It came to nothing. Though, perhaps, when in December there appeared in Paris a book entitled “The Works of the Philosopher of Sans-Souci,” containing those freethinking effusions a Most Christian King had written under the rose, and which he would not at all wish to see daylight, Choiseul’s claw had been active in the matter. Fortunately Voltaire could not be suspected. Had not Freytag taken from him at Frankfort that “Œuvre de Poëshie du Roi Mon Maître,” which was none other than the “Works of the Philosopher of Sans-Souci” under a different name? Still, the year 1760 opened as 1759 had done, with Damon and Pythias still sparring at each other. “You have embroiled me for ever with the King of France, you have lost me my posts and pensions, you have ill-treated me at Frankfort, me and an innocent woman,” writes Voltaire to Frederick from peaceful Tourney in April, 1760.
And in May Frederick wrote back. “If you were not dealing with a fool in love with your genius,” what might I not do and say? As it is—“Once for all, let me hear no more of that niece who bores me, and has nothing but her uncle to cover her defects.”
The niece who bored Frederick must have been very nearly as bored herself throughout the remainder of this year 1759 as she confessed to have been at the beginning. Uncle Voltaire was always so engrossed with writing, or with those stupid farms and gardens. “The more you work on your land, the more you will love it,” he had written to Madame de Fontaine in the summer. “The corn one has sown oneself is worth far more than what one gets from other people’s granaries.” And then, there were so few visitors.
Valette, a needy, clever, unsatisfactory acquaintance of d’Alembert’s, was at Délices in December; and during the year a man named d’Aumard had arrived on a visit. But that was all.
D’Aumard was a young soldier cousin of Voltaire’s mother. Of very ordinary abilities, and morals rather below the very low average of his day, that distant cousinship was the only claim he had upon Voltaire’s notice. But it was more than sufficient. Voltaire had already sent him presents of money through Madame Denis, and made him a promise of a pension for life. Directly he arrived at Délices he was attacked by what was at first taken to be rheumatism. Tronchin was called in. Voltaire sent d’Aumard to Aix for the waters. But neither the first physician nor the most fashionable cure in Europe was of any avail. D’Aumard became a helpless and hopeless cripple. In 1761, Voltaire said that it required four persons to move him from one bed to another. In this condition he lived in Voltaire’s house for at least ten years, and finally died there. His host engaged in a long correspondence about his case with the surgeon of the Royal Footguards, and entered into every detail with infinite pains and minuteness. To a busy and active Voltaire the fate of this young man, shut out of all work and interest—hearing, as he lay on the bed from which he was never to rise, the stir and movement of a life in which he could never join—seemed peculiarly pitiable. He makes a hundred sympathetic allusions to him. That his own conduct was infinitely generous he seems to have wholly lost sight of in the fact that d’Aumard’s fate was infinitely sad. Yet Voltaire had a reward if he wanted one. To Madame du Deffand’s question if life were worth living he could reply, “Yes. I know a man completely paralysed who loves it, to folly.” The man was d’Aumard.
In this year Voltaire obtained, after the exercise of even more than his usual persistence, and after working himself and his friends to death to attain his aim, the grant of two letters-patent for his lands of Tourney and Ferney. He set great value on these letters as declaring him a French subject.
Also in this year he heard of the loss of that very old English friend of his, Falkener. In 1774, Falkener’s two sons came to stay with him at Ferney.
He still kept himself well au courant of English affairs and English literature.
It was in 1759 he wrote to Madame du Deffand that there was nothing passable in “Tom Jones” but the character of the barber; and of “A Tale of a Tub” as “a treasure-house of wit.” He also read—and yawned over—“Clarissa Harlowe” and “Pamela”; and in 1760 he was criticising “Tristram Shandy.” No other great Frenchman of his day got into the heart of English literature and English character as Voltaire did. “An Englishman who knows France well and a Frenchman who knows England well are both the better for it,” is one of the shrewdest of his sayings, and he said many shrewd things, on the two races. “The English know how to think; the French know how to please.” “We are the whipped cream of Europe. There are not twenty Frenchmen who understand Newton.”
But there was another foreign country besides England which was engaging his attention now—Russia.