The life of Voltaire

by Evelyn Beatrice Hall

On the Easter Day of this 1754, Voltaire, having first confessed to a Capuchin monk, received the Sacrament. Faire ses Pâques declares the laxest Catholic to be still a son of the Church. What Voltaire’s motives were in this action, it is not easy to see. It is said that his anxious friends in Paris recommended the action as an answer to the charges of unbelief brought against him. But a Voltaire must have known well enough that such an answer as that would impose on no one. Besides, it was not like him to be governed by the advice of fools—even if they happened to be his friends. The reasons he himself gave for the action were that at Rome one must do as Rome does. “When men are surrounded by barbarians ... one must imitate their contortions.... Some people are afraid to touch spiders, others swallow them.” “If I had a hundred thousand men, I know exactly what I should do: but I have not, so I shall communicate at Easter, and you can call me a hypocrite as much as you like.”

The hypocrisy was but ill acted. Voltaire received the Sacrament with an irreverence painful to believers and harmful to his own reputation. To him the thing was a jest—“the contortions of barbarians.” He was quite mocking and gay. When he got home, he sent to the Capuchin convent a dozen of good wine and a loin of veal. I despise you too much to be ill-natured to you! If you believe in this mummery, you are fools! If you connive at it, unbelieving, you are knaves! Knaves or fools, I can laugh at you quite good-humouredly. If ever present conveyed a message, this was the message conveyed by the dozen of wine and the loin of veal.

To justify Voltaire for this act is not possible. It was at best a méchanceté. It was the mocking, jesting nature of the man getting the upper hand alike of his prudence and of his consideration for others. He was himself a Deist, and a firmly convinced Deist. To him the religion of Rome was not merely a folly but the stronghold of tyranny and of darkness. The fact that millions of faithful souls had found in her bosom consolation for the sorrows, and a key to the mysteries of life and of death, did not soften him.

In Voltaire was lacking now and ever that “crown of man’s moral manhood,” reverence. To find in “the last restraint of the powerful and the last hope of the wretched” only subject for a laugh was the greatest of his faults. If he had been a nobler nature, he would have seen the beauty and the virtue which lie even in the most degrading theologies: and respecting them, would have stayed his hand from the smashing blow, and for the sake of the virtue which sweetens corruption, have let corruption alone.

It has been done many times. “No man can achieve great things for his country without some loss of the private virtues.” A reverent Voltaire—what a contradiction in terms!—to spare some goodness, must have spared much vice. To arouse eighteenth-century France, steeped to her painted lips in superstition, and the slavery which had debased her till she came to love it, the shrieks and the blasphemies of a Voltaire and a Rousseau were necessary. No calmer voice would have waked her from her narcotic sleep. “Without Voltaire and Rousseau there would have been no Revolution.” No honest student of eighteenth-century France can doubt that that Revolution, though it crushed the innocent with the guilty and left behind it some of the worst fruits of anarchy, left behind it too a France which, with all its faults, is a thousand times better than the France it found.

By the middle of April the Plombières arrangements were well advanced. The d’Argental household was to be there; and Madame Denis, more or less penitent and more or less forgiven, had asked to join the party. The waters would be good for a health—ruined, said her temperate uncle, by “remedies and gourmandising.” Voltaire would come, with a couple of servants at the most. He was anticipating the change with pleasure when at the very last minute Madame Denis wrote to tell him that Maupertuis was at Plombières too. It was certainly not big enough to hold both him and his enemy. The events of the last months had taught even Voltaire some kind of caution. He was absolutely en partant when Madame Denis’s letter came; but on June 8th, though he left Colmar, it was to stop halfway between it and Plombières, at the Abbey of Senones, as the guest of Dom Calmet, who had himself been a visitor at Cirey. Calmet had a splendid library. His visitor, who was condemned, as he said, to work at a correct edition of that “General History, printed for my misfortune,” made good use of it, during his three weeks’ visit. Absurd reports were noised abroad—which the Dom did not contradict—that he had converted “the most pronounced Deist in Europe.” But, as the Deist himself said, his business was with the library—not with matins and vespers. Directly Maupertuis left Plombières, Voltaire took leave of Calmet and his monks, and on some day not earlier than July 2d left for Plombières, where he found not only his dear d’Argentals and Madame Denis, but her sister, Madame de Fontaine, as well.

The little party passed here an agreeable fortnight or so. About July 22d, Voltaire returned to Colmar with Madame Denis, who from this time forth managed, or mismanaged, his house for him till his death. The “Universal History” greatly occupied him after his holiday. But there was another subject which was even more engrossing.

It was the idea of living in Switzerland. Since March the plan of seeking “an agreeable tomb in the neighbourhood of Geneva,” or possibly near Lausanne, had been growing—growing. There were many reasons why the little republic was a suitable home for Voltaire. In the first place, it was a republic. It was quite close to France, though not in it; and though France might not like to have such a firebrand as Voltaire burning in her midst, she would not object to be lit by his light if it were burning near.

Then Switzerland was Protestant—and in Voltaire’s English experience of Protestantism he had found that faith singularly tolerant and easy-going—in practice, that is, not in principle. By August he was negotiating actively with M. de Brenles, a lawyer of Lausanne, about “a rather pretty property” on the lake of Geneva. It was called Allamans; and Voltaire was not a little disappointed when his negotiations for buying it fell through. In October he was inquiring if a Papist could not possess and bequeath land in the territory of Lausanne. He urged secrecy on de Brenles; and entered fully into money matters. If he bought land, it was to be in the name of his niece, Madame Denis. There was a danger throughout these months of that bomb the “Pucelle” bursting—into print—“and killing me.” That fear made the Swiss arrangements go forward with a will.

On October 23d, Voltaire went to supper at a poor tavern of Colmar, called the “Black Mountain,” with no less a personage than his friend Wilhelmina of Bayreuth. She overwhelmed him with kindness and attention; asked him to stay with her; begged she might see Madame Denis, and made a thousand excuses for the bad behaviour of brother Frederick; so that impulsive Voltaire jumped once more to that favourite conclusion of his that “women are worth more than men.” To be sure, if he had seen an account of the interview his clever Princess wrote to her brother, he might have thought something less highly of her and her sex. But he did not see it; nor Frederick’s bitter reply. If he had, neither flattery nor opprobrium would have moved him now from one fixed resolve—to shelter in Switzerland.