Is it difficult to fancy the conversation between these three men over the Ferney supper-table at the magic hour when Voltaire was always at his best, “at once light and learned,” brilliant and subtle? The tranquil cheerfulness of that true philosopher, d’Alembert—“his just mind and inexhaustible imagination”—soothed the vexations with which he found his irritable host overwhelmed.
Condorcet, whom Voltaire spoke of as having “the same hatred of oppression and fanaticism, and the same zeal for humanity” as he had himself, was as exempt from what it was then modish to call “prejudices,” as the gentle d’Alembert.
Of that brilliant little party there was but one man who still clung to some tenets of the old faith; and that man was Voltaire. Du Pan records how he heard him give an “energetic lesson” at his supper-table to his two guests, by sending all the servants out of the room in the middle of their conversation. “Now, gentlemen, continue your attack on God. But as I do not want to be strangled or robbed to-night by my servants they had better not hear you.”
“Si Dieu n’existait pas il faudrait l’inventer,” Voltaire had said in one of the most famous lines in the world.
Baron Gleichen, who was at Délices in 1757, records how a young author sought to recommend himself to the great man’s favour by saying “I am an atheist apprentice at your service.” “But I,” replied Voltaire, “am a master Deist.”
But the pupils he had taught had gone far beyond his teaching. Diderot spoke of him as “cagot”; and the story runs that some fine lady of Paris dismissed him scornfully in the words, “He is a Deist, he is a bigot.”
He had no further bigotries, it is certain. A thousand stories are told to illustrate his indignation against what he took to be a debasing fanaticism.
A Genevan lady brought to see him her little girl, who was as intelligent as she was pretty and could learn everything but her Catechism, and that she could not understand. “Ah!” says Voltaire. “How reasonable! A child always speaks the truth. You do not understand your Catechism? Do you see these fine peaches? Eat as many as you like.”
It is recorded, too, that Voltaire had always a special grudge against Habakkuk: and when someone showed him that he had misrepresented facts in that prophet’s history, “It is no matter,” he replied; “Habakkuk was capable of anything.”
There are many other such stories told of him. All profane jests are fathered on Voltaire. Some of them have lost their point with the circumstances and surroundings among which they were uttered. Some grow clumsy in translation. Some are without authenticity. That a searching wit like Voltaire, quite unhampered by reverence, must have found abundant subject for witticism in the degraded state of the established religion of his country in his time, is palpable enough.