No man in the world better understood the force of contrast, and the infinite value of the striking and the bizarre upon the minds of his countrymen, than Voltaire. In France, if anywhere, he who strikes must strike at once; must appeal immediately to emotions which are sooner at boiling point and sooner cooled than the emotions of any other nation in Europe. “The Scotch Girl” had made Paris laugh: and Paris loved laughter. It had quite forgotten for the moment that it had also loved Fréron, its dear, clever, sociable, amusing journalist, who was pleasantly renowned for giving charming little suppers, and as the favourite of the great. Here, then, was the moment for this Swiss exile, who belonged to the wrong party, who persistently thought—and said—the wrong things, and was infinitely able and dangerous, to strike in with his “Tancred.” To ensure its success a hearing was all that it wanted. Its genius could be trusted to do the rest. Voltaire took at the tide that flood which leads on to fortune, and sailed straight into harbour.
He began “Tancred,” it is said, in his joy on learning of that decree which, in April, 1759, forbade spectators henceforth to sit on the stage. On the 19th of the next month, May, he wrote that this day an old fool finished a tragedy begun on April 22d. At first he called it “Aménaïde,” or “My Knights,” or “The Knighthood,” and designed to have it played by Lekain or Lauraguais as the work of “a young unknown.” “I have changed the metre,” he wrote on May 29, 1759, “so that that cursed public shall not recognise me by my style.”
In the October of 1759 he and his amateur company had acted it at Tourney. It moved the author and Madame Denis to tears; but as he very justly observed, they were too near relations to the piece for their emotion to count for much. When Marmontel had stayed at Délices in the summer of 1760 he, too had wept over it—had returned the manuscript with his face bathed in tears, which told the author, he said, all he wanted to know.
Every omen was good. For several weeks during the summer of 1760 the d’Argentals had the manuscript in their charge in Paris. They had seen it put into rehearsal. Then Voltaire had withdrawn it to punish a company which dared to produce “The Philosophers.” But that brave “Scotch Girl” had effectually killed “The Philosophers.” The time was ripe indeed.
The theatre was crowded to the full. No more piquant contrast could be imagined than between the rough English burlesque of last night and the polished, romantic Sicilian tragedy of this. Yesterday there had not been a grave face in the house, and to-day every eye was wet. Madame d’Épinay was there, in the most fascinating grief. “Satan, in the guise of Fréron,” who was in the amphitheatre, spoke of the thing as having “the simplicity and natural beauty of the classic, above all of the Odyssey.” When d’Alembert saw it for the third time the whole audience was in tears. Mademoiselle Clairon surpassed herself as the heroine: so that the author, always largely generous in such appreciations, said that the piece owed to her all its success; and d’Olivet, Voltaire’s old schoolmaster, declared there had been no such acting since the days of Roscius. As for Lekain—“nothing is comparable to Lekain, not even himself.” The truth was, luckily for Voltaire, that the play was so moving that few were sufficiently masters of themselves to criticise coolly, and did not even carp at the author for writing in a metre with which they were wholly unfamiliar. Marmontel, who wept over it, had declared very justly not the less, that the style was not equal to that of Voltaire’s earlier tragedies; that it was sometimes tedious, and a little wanting in vigour. But, after all, he had wept. Marmontel’s attitude describes “Tancred” exhaustively.
Satan in the amphitheatre criticised the piece with the only criticism that need ever really hurt—a just one. He had mingled praise with his blame. Voltaire was sensible enough to recognise the weight of censure so tempered.
Fréron continued to conduct his “Literary Year” until his death in 1776. When he gave any of the actors—such as Lekain or Clairon—a bad notice, they simply revived “The Scotch Girl.” And M. Wasp mended his manners at once.
In September Voltaire dedicated his “Tancred” to Madame de Pompadour. But that “chicken-hearted fellow” as he called her, made, at the time, no acknowledgment of the compliment. The truth was, as twice before in their history, some jealous scandal-monger about the Court had read an evil meaning into his flatteries.
Meanwhile the hermit of Délices, if ever in his life, was independent of her favours. Délices was charming: Ferney nearly finished: and Tourney the most histrionic place in Europe.
In the June of 1760 Marmontel had come to stay at Délices. Marmontel was a great man now: a successful playwright; and the author of that once much read and now wholly forgotten novel, “Bélisaire.” He was not ungrateful to the benefactor who fourteen years earlier had launched him on the literary sea of Paris; while Voltaire on his side had always a fellow-feeling for that brave heart which at eighteen had begun the world on a capital of six louis, hope, cleverness, and a translation. Marmontel brought with him one Gaulard; and found at Délices a M. Lécluse, the King of Poland’s dentist, who, when he was not mending Madame Denis’s teeth acted and sang most agreeably.