the whole house got upon its feet and howled itself hoarse. It would not have been like Voltaire to hide from his friends, even if he could have done so, a subject that so possessed him as the subject of Calas. “It is the only reparation,” he said, writing of the scene, “that has yet been made to the memory of the most unhappy of fathers.”
Charming the audience with her soft voice and round girlish freshness, Marie Corneille was now always one of the actresses. She had by this time a pretty dot as well as a pretty face; and Papa Voltaire, in addition to the proceeds of the Corneille Commentary, had settled a little estate upon her. A suitor naturally appeared soon upon the tapis. But though he was warmly recommended by the d’Argentals, M. Vaugrenant de Cormont seems to have been chiefly remarkable for large debts, a very mean father, and the delusion that he was conferring a very great honour on Mademoiselle by marrying her. He had taken up his abode at Ferney, and when he had received his congé was not to be dislodged without difficulty. Mademoiselle was serenely indifferent to him; so no harm was done.
Marrying and giving in marriage was to the fore in the Voltaire ménage just then. In May, Madame de Fontaine became the wife of that Marquis de Florian who had stayed with her at Ferney and long been her lover. Voltaire was delighted—not in the least on the score of morality—but because he thought the pair would suit each other, which they did.
On June 11, 1762, “Émile, or Education,” Jean Jacques’s new novel, was publicly burnt in Paris. Nine days after, it was condemned to the same fate in Geneva. “Émile” expresses in nervous and inspired language some of those theories which Voltaire’s friend, Dr. Tronchin, had worked so hard to bring into practice. It was not so much the education of children that “Émile” dealt with as the education of parents. To abolish the fatal system of foster-motherhood, instituted that the real mothers might have more time for their lovers, their toilettes, and their pleasures, to portray a child brought up in natural and virtuous surroundings—even an eighteenth-century censor could not have found matter meet for burning in this. But “Émile” was only a scapegoat. “The Social Contract,” published a little earlier, was what the authorities really attacked.
Neither the publication of “Émile,” nor its burning, particularly attracted Voltaire’s notice at first. Like Lasalle, he was all Calas. On July 21st, he wrote indifferently to Cideville that Rousseau had been banished from Berne and is now at Neufchâtel, “thinking he is always right, and regarding other people with pity.” For the “Profession of Faith of a Savoyard Vicar” which was “imbedded in ‘Émile,’” Voltaire indeed not only felt, but expressed, a very sincere admiration. But your “Eloïsa” and your “Émile,” and your hysterics generally, why, they bore me, my dear Jean Jacques! And you are so dreadfully long-winded, you know! However, the “Savoyard Vicar” had shown that Rousseau had the courage of his unbelief. It was the kind of heroism in which Voltaire was not going to be behindhand. In July, 1762, appeared his “Sermon of Fifty,” whose excellent brevity was a reproach and a corrective to the four immense volumes of “Émile,” and whose virulent attack upon the Jewish faith was at least as outspoken and unmistakable as the Vicar’s “Profession.”
This fifty-page pamphlet is noticeable as the first of Voltaire’s works which is openly anti-Christian. Goethe declared that for it, in his youthful fanaticism, he would have strangled the author if he could have got hold of him.
Rousseau, of course, took “The Sermon of Fifty” amiss, as he was fast coming to take amiss everything Voltaire did. Jean Jacques was quite persuaded, for instance, that it was Voltaire who had incited the Council of Geneva to burn “Émile”; and, presently, that it was Voltaire’s hand which guided the pen of Robert Tronchin’s “Letters from the Country,” which favoured the burning of “Émile,” and to which Rousseau was to make reply in the brilliant and splendid inspiration of his famous “Letters from the Mountain.”
The truth seems to have been that Voltaire laughed at Jean-Jacques instead of losing his temper with him; or, rather, that he lost his temper with him for an occasional five minutes, and then laughed and forgave him. Végobre, the lawyer, who is described as having “no imagination” to invent such stories, was once breakfasting at Ferney when some letters came detailing the persecution inflicted on Rousseau for his “Vicar.” “Let him come here!” cried Voltaire. “Let him come here! I would receive him like my own son.”
The Prince de Ligne also records how, after Voltaire had vehemently declared that Jean Jacques was a monster and a scoundrel for whom no law ever invented was sufficiently severe, he added, “Where is he, poor wretch? Hunted out of Neufchâtel, I dare say. Let him come here! Bring him here: he is welcome to everything I have.”
All the sentiments were genuine, no doubt. It would have been perfectly in Voltaire’s character to abuse Rousseau by every epithet in a peculiarly rich vituperative vocabulary, and to have received him with all generous hospitality and thoughtful kindness as a guest in his house for months; to have quarrelled with him and abused him again, and once more to have received him as a brother.