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.
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.