There was still in the man an inexhaustible fund of illusion. He could rail and boast and dream. He seems never to have given up the hope of attaining to reputation and competence. In the blackest year of his life, he began translating Robinson Crusoe (1720), but, wearying of the task, left the Dutchman Justus van Effen to finish it. A letter of his to M. de Burigny, dated 6th September 1727, is sweetly optimistic. "Cross the Channel," he says, to his friend, "but, for Heaven's sake, come alone; don't bring your man along with you. I can manage to accommodate you with rooms in my house, and receive you at my table. What you will eat," he adds, with a flourish of liberality, "with what I am obliged to have for my own family, will not cost me more than two sous a day."[300]
In London, most probably at the Rainbow Coffee-House, then the resort of the refugees, Saint-Hyacinthe one day came upon Voltaire. The two men had met once before in Paris, when Voltaire's Œdipe was being acted. It is said that, during a performance, the Chevalier de Thémiseul, pointing out to the full house, exclaimed: "That is the completest praise of your tragedy." To which Voltaire replied with a bow: "Your opinion, Monsieur, flatters me more than that of all that audience." But times had changed. Needy Saint-Hyacinthe was no longer the successful author that a younger man is naturally anxious not to wound. "M. de Voltaire," Saint-Hyacinthe repeated later, "led a very irregular life in England; he made many enemies by proceedings not in accordance with the principles of strict morality." "Saint-Hyacinthe," Voltaire retorted, "lived in London principally on my alms and his lampoons. He cheated me and dared to insult me."
It must be acknowledged that Saint-Hyacinthe struck the first blow. In 1728, having a mind to correct the mistakes that he had noticed in the Henriade, he did the work in the most thoroughly impertinent manner. Thus, to the following line:
"Aux remparts de Paris les deux rois s'avancèrent,"
he added the comment: "It is not good grammar to say s'avancer, but s'avancer vers; so the author should write:
"Vers les murs de Paris les deux rois s'avancèrent."
And further on, in a note on the expression "allés dans Albion," "it is surprising that a poet who has written tragedies, and an epic, without mentioning those miscellaneous pieces where an agreeable politeness must prevail, should not know the use of the prepositions dans and en." Then there was captiousness in some of the remarks; thus Voltaire had written
"Et fait aimer son joug à l'Anglois indompté,
Qui ne peut ni servir, ni vivre en liberté."
"M. de Voltaire," slyly added his enemy, "should not have tried in a vague and sorry antithesis to give an idea of the English character that is both insulting and erroneous."
A more striking example of perfidiousness was effectually to stir Voltaire's resentment a little later. To one of the numerous editions of the Chef d'œuvre, Saint-Hyacinthe added a postscript entitled The Deification of Doctor Aristarchus Masso, in which he related the well-known anecdote of Voltaire being set upon by an officer: "'Fight,' exclaims the officer, 'or take care of your shoulders.' The poet not being bold enough to fight, the officer handsomely cudgelled him, in the hope that the sore insult might lend him courage; but the poet's caution rose as the blows showered down upon him," etc. Though not mentioned by name, Voltaire was pretty clearly pointed out. Soon after, malicious Abbé Desfontaines inserted the anecdote in his libellous Voltairomanie (1739), and all Paris began to make merry over the poet's cowardice. In spite of the provocation, Voltaire acted with characteristic forbearance, begging mutual friends to adjust the difficulty, and saying that he should feel quite satisfied if Saint-Hyacinthe would retract and solemnly declare that he had taken no part in the abbé's libel. But Saint-Hyacinthe's stubbornness drove Voltaire to retaliate, and so he threw all his venom in the following paragraph:—