give his epic to the world, it would have been that ministerial prohibition. Its publication in Holland was conditional on its publication in Paris. Voltaire, as has been well said, had not written an epic to keep it in a portfolio. He lost no time. With the help of the Bernières and ever ready and good-natured Theriot, he surreptitiously printed two thousand copies at Rouen. That occupation took at least five months—from the June of 1723 until the October. He was himself mostly in Paris, staying with the Bernières on the Quai des Théatins, where the noise nearly drove him distracted; or in a very poor lodging of his own. Garret or château, what did it matter? The “Henriade” was everything—his world.

In September he was back at Rivière Bourdet. Everyone concerned in the scheme was infinitely active and secret. “Little de Génonville” died in this September of a very bad kind of smallpox then epidemic in Paris. Voltaire mourned him much and long. He had a new tragedy in hand to keep his mind from the tragedies and trials of life, and turned to “Mariamne” for the comfort and change of thought he needed. It was finished early in November, and the author put it in his pocket and went to stay with his friend M. de Maisons, at the Château of Maisons, in the forest of St. Germains, nine miles from Paris, where were fêtes, parties, gaieties, and where Adrienne Lecouvreur was coming to read “Mariamne” to the guests.

Maisons was but four-and-twenty, delicate, noble, accomplished; destined, it seemed, for all great things, but to die too soon. Madame, his wife, was the friend of that old love of Voltaire’s, Madame de Villars.

By November 4th, at least two of the guests, Voltaire and Adrienne Lecouvreur, had arrived. Two days later Voltaire developed smallpox.

No one can gain an adequate idea of his character without realising in what “a thin and wretched case” Nature had enveloped “what is called my soul.” No other great man, perhaps, ever fought such a plucky fight against physical weakness, weariness, and infirmities. Voltaire was not always ill, but he was never well. One of his valets said that his state of indisposition was natural and permanent and accompanied him from the cradle to the grave. He himself said he had never passed a single day without suffering, and could not even imagine what it must be like to be in robust health. But he had what he called his “infallible secret”—work. Others have used physical weakness as an excuse for mental idleness, and indisposition as a natural holiday from labour. But not Voltaire. He dictated when he was too ill to write and when he was too ill to think, he read dull books for information which he might find useful and make amusing; and when he was yet worse, and could do nothing else, he read and wrote that gay mockery of his leisure, his “Pucelle.” The body was but the ragged covering of the soul at its best; at its worst, it was a subtle and seducing enemy, and one must be ever up and at it, with a thrust here and a lunge there, lest by any means it get the mastery. Voltaire fought it his whole life long—and always won. “Toujours allant et souffrant” was his definition of himself. He hardly ever made a happier.

In the present case, his disease was of that confluent type which a couple of months earlier had killed de Génonville. Voltaire was very ill. He went so far, he said, as to call the curé, make his confession, and his will, “which, you will well believe, was very short.”

But he was placed under the enlightened care of a Doctor Gervasi, physician to the Chevalier de Rohan, who saved his life with much lemonade and more common-sense.

Voltaire had always that interest in medicine which by no means implies faith in doctors. With two famous exceptions—Gervasi was one—he mistrusted that eighteenth-century faculty as it deserved to be mistrusted. He wrote afterwards a very minute description of his symptoms and treatment for the benefit of an old Baron de Breteuil, the father of Madame du Châtelet.

Adrienne Lecouvreur, it is said, who once had been something more than Voltaire’s friend, never left his bedside until Theriot, whom she had summoned, came to be with him.

The Maisons were prodigal of kindnesses. The day after he was out of absolute danger, the patient was writing verses. On the twenty-sixth day from his seizure, that is December 1, 1723, he left for Paris. He was not more than two hundred feet away from the château when the wing he had been occupying caught fire and was burnt to the ground.

As such accidental disinfectants were the only ones known to that age, the conflagration was a blessing in disguise. But Voltaire naturally felt overwhelmed with compunction, as if he had burnt the château himself. As for the Maisons, the letters they wrote him are examples of that exquisite grace and tact known to complete perfection only to France, and to the France before the Revolution.

In the very early days of 1724 certain innocent-looking, plodding agricultural vans arrived in Paris from Rouen. By the exertions of Madame de Bernières the great packages they contained got through the douane—somehow. Theriot was ready in the capital with his two thousand bindings. Voltaire’s injunctions that his child should be properly clad had not been in vain.

The August of 1723 had seen the death of Cardinal Dubois; the December the death of the Regent. Surely the time was favourable! The censor had condemned the book—what advertisement could be better?

