The life of Voltaire

by Evelyn Beatrice Hall

To compass this act the Jesuits had allied themselves with a Calvinistic Councillor of State of Geneva. There is no doubt at all that Voltaire delighted, as he said, in thus triumphing over both Ignatius and Calvin; or that the defeat of the Jesuits gave him as much pleasure as the victory of the brothers. But when it is added that he had lent those brothers, without interest, all the money necessary to reclaim their heritage: that he spent on them an incalculable amount of that time which was more valuable to him than any money, it must be allowed that if his motives were mixed, good preponderated in the mixture.

And then he turned his extraordinary mind towards building a church.

The church scheme had been on the tapis as far back as the August of 1760. The truth was that the old church at Ferney was not only very hideous and tumbledown, but spoilt a very good view from the château. If churches there must be to enslave men’s souls, thinks Voltaire, why, they need not offend their eyes as well. I will build a new one!

Every Sunday it was now his habit not only to attend mass with Marie Corneille and Madame Denis, but to be duly incensed thereat as lord of the manor. He also looked after his poor, and behaved very much as a conscientious country landowner ought to behave, but as, in the eighteenth century, he very seldom did.

But still this sceptic, this freethinker, this wicked person who had just successfully brought home to the good Jesuits an accusation of robbery, was certainly a character whose every act the devout might well eye suspiciously.

Voltaire cautiously obtained the permission of the Bishop of Annecy to change the site of the church, and then began pulling down with a will. He was to bear all the expenses himself. If the deed was not strictly right in law, it was so excellent in morals that it had been done with impunity hundreds of times before.

In the rasing operations, part of the churchyard wall had to be taken down, and a large cross, which dominated the churchyard, removed.

All would have been well, however, if this unlucky Voltaire had not had, as usual, an enemy on the spot. When he first came to Ferney, it will be remembered that he had successfully fought Ancian, the curé of the neighbouring parish of Moens, for a tithe of which Ancian had long deprived the poor of the neighbourhood. Ancian, whom Voltaire vigorously described as “brutal as a horse, cross-grained as a mule, and cunning as a fox,” had not forgiven that affront easily. But worse was to come.

On December 28, 1760, a young man, wounded and nearly bleeding to death, had been brought to the doors of Ferney. Voltaire did not only take him in and care for his body. With that passionate love of fair-play which was so fatal to the ease and comfort of his life, he determined to ferret out the rights of the case and get justice done.

It appeared that three young men had been supping, after a day’s hunting, at the house of a woman of whom Ancian was commonly reported the lover. Ancian, and “some peasants his accomplices,” rushed in and violently attacked the three men, nearly killing Decroze, the one who had been brought to Ferney.