And better than all, better a thousand times, through this chill, discontented January, Voltaire was eagerly looking for a house and property of his own, in this free little Switzerland, where he might settle down at last and be in peace. On January 31, 1755, he was in active negotiation about two houses. On February 1st there appeared in the Registers of the Council of State of Geneva a special permission to M. de Voltaire—who alleged the state of his health and the necessity for living near his doctor, Tronchin, as a reason for wishing to settle in Switzerland—to inhabit the territory of the republic under the good pleasure of the Seigneury.
On February 8th or 9th the Councillor Tronchin bought a property quite close to Geneva, called Saint-Jean, which he let on a life lease to Voltaire, and which, in a characteristic enthusiasm and before he had had any practical experience of it, Voltaire rechristened “Les Délices.” Thus he was enabled to evade the law of the republic, and, Papist though he nominally was, to live and hold property under the Genevan republic.
A few days later he acquired a second house, called Monrion, on the way from Lausanne to Ouchy.
He was now sixty-one years old. Strong in his heart all his life had been his love of a home. For a while Cirey had seemed like one. But it had never belonged to him. It was, too, in France; and there had been often the painful necessity of leaving it as quickly as possible, and without any surety of being allowed to come back again. The man’s whole life had been a buffeting from pillar to post.
But the fretted youth in Paris, the restless middle age at Lunéville, Brussels, Cirey, and the angry hurry of Prussia were over for ever.
When he settled in Switzerland Voltaire took a new lease of his life. He entered upon its last, greatest, noblest, and calmest epoch.
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE DÉLICES, AND THE “POEM ON THE DISASTER OF LISBON”
In 1755, the little republic of Geneva contained twenty thousand of some of the most simple, honest, frugal, and industrious persons in the world. Calvin had been dead two centuries. But his influence yet lived in laws which regulated not only the worship but the food and the drink of his followers; which bade them rise at five in summer and at six in winter, under penalty of a fine; allowed but two dishes at their tables; and made more than one fire in a house appear unjustifiable extravagance. In many respects the Genevan Calvinists of the time of Voltaire were not unlike a certain section of Scottish society. Austere in morals, and shrewd in mind, narrow, laborious, economical, equally exempt from degrading poverty and degrading luxury, content with stern pleasures, and a brief and rigid creed—the Calvinist was but a severer Presbyterian after all. By the middle of the eighteenth century, indeed, one party of the Genevans had been influenced not a little, on the side of their intellect, by the new science, the new literature, the new philosophy, which were remoulding Europe; and beneath the Calvinistic gloom still felt the gay heart-beats of the Frenchman. But the other and larger party were Puritan to the marrow—who believed, with all the morbid intensity of their founder, that enjoyment was sinful, musical instruments had been invented by the devil, and play-acting was the abomination of desolation.
It was among such a people that this cynic Voltaire, whose motto was “Rire et fais rire,” whose darling amusement was the drama, and whose incorrigible indulgence was the “Pucelle,” had elected to live.
On the very day, February 9, 1755, when he completed his negotiations for buying the lease of Délices, a certain Pastor Vernet wrote to him, begging him to respect religion, and saying that the serious persons of the neighbourhood were not without their apprehensions on that count. But when it came to writing, Voltaire was more than a match for any pastor who ever lived. He responded by a letter brilliantly ambiguous; to which Vernet could take no exception, but in which he must have found much food for thought.