In brief, there was a different and quite as good an air in Lausanne, where the “wise laws” of Geneva had no sway. Lausanne loved play-acting; and M. de Voltaire had a house at Monrion.
In Paris, too, on August 20th, “The Orphan of China” was performed with brilliant success. Here was excellent consolation for the solemn resolutions of Genevan Councils. They might take offence at “Zaire,” but Paris applauded “my Chinese baboons” to the echo. Poor Marie Leczinska, indeed, who not unnaturally saw evil in everything this sceptic, this Pompadour’s favourite, did, saw it here too. But even her objections, that the piece contained lines hostile to religion and to the King, were too obviously unjust to harm it. The censor had passed it. Its first performance declared it Voltaire’s greatest success since “Mérope.” If Lekain did fall into his old fault and speak dreadfully indistinctly, Mademoiselle Clarion made the most charming of heroines, and the play was “all full of love”—tender, graceful, picturesque. It was played twelve or thirteen times in Paris; and when it was moved to Fontainebleau the Court delighted in it as much as the capital had done. In the annals of the French stage it is still remembered as the first play in which the actresses consented to forego their paniers.
Collini was present on the opening night. Even his grumbling pen allows that his master had made a very palpable hit. The pleasure-loving secretary had spent six weeks in Paris, almost entirely engaged in enjoying himself, before Voltaire recalled him in the friendliest of terms.
On August 30, 1755, Voltaire wrote from Délices one of his most famous letters; perhaps one of the most famous letters in the world. It was to Jean Jacques Rousseau, and thanked him for the “Discourse on the Origin of Inequality among Men,” which Rousseau had written as a prize essay at the Academy of Dijon, and now sent for the approval of the great master. The “Discourse” was nothing but an elaboration of Rousseau’s famous theory—the advantage of savage over civilised life. Years before, at the French Court in 1745, Voltaire and Rousseau had had dealings with each other. They now renewed that acquaintance. Voltaire’s letter began, “I have received, Sir, your new book against the human race.... No one has ever employed so much wit in trying to make us beasts: one longs to go on four paws when one reads your book, but, personally, it is sixty years since I lost the habit, and I feel it is impossible for me to resume it.” He went on to agree with Jean Jacques that literature and science brought many troubles to their votaries; and instanced his own case with as quick a feeling as if all his wrongs were of yesterday. But, “literature nourishes, rectifies, and consoles the soul ... one must love it, in spite of the way it is abused, as one must love society, though the wicked corrupt its sweetness: as one must love one’s country, though one suffers injustice from it; and one’s God, though superstition and fanaticism degrade His service.”
On September 10th, Rousseau replied from Paris in warm terms of friendship, and agreeing with the superior wisdom of his master’s argument. As yet, each could see the other’s genius—and reverence it. They could disagree and be friends.
The autumn at Délices was further marked by the visit of Patu, a poet, who was a friend of David Garrick’s and wrote him an ecstatic account of his boyishly energetic host; and by a fracas with Madame Denis.
The facts that that foolish person was fat, short, forty-five years old, and squinted, did not, it has been said, make her less fond of admiration from the opposite sex, or less prone to make a fool of herself in a flirtation when opportunity offered.
In the present case Uncle Voltaire suspected her of being a party to a theft her old admirer, the Marquis de Ximenès, had made of some manuscript notes for Voltaire’s “Campaigns of the King.” Ximenès had sold the notes to a publisher. Madame Denis’s voluble denials would certainly prove nothing. Voltaire was already quite aware of what Madame d’Épinay discovered after a very short acquaintance with her, that his niece was constitutionally a liar.
And then, on November 24th, came news which staggered Voltaire’s soul; and beside which all petty trouble seemed shameful. On November 1, 1755, Lisbon was destroyed by an earthquake. It was All Saints’ Day, and the churches were full. In six minutes, fifteen thousand persons were dead; and fifteen thousand more were dying.
In these days, when every morning has its “crisis” and every evening its “appalling disaster,” it is difficult to realise the effect of the earthquake at Lisbon upon the eighteenth century. The less news there is, the more is that news felt. In the eighteenth century, too, all thoughtful persons saw signs in the heavens and the earth of some great change; and felt in the social order throes, which might be the death pangs of the old world, or the birth pains of a new. Further, men had begun to think and to reason for themselves: to ask why? from whence? to what end? and to brush aside the answers of the old theologies to those ancient questions as trite, unproven, and inadequate.