The “Pucelle” is infinitely bright, rollicking, and amusing. Voltaire’s indecency was never that of a diseased mind like Swift. He flung not a little philosophy into his licence, and through sparkling banter whispered his message to his age. Those ten thousand lines of burlesque terminated, it has been said, the domination of legends over the human mind. Condorcet goes so far as to declare that readers need only see in the author of the “Pucelle” the enemy of hypocrisy and superstition.
But the fact seems to be that though Voltaire was constantly hitting out, as he always was hitting, at hypocrisy and superstition, the blows this time were only incidental; and that he wrote first to amuse himself, and then to amuse his world.
That he succeeded in both cases, condemns both it and him.
If Voltaire’s connection with Madame du Châtelet was a blot on his moral character, the “Pucelle” was a darker blot. It spread wider to do harm. His passionate and tireless work for the liberation of men’s souls and bodies, for light and for right, make such blots infinitely to be regretted. That the best work in the world is not done by morally the best men is a hard truth, but it is a truth.
Of the “Pucelle” it can only be said,
But yet the pity of it, Iago!—O Iago, the pity of it!
On February 12th of 1763 the man who had not only written the most scandalous of epics, but had tended Marie Corneille with as honest a respect and affection as if she had been his own innocent daughter, married her to M. Dupuits, cornet of dragoons, handsome, delightful, three-and-twenty, and head over ears in love with Mademoiselle. M. Dupuits united to his other charms the fact that his estates joined Ferney, and that he was quite sufficiently well off. One little trouble there had been. Père Corneille disapproved not only of this marriage, but of any marriage, for his daughter. Voltaire sent him a handsome present of money to assuage his wounded feelings, but did not invite him to the ceremony lest young Dupuits should have cause to be ashamed of his father-in-law, and that graceless Duke of Villars, who was also at Ferney, should laugh at him. The ceremony took place at midnight on February 12th, and the wedding dinner was at least magnificent enough to give Mama Denis as Marie called her, an indigestion. There were no partings. The young couple took up their abode at Ferney, where their love-making gave the keenest delight to a large element of romance still left in Voltaire’s old heart, and where presently their children were born.
It was not wonderful that the good fortunes of Marie Corneille should have incited many other offshoots of that family to “come pecking about,” as Voltaire said, to see if there was anything for them. Only a month after she was married, Claude Étienne Corneille, who was in the direct line of descent from the great Corneille, and not in the indirect, like lucky Marie, appeared at Ferney. But Voltaire, though he thought Claude an honest man and was sorry for him, could not adopt the whole clan. His mood was still adoptive, however.
In this very year he took to live with him Mademoiselle Dupuits, Marie’s sister-in-law; and a certain Father Adam. Mademoiselle Dupuits was not less pretty than Marie, and very much more intelligent. Several of the noble Ferney visitors amused themselves by falling in love with her.
On March 2d, Voltaire had written, “We are free of the Jesuits, but I do not know that it is such a great good.”