Part 36

Yet they did quarrel, too, as true lovers will, I am told. But their quarreling was all done in English, so the servants and His Inertia, the Marquis, did not know the purpose of it. It is probable that the accounts of their misunderstandings are considerably exaggerated, as the rehearsal of a tragedy by this pair of histrions would be taken by the servants for a sure-enough fight.

And they were always acting--often beginning breakfast with a "stunt." The Madame sang well, and her little impromptu arias pleased her thin little lover immensely and he would improvise and answer in kind, and then take the part of an audience and applaud, calling loudly, "Bravo! Bravo!"

Mornings they would ride horseback through the winding woods, or else hunt for geological and botanical specimens. About all of Voltaire's science he got from the lady and this was true of languages as well.

To a nervous, irritable and intense thinker a certain amount of solitude seems necessary. Voltaire occasionally grew weary of the delicious quiet of Civey, and the indictment against him having been quashed, he would go away to Paris or elsewhere. On these trips if he did not take Madame along she would grow furious, then lacrimose and finally submissive--with a weepy protest. If he failed to write her daily she grew hysterical. Two winters they spent together in Paris and another at Brussels.

A lawsuit involving the estate of the Marquis du Chatelet, that had been in the courts for eighty years, was pushed to a successful issue by Voltaire and Madame. Four hundred fifty thousand dollars were secured, but of this Voltaire, strangely enough, took nothing.

That the bond between Emilie and Voltaire was very firm is shown by the fact that, after they had been together ten years, he declined to leave her to accept an invitation to visit Frederick the Great at Berlin. Frederick was a married man, but his was a strictly bachelor court--for prudential reasons. Frederick and Emilie had carried on a spirited correspondence, but this was as close as he cared for her to come to him. All of his communications with females were limited to letters, and Voltaire once said that that was the reason he was called Frederick the Great.

Madame du Chatelet died when she was forty-two; Voltaire was fifty-five. For fifteen years this strange and most romantic friendship had continued, and to a degree it had worn itself out. Toward the last the lady had been exacting and dictatorial, and thinking that Voltaire had slighted her by not taking her more into his confidence, she had accepted another lover, a man ten years her junior. If she had thought to make Voltaire jealous, she had reckoned without her host--he was relieved to find her fierce supervision relaxed.

When she passed away he worked his woe up into a pretty panegyric, closed up his affairs at Civey, and left there forever.

* * * * *

So far as the government was concerned, Voltaire seems to have passed his days in accepting rewards and receiving punishments. Interdict, exile, ostracism were followed by honors, pension and office.

His one lasting love was the drama. About every two years a swirl of excitement was caused at Paris by the announcement of a new play by Voltaire. These plays seemed to appeal mostly to the nobility, the clergy and those in public office. And the object in every instance was to get even with somebody, and place some one in a ridiculous light. Innocent historical dramas were passed by the censor, and afterward it was found that in them some local bigwig was flayed without mercy. Then the play had to be withdrawn, and all printed copies were burned in public, and Voltaire would flee to Brussels or Geneva to escape summary punishment.

However, he never fooled all of the people all of the time. There was always a goodly number of dignitaries who richly enjoyed the drubbing he gave the other fellow, and these would gloat in inward glee over the Voltaire ribaldry until it came their turn. Then the other side would laugh. The fact is, Voltaire always represented a constituency, otherwise his punishment might have been genuine, instead of forty lashes with a feather, well laid on.

About the time Madame du Chatelet passed away, Voltaire seemed to be enjoying a period of kingly favor. He had been made a Knight of the Bedchamber and also Historiographer of France. The chief duty of the first office consisted in signing the monthly voucher for salary, and the other was about the same as Poet Laureate--with salary in inverse ratio to responsibility. It was considered, however, that the holder of these offices was one of the King's family, and therefore was bound to indulge in no unseemly antics.

On June Twenty-sixth, Seventeen Hundred Fifty, Voltaire applied to the King in person for permission to visit Frederick of Prussia.

Tradition has it that the King replied promptly, "You may go--the sooner the better--and you may remain as long as you choose."

Voltaire pocketed the veiled acerbity without a word, and bowing himself out, made hot haste to pack up and be on his way before an order rescinding the permission was issued.

