Voltaire was delighted at Frederick’s subscription (which of course was not limited to words), not only because that great name would look nobly, but for a more characteristic reason. “It would save money to too generous literary men, who have none.”
Among the “too generous literary men” were four old enemies—Rousseau, Fréron, Palissot, and La Beaumelle. Their money was returned—except that of Rousseau. And peace-making d’Alembert had very hard work to get vif Voltaire to accept Jean Jacques’s gift as a “reparation.”
Another foe more unforgiving—or more honest—declined to give at all. “I will not give a sou to the subscription,” says Piron, “but I will undertake the inscription.”
About June 16th, Pigalle, sculptor to the King and Chancellor of the Academy of Painting, arrived at Ferney, on work intent. But the model was so agreeable a host! True, in spite of the parties and distractions, he gave the sculptor a sitting every day. But as he never kept still a moment and was dictating letters, with much vivid French gesticulation, to Wagnière the whole time, it was not wonderful that on the seventh day of a visit which was to last eight, M. Pigalle discovered that he had done nothing at all. Fortunately, on that seventh day—June 23, 1770—the conversation turned upon the Golden Calf of the Children of Israel. Voltaire was so childishly delighted when Pigalle declared that such a thing would take at least six months to make—as disproving the Mosaic testimony that it was made in twenty-four hours—that during the rest of the sitting the model was as quiet and obedient as possible. The results were so satisfactory that Pigalle resolved not to attempt another interview, and the next morning left Ferney quietly and without seeing anyone.
The Golden Calf incident so pleased Voltaire that he at once wrote it down and dated it. He repeated it, with much chuckling, to all his correspondents; wrote an article on Casting for his dear “Philosophical Dictionary,” where he introduced it again, most amusingly; and in 1776 wrote a pamphlet—“A Christian against Six Jews”—in which he put Pigalle’s professional testimony in opposition to that of the sacred writers.
Another account of the episode declares that Pigalle kept his sitter quiet by talking of his dear “Pucelle.”
There seems no reason why both stories should not be true.
Pigalle’s statue disappointed his own generation, and is only a curiosity to ours.
The best statue of Voltaire is usually considered to be the one by Houdon, of a very old, sitting, draped figure, with a face far from unamiable or unkindly, excessively able and shrewd, with the most steady, penetrating old eyes, and mocking lips closed over the toothless mouth.
Pigalle represented his subject entirely unclad—for the best of all reasons, said Grimm, he could not do drapery. Good Madame Necker, mindful of her Calvinistic education, objected to the nakedness. But not old Voltaire. “It is all one to me,” he said airily; and added sensibly, “M. Pigalle must be left absolute master of his statue.... It is a crime ... to put fetters on genius.”