The impertinent unknown (who turns out to be a pastor, Lervèche, who had long objected to Voltaire’s theatricals at Mon Repos) writes a “Reply” to the refutation.
Then who should appear on the scene but Grasset, the publisher, and Voltaire’s enemy in the latest “Pucelle” fracas. Grasset reprints the whole correspondence, and adds thereto Voltaire’s “Defence of Lord Bolingbroke,” and other little brochures from his pen most likely to give offence. The whole he calls “The Literary War or Selected Pieces of M. de V——.”
Literary War indeed! says M. de V——; a literary libel! And do you know who this Grasset is? A scoundrel, a cheat, a common criminal! M. de V——, in short, not only loses his temper, but seems for the moment to lose sight of the Saurin cause, and to devote all his energies to getting Grasset punished. He appeals to all the local authorities. He “knocks at every door,” and continues to knock till all are opened. He is once more his own angry, spry, busy little fighting self. Peaceful landowner and householder—all that is forgotten. Behold again the restless and terrible little enemy who fought Desfontaines.
Most people listened to him—and sympathised, if not for his rage with Grasset, at least for his zeal for the Saurins. There was but one man who threw on his enthusiasm the cold water of irony: and that was Haller, the great Swiss genius, savant, philosopher, linguist, botanist, poet, philologist. Until Voltaire settled at Délices, Haller had been the lion of the neighbourhood. Now he was only a lion. The situation hardly needs further explanation. Suffice it to say that Haller was as firm a Christian as Voltaire was a Deist: and that Haller had been a rather sarcastic spectator of M. de Voltaire’s theatricals. All generous admiration was on the side of Voltaire, who always had plenty to spare for real talent such as Haller’s.
When Haller returned a very cool answer to Voltaire’s warm pleadings for the Saurins and suggested that to concern himself in so small a matter was beneath a great man’s greatness, Voltaire waited a judicious ten days, and returned a mild and pleading answer.
To be beneath one’s greatness to put wrong, right, and to clear a dead man’s honour! Haller could have known the Voltaire who was to avenge Calas, very little. The correspondence continued. Haller was not a little stiff-necked and difficult: and Voltaire at once persistent and impulsive. Then Haller published the letters—in which he fancied he himself played a beau rôle—and made an enemy, though a very generous enemy, of Voltaire, for ever.
Grimm records how Voltaire one day asked an English visitor at Ferney, from whence he had come.
“From Mr. Haller’s.”
“He is a great man,” cried Voltaire, “a great poet, a great naturalist, a great philosopher—almost a universal genius in fact.”
“What you say, Sir, is the more admirable,” replied the Englishman, “because Mr. Haller does not do you the same justice.”