Frederick was a freethinker, a scientist, a poet, and a wit well worthy of the companionship of Voltaire. In fact, they were very much alike. Both had the dual qualities of being intensely practical and yet iconoclastic. Both were witty, affable, seemingly indifferent and careless, but yet always with an eye on the main chance. Each was small, thin and bony, but both had the intellect of the lean and hungry Cassius that looked quite through the deeds of man.

Frederick received Voltaire with royal honors. Princes, ministers of state, grandees and generals high in office, knelt on one knee as he passed. Frederick tried to make it appear that France had failed to appreciate her greatest philosopher, and so he had come to Prussia--the home of letters. His pension was fixed at twenty thousand francs a year, he was given the Golden Key of Chamberlain, and the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit. He was a member of the King's household, and was the nearest and dearest friend of the royal person.

Frederick thought he had bound the great man to him for life.

Personality repels as well as attracts. Voltaire's viper-like pen was never idle. He wrote little plays for the court, and these were presented with much eclat, the author superintending their presentation, and considerately taking minor parts himself, so as to divide the honors. But amateur theatricals stand for heart-burnings and jealousy. The German poets were scored, other writers ridiculed, and big scientists came in for their share of pen-pricking.

Voltaire corrected the King's manuscript and taught him the secret of literary style. Then they fell into a controversy, done in Caslon old-style, thundering against each other's theories in pamphlets across seas of misundertandings. Neither side publicly avowed the authorship, but nobody was deceived. The King and Voltaire met daily at meals, and carefully avoided the topics they were fighting out in print.

Voltaire was rich and all of his wants were supplied, but he entered the financial lists, and taking advantage of his inside knowledge, speculated in scrip and got into a disgraceful lawsuit over the proceeds with a man he should never have known. Frederick was annoyed--then disturbed. He personally chided Voltaire for his folly in mixing with the King's enemies.

Voltaire had tired of the benevolent assimilation--he craved freedom. A friend who loves you, if he spies upon your every action, will become intolerable. Voltaire intimated to Frederick that he would like to go.

But Frederick had a great admiration for the man--he considered Voltaire the greatest living thinker, and to have such a one in the court would help give the place an atmosphere of learning. He recognized that there were two Voltaires--one covetous, quibbling, spiteful and greedy; and the other the peerless poet and philosopher--the man who hated shams and pretense, and had made a brave fight for liberty; the charming companion, the gracious friend. Frederick was philosopher enough to realize that he could not have the one without the other--if he had the angel he must also tolerate the demon. This he would do--he must have his Voltaire, and so he refused the passports asked for, and sought to interest his literary lion in new projects. Finally, court life became intolerable to Voltaire, as life is to anybody when he realizes that he is being detained against his will. Voltaire packed his effects, secured a four-horse carriage, and with his secretary, departed by night, without leaving orders where his mail should be forwarded.

When Frederick found that his singing bird had flown, he was furious. Fear had much to do with the matter, for Voltaire had taken various manuscripts written by the King, wherein potentates in high places were severely scored. The first thought of Frederick evidently was that Voltaire had really been a spy in the employ of the French government. He sent messengers after him in hot haste--the fugitive was overtaken, and arrested. His luggage was searched, and after being detained at Frankfort for three weeks he was allowed to depart for pastures new.

The news of his flight, arrest and disgrace became the gossip of every court of Christendom. Who was disgraced more by the arrest--Voltaire or Frederick--the world has not yet decided. Carlyle deals with the subject in detail in his "Life of Frederick," and exonerates the King. But Taine says Carlyle wrote neither history nor poetry, and certainly we do not consider the sage of Cheyne Row an impartial judge.

Voltaire took time to cool, and then wrote a history of the affair which is published in his "My Private Life," that is one of the most delicious pieces of humor ever written. That he should have looked forward to life at the Prussian Court as the ideal, and then after bravely enduring it for three years, make his escape by night, was only a huge joke. Nothing else could have been expected, he says. Men of fifty should know that environment does not make heaven, and people who expect other people to make paradise for them are forever doomed to wander without the walls.

Voltaire acknowledges that he got better treatment than he deserved, and makes no apology for working the whole affair up into good copy. The final proof that Voltaire was a true philosopher is that he was able to laugh at himself.