The poor curé was in such a fright that he was attacked on the spot, says Wagnière, by the colic.
On March 31st, Voltaire drew up before a notary a statement in legal form declaring himself, in spite of calumnies, to be a sincere Catholic. Among others the complaisant Father Adam witnessed this statement.
The next day, April 1st, the Capuchin appeared at Ferney. The Bishop of Annecy had been consulted, and now sent by the Capuchin a profession of faith for Voltaire to sign.
The invalid, who had already recited a hurried jumble of the Pater, the Credo, and the Confiteor, replied that the Creed was supposed to contain the whole faith; and though the unhappy Capuchin went on presenting to him at intervals the Bishop’s paper to sign, he would do nothing but repeat his statement about the Creed. After having delivered to the Capuchin a long homily on morality and tolerance (which Wagnière found “very touching and pathetic”) the sick man suddenly called out loudly, “Give me absolution at once,” which the terrified confessor, who had entirely lost his head, did. Then Voltaire sent for the curé, who administered the Sacrament.
The notary was also present. “At the very instant the priest gave the wafer to M. de Voltaire” he declared aloud that he sincerely pardoned those who had calumniated him to the King “and who have not succeeded in their base design, and I demand a record of my declaration from the notary.” He recorded it. No sooner was Voltaire left to himself than this amazing invalid jumped out of bed and went for a walk in the garden.
Meanwhile, curé and Capuchin laid their terrified heads together and bethought themselves of some means to avoid the consequences of having absolved and given the mass to the scoffer without his having signed the declaration drawn up by the Bishop.
On April 15th, they summoned seven witnesses whom they had persuaded to declare on oath that they had heard M. de Voltaire pronounce a complete and satisfactory confession of faith, which confession they invented and sent to the Bishop.
The hocus-pocus was on both sides, it will be seen. But Voltaire was responsible for it all. Paris—even Paris—received the news of his “unpardonable buffoonery” “pretty badly.” The d’Argentals entirely disapproved of it, and Dr. Tronchin condemned it with severity.
“Useless méchancétés are very foolish,” Voltaire had said. He regarded this one as indispensable. When he wrote to his Angels excusing himself, he declared that he had need of a buckler to withstand the mortal blows of sacerdotal calumny, and that such a duty, neglected, might at his death have had very unpleasant consequences for his family. These were not sufficient reasons for his act. But they at least free him from “the reproach of erecting hypocrisy into a deliberate doctrine.” As Condorcet says, “such deceptions did not deceive, while they did protect.” “Disagreeable as these temporisings are to us,” they damn deeper the time which made them a pressing expedient, than the time-server.
As the Bishop of Annecy had accused Voltaire of holding impious conversations at his dinner-table, he now took advantage of Madame Denis’s absence to have pious works read aloud to him at that meal. When a President of the Parliament of Dijon was dining with him, Massillon, of whom Voltaire was a warm admirer, was the author chosen. “What style! What harmony! What eloquence!” cries the Patriarch of Ferney as he listens to those magnificent periods, to the denunciations like a god’s. The reader continued for three or four pages.