And lo! on a sudden the “League” was all over the city—on the toilet tables of the women, in the salons, in the coffee-houses; aye, and in the King’s palace itself. It was of course a thousand times more tempting and delicious for being forbidden fruit.

Was it absurdly imitated from the “Æneid?” Did Henry of Navarre and Elizabeth of England, who never met in real life, meet in the poem for an immense interview? Well, what of that? It was daring, impetuous, and prohibited. That was enough. It was soon all over Europe translated into many languages, fulsomely admired, parodied, burlesqued, abused, pirated, copied. It had all the successes. A year

LOUIS XV.

From the Picture by Carle Van Loo in the Museum at Versailles

later Voltaire could say truthfully in his airy manner that he had made poetry the fashion.

The production of his tragedy “Mariamne” at the Comédie Française in this March of 1724 came like a dash of cold water on his rising spirits. It was a failure. A wag in the pit spoilt the critical moment of the heroine’s death with a foolish mot.

The author withdrew “Mariamne” to rewrite it, as was his indefatigable fashion, and went to recover his disappointment and his always ailing health at the waters of Forges, near Rouen, whither he was accompanied by the young Duke of Richelieu.

At Forges the invalid drank the waters, lost his money at faro, wrote a gay little comedy called “L’Indiscret,” and made the acquaintance of the French Court, then at Chantilly, near Forges.

The French Court then consisted of a King of fourteen; the Duke of Bourbon, who had obtained the post of Prime Minister simply by asking for it; and the Duke’s mistress, Madame de Prie. The mistress may be said to have ruled the kingdom, since she ruled the Duke, and the Duke ruled the King.

This wary Voltaire propitiated her, dedicated to her “L’Indiscret,” and made her his very useful friend. Drinking the waters (“There is more vitriol in a bottle of Forges water than in a bottle of ink,” he wrote; “and I do not believe ink is so very good for the health”) was brought to a tragic conclusion by the Duc de Melun, who was out hunting with Richelieu, being gored to death by a stag. The hunt was at Chantilly, and the unhappy Melun died in the arms of the Duke of Bourbon and in the presence of the Court. Voltaire, who never abandoned a friend, stayed another fortnight to console Richelieu, and then went back to Paris, which he had reached by August 15th.

He had a lodging in the Rue de Beaune now, but the unbearable noise of the street drove him into an hôtel garni, and the discomforts of the hôtel garni back again to the Rue de Beaune. Finally, he completed an arrangement begun the year before, and rented a room from the Bernières in their noisy house.

Wherever he was, he was working as usual. He rewrote “Mariamne.” He obtained for Theriot the offer of the secretaryship to Richelieu—Richelieu having been appointed ambassador to Vienna. And M. Theriot is too idle to be bothered with regular work, and twice declines the offer. Voltaire was not a little mortified, and found forgiveness difficult; but he forgave. His letters on the subject are an admirable lesson in the arts of friendship and of forbearance.

In April of the next year, 1725, the rewritten “Mariamne” was produced, with that gay little bagatelle, “L’Indiscret,” after it. “L’Indiscret” was said to justify its name in that it took too much liberty with the upper classes. “Mariamne” was very fairly successful now. But, after all, the author had had it and “L’Indiscret,” as well as the “Henriade,” all printed at his own expense, and at a very great expense. Fame, he observed, was agreeable but not nourishing. His thrifty soul began to look out for the nourishment.

In this summer of 1825, Louis XV., aged fifteen, was to be married to Marie Leczinska, aged twenty-one, daughter of Stanislas, ex-King of Poland. Madame de Prie gave Voltaire the refusal of rooms in her house at Fontainebleau, where the royal honeymoon was to be spent. Here was an opportunity! He had said not a year ago that he had renounced Courts for ever through the weakness of his stomach and the strength of his reason.

But in many respects, and in this respect above all, he was nothing if not inconsistent. He cried for royal favour as a spoilt child cries for the moon; and when he had it, it bored, wearied, and irritated him. But in his day, if the King, and the person who ruled the King, did not smile on talent, talent had small chance of success. “To make one’s fortune,” Voltaire wrote bitterly hereafter, “it is better to speak four words to the King’s mistress than to write a hundred volumes.”

