Part 35

Voltaire cleared about twenty thousand pounds out of his provision contract.

Thus we find this thrifty poet at forty with a fortune equal to a half-million dollars. This money he loaned out in a way of his own--a way as original as his literary style. His knowledge of the upper circles again served him well. Among the proud scions of nobility there were always a few who, through gambling proclivities, and other royal qualities, were much in need of funds. Voltaire picked the men who had only a life interest in their estates, and made them loans, secured by the rentals. The loans were to be paid back in annuities as long as both men lived.

All insurance is a species of gambling--the company offers to make you a bet that your house will burn within a year.

In life-insurance, the company's expert looks you over, and if your waist measurement is not too great for your height, a bargain is entered into wherein you agree to pay so much now, and so much every year as long as you live, in consideration that the company will pay your heirs so much at your death.

The chief value of life-insurance lies in the fact that it insures a man against his own indiscretion, a thing supposedly under his own control--but which never is. Voltaire's scheme banked on the man's weakness, and laid his indiscretion open before the world. It was life-insurance turned wrong side out, and could only have been devised and carried out by a man of courage with an actuary's bias for mathematics.

Instead of agreeing to pay the man so much at death, Voltaire paid him the whole sum in advance, and the man agreed to pay, say, ten per cent interest until either the lender or the borrower died. No principal was to be paid, and on the death of either party, the whole debt was canceled.

Voltaire picked only men younger than himself. It was a tempting offer to the borrower, for Voltaire looked like a consumptive, and it is said that on occasion he evolved a wheezy cough that helped close the deal. The whole scheme, for Voltaire, was immensely successful. On some of the risks he collected his yearly ten per cent for over forty years, or until his death.

On Voltaire's loan of sixteen hundred pounds to the Marquis du Chatelet, however, it is known that he collected nothing either in way of principal or interest. This was as strange a piece of financiering as was ever consummated; and the inside history of the matter, with its peculiar psychology, has never been written. The only two persons who could have told that story in its completeness were Voltaire and the Madame du Chatelet, and neither ever did.

* * * * *

Madame du Chatelet--the divine Emilie--was twenty-seven and Voltaire was thirty-nine when they first met.

He was living in obscure lodgings in Paris for prudential reasons, the executioner having just burned, in the public street, all the copies of his last book that could be found.

The Madame called on him to express her sympathy--and congratulations. She had written a book, but it had not been burned--not even read! She was tall, thin, angular, far from handsome, but had beaming eyes and a face that tokened intellect. And best of all, her voice was low, finely modulated, and was not exercised more than was meet.

She leaned her chin upon her hand and looked at him.

She had met Voltaire when she was a child--at least she said so, and he, being a gentleman, remembered perfectly. She read to him a little manuscript she had just dashed off. It was deep, profound and full of reasons--that is the way learned women write--they write like professors of rhetoric. Really great men write lightly, suggestively, and with a certain amount of indifference, dash, froth and foam. When women evolve literary foam, it is the sweet, cloying, fixed foam of the charlotte russe--not the bubbling, effervescent Voltaire article.

Could M. de Voltaire suggest a way in which her manuscript might be lightened up so the public executioner would deign to notice it?

M. de Voltaire responded by reading to her a little thing of his own.

The next day she called again.

Some say that Madame called on Voltaire to secure a loan on her husband's estate at Civey. No matter--she got the loan.

Doubtless she did not know where she was going--none of us do. We are all sailing under sealed orders.

The Madame had been married eight years. She was versed in Latin and knew Italian literature. She was educated; Voltaire was not. She offered to teach him Italian if he would give her lessons in English.

They read to each other things they had recently written. When men and women read to each other and mingle their emotions, the danger-line is being reached. Literary people of the opposite sex do not really love each other. All they desire is to read their manuscript aloud to a receptive listener.

Thus are the literary germs vitalized--by giving our thoughts to another we really make them our own. Only well-sexed people produce literature--poetry is the pollen of the mind. Meter, rhythm, lilt and style are stamen, pistil and stalk swaying in the warm breeze of springtime.

An order for arrest was out for Voltaire. Pamphlets which he had been refused permission to publish in Paris were printed at Rouen and were setting all Paris by the ears.

With Madame du Chatelet he fled to Civey, where was the tumbledown chateau of the Marquis--the Madame's complaisant husband. Voltaire advanced the Marquis sixteen hundred pounds to put the place in order, and then on his own account fitted up two sumptuous apartments, one for himself and one for Madame. The Marquis went away with his regiment, and occasionally came back and lounged about the chateau. But Voltaire was the real master of the place.

Voltaire was neither domestic nor rural in his tastes, but the Du Chatelet seemed to fill his cup to the brim, and made him enjoy what otherwise would have been exile. He wrote incessantly--poems, essays, plays--and fired pamphlets at a world of fools.

All that he wrote during the day he read to Madame at night. One of her maids has given us a vivid little picture of how Voltaire, at exactly eleven o'clock each night, would come out of hiding, and entering the Madame's room, would partake of the dainty supper that was always prepared for him. The divine Emilie had the French habit of receiving her visitors in bed, and as her hours were much more regular than Voltaire's, she usually enjoyed a nap before he entered. After his supper he would read aloud to her all he had written since they last met. If the piece was dramatic he would act it out with roll of r's, striding walk, grimace and gesticulations gracefully done, for the man was an actor of rare talent.

Emerson says, "Let a man do a thing incomparably well, and the world will make a path to his door, though he live in a forest." There was no lack of society at Civey--the writers, poets and philosophers found their way there. Voltaire fitted up a little private theater, where his plays were given, and concerts and lectures held from time to time.

The divine Emilie's forte was science and mathematics--and on these themes she wrote much, competing for prizes and winning the recognition of various learned societies. It will be seen that the man and the woman were not in competition with each other, which, perhaps, accounts, in degree, for their firm friendship.