“It was written in six days,” wrote Voltaire to a friend whose opinion he desired. “Then the author should not have rested on the seventh,” was the answer. “He did, and repented of his work,” replied Voltaire. The play written in six days took six months to correct.
In the meantime, and for fear one should get idle and the brain rust, he flung on to paper a versified comedy called “Seigneurial Rights” (“Le Droit du Seigneur”). It had been rehearsed at home by December 17th. It was to pose as the work of one Picardet, an Academician of Dijon, until its success was established.
But once again Voltaire had to reckon with an old enemy. Crébillon of eighty-eight was still envious, and now censor of plays. He recognised the style of Picardet, Academician of Dijon, and refused to license his play unless a scene from his (Crébillon’s) hand was added. Chafing Voltaire called this scene a carnage of all his best points.
Early in the new year 1762, Crébillon died, at peace with all the world, it was said, even his profligate of a son—and M. de Voltaire. But Voltaire had too much to forgive in return. He wrote the “Éloge de Crébillon,” and once more peaceful d’Alembert had to complain of his vif friend’s losing his temper—“a satire under the name of a eulogy.” “I am sorry you chose the moment of his death to throw stones on his corpse.” “He had better have been left to rot of himself: it would not have taken long.”
D’Alembert was right, as he had been before.
Meanwhile “Seigneurial Rights” had been produced on January 18, 1762, and had met with a success far above its slender merits.
January also saw another temporary resurrection of poor Pompignan. It was Voltaire himself who had provoked the poor man to turn in his grave this time, by writing to a popular tune and in a catching metre “A Hymn Sung at the Village of Pompignan.”
This he sent round to his friends with a guitar accompaniment. It became the air of Paris; and the street boys, it is said, sang it at the Pompignans as they passed. A little later Voltaire wrote a burlesque “Journey of M. le Franc de Pompignan from Pompignan to Fontainebleau,” and replied to an attack Brother Aaron de Pompignan, Bishop of Puy, had been foolhardy enough to make upon the philosophers, with such a running fire of pamphlets, epigrams, and irony as might have slain a far abler foe.
And so exeunt the Pompignans for ever.
In January, too, Voltaire published a pamphlet called “The Extract of the Opinions of Jean Meslier,” Meslier having been a curé who left at his death papers seeking to prove the falsehood of the religion which he had professed. Voltaire put it into shape. It was a curious and a very human document. He was not a little disgusted that “tepid” Paris did not receive it with more enthusiasm.