So on August 27, 1725, he came up to Madame de Prie’s house at Fontainebleau. The festivities were in full swing, though the marriage was yet to come. Voltaire was one-and-thirty. He was there by his own choice. He knew himself to be for the first time in his life well placed. Yet his visit had not lasted three days when he wished himself away again. There was a dreadful rumour, too, that all the pensions were to be discontinued, and a new tax imposed instead to pay for the bride’s chiffons! Then Voltaire wrote a little divertissement to amuse the royalties, and the master of the ceremonies preferred “Le Médecin Malgré Lui.” On Wednesday, September 5th, the wedding took place. Then the bride accorded her gracious permission to M. de Voltaire to dedicate to her “Œdipe” and “Mariamne.” Things were a little better! Her father, with whom Voltaire was to have much to do hereafter, begged for a copy of the “Henriade” on his daughter’s recommendation. Voltaire was presented to her Majesty. Things were better still. “She has wept at ‘Mariamne,’ she has laughed at ‘L’Indiscret,’ she talks to me often, she calls me her ‘poor Voltaire.’” Charming! charming! but just a little bit—well, unsubstantial. And then she allowed her poet a pension of fifteen hundred livres.

Voltaire’s state of mind at Court was the state of mind of many—perhaps of most—courtiers. It is a dreadful bore to be here—but it is very advantageous! The cage is really so exquisitely gilded that one must try not to see the bars through the gilt! I want to get out, and I could get out—but I am so very lucky to be here, and so many people envy me, that I certainly will not. What an inexplicable and yet what a very common state of mind it is!

Voltaire could now count on the friendship, not only of the Queen, but of Madame de Prie, and of the minister Duverney. He was a pensioner of both their Majesties. The Court acknowledged him the first poet in France. Epigrams and the Bastille were in the background. He had hopes of being useful to his friends.

All this was not ungenerous payment for three months’ ennui at the finest Court in the world. But was it sufficient? Voltaire had indeed his gift of satiric observation to make the dullest entertainment amusing. “The Queen is every day assassinated with Pindaric odes, sonnets, epistles, and epithalamiums,” he wrote; “I should think she takes the poets for the Court fools; and if she does she is right, for it is a great folly for a man of letters to be here.” The boredom was stronger than the satisfaction after all. To hang about in the antechamber, tickling the jaded fancy of the Court gentlemen with one’s mots—to try and rouse the sleepy selfishness of a callow king with one’s finest wit—to flatter and cajole a duke’s mistress and a poor, honest, simple little foreigner because she happened to be a king’s wife—to play for apples of Sodom that turned to dust and ashes at one’s touch—was it worth while? “It is better to be a lackey of wits than a wit of lackeys”—better to do any work than none—better any life than this narcotic sleep of easy idleness. In Voltaire’s ear that siren, Verse, was always whispering and calling him away. In his heart were passionate convictions throbbing to be spoken. He had been glad to go to Court. He was more than glad to get away.

His zeal for a fight must have been more to the fore than ever after those three months of amiable apathy. He had it soon enough.

It was in the December of 1725 that the great Chevalier de Rohan, meeting this lean, brilliant, impertinent upstart of an author at the opera, said to him scornfully, “M. de Voltaire—Arouet—whatever your name is——?”

The Chevalier de Rohan was himself the representative of the haughtiest and most illustrious family in France, and of the same house as that Rohan who was to drag its pride through the mud of the episode of the Diamond Necklace.

A middle-aged debauchee; “a degenerate plant, a coward and a usurer”—in the vigorous words of a contemporary—was this great Chevalier whom Voltaire met that night.

He made no answer at the moment. Two days after, at the Comédie Française—most likely in Adrienne Lecouvreur’s box there—Rohan repeated the question.

“I do not drag about a great name, but I know how to honour the name I bear,” was the answer. There is another version of it: “I begin my name; the Chevalier de Rohan finishes his.” Or, as Voltaire himself wrote after in “Rome Sauvée”:

My name begins with me: your honour fend

Lest yours with you shall have an end.

The answer was at least one which made the Chevalier raise his cane; and Voltaire clapped his hand on his sword. Adrienne, of course, fainted, and the incident closed.

A few days later Voltaire was dining with the Duke of Sully. He was called from the table to speak to someone in a carriage outside. He went unsuspiciously enough. A couple of Rohan’s lackeys fell on him and beat him over the shoulders. Rohan, it is said, looked out of the window of his coach and called out: “Don’t hit his head! something good may come out of that!” And the bystanders, cringing to rank and success as they needs must, observed admiringly, “The noble lord!” Voltaire, beside himself with fury, flung off his assailants at last, rushed back to Sully, begged him to redress the wrong, to go to the police, to speak to the minister. Voltaire had been as “a son of the house” for ten years, and had immortalised Sully’s ancestors in the “Henriade.” But Sully was not going to brave the wrath of such a great man as his cousin Rohan for a bourgeois author with a talent for getting into disgrace. Voltaire left the house—never to enter it again. He went straight to the opera, where he knew he would find Madame de Prie, told her his story, and enlisted her sympathy. For a few days it seemed as if she would succeed in getting her lover, the Duke of Bourbon’s, influence for Voltaire. But the friends of Rohan showed the Duke an epigram on his one eye, which sounded clever enough to be Voltaire’s, and ruined his credit at once. He was baffled on every side. Marais, that keen old legal writer of memoirs, declares that, though he showed himself as much as he could in town and Court, no one pitied him, and his so-called friends turned their backs. He had been publicly caned! He was ridiculous! And the fear of being absurd was a thousand times stronger than the fear of hell in eighteenth-century Paris. Any other but Voltaire would have hidden his head in obscurity and have been thankful to be forgotten.

