Perhaps the genius of “Candide” lies partly in the fact that it is both serious and frivolous, ghoulish and gay, tragedy and comedy; and equally perfect as the one or the other.
Voltaire assigned “this little sort of romance” to that convenient person, the Chevalier de Mouhy, on whom, in 1738, had been fathered the “Préservatif.” The real author declared that the thing was much too frivolous for him to have written. He had read it, to be sure. “The more it makes me laugh the more sorry I am it is assigned to me.” Almost every letter of this spring of 1759 contains a mocking allusion to optimism. “Candide” was much to the fore in its writer’s mind.
On March 2d, the Council of Geneva condemned the book to be burnt; and once more, as in the case of the “Pucelle,” Voltaire watched a bonfire with a very twisted smile. He revenged himself by flooding Geneva with anonymous irreligious pamphlets with such religious names—“Christian Dialogues” and “The Gospel of the Day”—as to deceive the very elect.
But it was not only his suspected paternity in the case of “Candide,” but a suspected paternity of an even more dangerous child, that prevented Voltaire in this spring giving up his whole soul peacefully to rebuilding Ferney and laying out gardens. Frederick was in the midst of a disastrous campaign; but, unfortunately, no disaster stopped him writing to Voltaire or composing verses. Wilhelmina’s death had only healed the old wounds for a while. They broke out afresh. In March this strange Damon and Pythias were again squabbling over that ancient bone of contention, Maupertuis; and then, as inconsistently as if they had been a couple of schoolgirls, passionately regretting their old amity. “I shall soon die without having seen you,” wrote Voltaire on March 25th. “You do not care, and I shall try not to care either.... I can live neither with you nor without you. I do not speak to the King or the hero: that is the affair of sovereigns. I speak to him who has fascinated me, whom I have loved, and with whom I am always angry.” Then they remembered Frankfort and Freytag, and began snarling and growling again.
And then—then—a book of Frederick’s poems which abused Louis XV. and Madame de Pompadour was opened in the post on its way from Frederick to Voltaire. And in a trice Voltaire is quaking lest he should be thought to have inspired, or positively written, verse so dangerous and disrespectful.
No emergency had ever yet robbed him of his cleverness. He took the packet to the French envoy at Geneva and showed him the broken seal; and then, by the envoy’s advice, sent the whole thing to Choiseul, the head of the French Ministry. Choiseul was himself a verse-maker; he wrote a virulent versified satire upon Frederick and sent it to Voltaire. “Tell your King, if he publishes his poems I shall publish mine.”
Voltaire says that if he had wished to amuse himself he might have seen the Kings of France and Prussia engaged in a war of verses. But he was the friend of peace as well as the friend of Frederick. He begged Frederick not to shut every door of reconciliation with the King of France by publishing that ode; and added, that in mortal fear of its being attributed to Uncle Voltaire, Niece Denis had burnt it. Frederick would not have been human had he not immediately felt convinced that those ashes contained the finest lines he had ever written. But they were ashes. The episode closed.
On July 27, 1759, Maupertuis died at Bâle, “of a repletion of pride,” said Voltaire. Akakia, busy with his history of “Peter the Great,” and with touching up “Tancred,” or his “Chevaliers” as he called it sometimes, must needs push them aside and shoot an arrow or two of his barbed wit at that poor enemy’s dead body. “Enjoy your hermitage,” Frederick wrote back to him gravely. “Do not trouble the ashes of those who are at peace in the grave.... Sacrifice your vengeance on the shrine of your own reputation ... and let the greatest genius in France be also the most generous of his nation.” The counsel was just and noble. Alas! it was even more needed than Frederick guessed. At this very time Voltaire was writing his secret “Memoirs for the life of M. de Voltaire.” They were not published till after his death. They were never meant to be published at all. They contain what Morley has well called “a prose lampoon” on the King’s private life, “which is one of the bitterest libels that malice ever prompted.”
Its incomprehensible author was still actually compiling it when, for the third time, he took up his rôle of peacemaker between France and Frederick.
This time, Tencin and Richelieu having been tried in vain, the medium was to be Choiseul, Choiseul being approached by Voltaire’s angel, d’Argental. The moment was favourable. The campaign of 1759 was wholly disastrous to Frederick: and on August 12th he was beaten by the united armies at Kunersdorf. Chased from his States, “surrounded by enemies, beaten by the Russians, unable to replenish an exhausted treasury,” “Luc,” as Voltaire phrased it, “was still Luc.” He still kept his head above the foaming waters that would have engulfed any other swimmer. “Very embarrassed, and not less embarrassing to other people; astonishing and impoverishing Europe, and writing verses,” Frederick as if to give himself time—as if, though he never meant to yield to such advances, he yet did not dare to openly refuse them—coquetted with the peace offers of M. de Choiseul, sent through that “Bureau d’adresse,” Voltaire. It is not a little wonderful that Voltaire, with his itching fingers for action, could suffer himself to be a “Bureau d’adresse,” a passive medium, even for a while. But he did. An immense correspondence passed between himself and Frederick—for the benefit of Choiseul. Frederick was alluded to as Mademoiselle Pestris or Pertris: and very coy was Mademoiselle over the matter. Shall it be peace? shall it not? It was a delicate negotiation, said that “Bureau d’adresse,” very truly. It was like the play of two cats—each with velvet paws to hide its claws.