But with this man an insult raised all the vivid intensity of his nature. “God take care of my friends,” said he; “I can look after my enemies myself.” For more than three months he led a life of feverish indignation and was every moment busy with revenge. He learnt fencing. He had no aptitude for any bodily exercise. But he perfected himself in this one with all the persistency and thoroughness of his nature. If he was not normally courageous, he had plenty of daring now. The Rohans, anyhow, feared him so much that they kept him under police supervision. On April 16, 1726, the lieutenant of police recorded that Voltaire intended to insult Rohan with éclat and at once; that he was living at his fencing master’s, but continually changing his residence. On April 17th Voltaire went to Adrienne Lecouvreur’s box at the Comédie, where he knew he would find Rohan. Theriot accompanied him and stood without the box, but where he could hear everything. “Sir,” said Voltaire, “if you have not forgotten the outrage of which I complain, I hope you will give me satisfaction.” The great man agreed. The hour fixed was nine o’clock the next morning; the place, St. Martin’s Gate. But before that, Voltaire found himself for the second time in the Bastille. One can hardly fancy a meaner revenge. By March 28, 1726, the influence, cunning, and poltroonery of Rohan had succeeded in getting signed the warrant for his enemy’s arrest and detention. Rohan, in fact, was a great noble; and Voltaire, as his rival playwright Piron said to himself, was “nothing, not even an Academician.” Armand and his faction were only too glad to be rid of such a stormy petrel.

It is not hard to understand what a passion against the bitter injustice of his gorgeous day must have surged in Voltaire’s heart. “You do not hear in England,” he wrote but a very short time after, “of haute, moyenne, and basse justice.” It was in fact literally true that in France at that period there was not only really, but avowedly, one “justice” for the noble, another for the bourgeois, and a third for the canaille. Voltaire was in the Bastille only a fortnight. He was very well treated. “Everyone he knew,” wrote Delaunay the governor, came to see him; so his visitors had to be limited to six a day. Theriot brought him English books. He dined at Delaunay’s table. Also imprisoned in the Bastille was the famous Madame de Tencin—young, clever, and corrupt. “We were like Pyramus and Thisbe,” Voltaire wrote, “only we did not kiss each other through the chink in the wall.” He could still write gaily. As some people never speak without a stammer, Voltaire never spoke without a jest. But what food in his heart for new strange thought! Under what crushing laws was this great French people bound in darkness, wretchedness, ignorance! “We are born in slavery and die in it.” It has been said that Voltaire left France a poet and returned from England a philosopher. But that fortnight in the Bastille must have made him realise, if he had not known already, that he was born for a destiny far weightier and greater than that of a Corneille or a Racine.

“What is done with people who forge lettres de cachet?” he asked the lieutenant of police one day, when he was in prison. “They are hanged.” “Good!” was the answer, “in anticipation of the time when those who sign genuine ones shall be hanged too.”

A few days after his imprisonment he wrote to the Minister of the Department of Paris:

“Sieur de Voltaire humbly represents that he has been assaulted by the brave Chevalier de Rohan, assisted by six cut-throats, behind whom the chevalier was courageously posted; and that ever since Sieur de Voltaire has tried to repair, not his own honour, but that of the chevalier, which has proved too difficult.”

He went on to beg permission to go to England. His order of liberty was signed on April 29, 1726. But there were many formalities to be observed before it could be put into execution. On May 2d, Delaunay received it with its accompanying conditions. Voltaire was free—to go to England, accompanied as far as Calais by Condé, one of the turnkeys of the Bastille, to see that he really did go there.

The businesslike prisoner asked Madame de Bernières to lend him her travelling carriage to take him to Calais. She, Madame du Deffand, and Theriot came to say good-bye to him. He left the Bastille on May 3d. On May 5th he was writing to Theriot from Calais. He stayed there three or four days, and about the end of the first week, in May, 1726, landed at Greenwich.