profound conviction; and that “as soon as he is convinced of the truths of Christianity he will openly avow his opinion, in health as in sickness, uniformly to his last moment.”
Dr. Moore also perceived that here was the man who was not afraid of dying—only of dying before he had said all he had to say. He records Voltaire’s famous comparison of the British nation to a hogshead of its own beer—“the top of which is froth, the bottom dregs, the middle excellent.” Moore’s “Society and Manners in France” contains one of the best, if not the best, accounts of Voltaire written from personal observation by an Englishman.
In the midst of theatrical gaieties news reached Voltaire of the death of Theriot, on November 23, 1772. Old age, that merciful narcotic, helped to deaden the blow for Theriot’s old friend. Also, Theriot had long been proven worthless, and he had a great many of Voltaire’s letters in his possession, which roused Voltaire from grief to anxiety lest they should appear incontinently in print.
On December 8th he was writing to d’Alembert to recommend “brother La Harpe” (who had so grievously failed him) for the post, left vacant by Theriot’s death, of Parisian correspondent to Frederick the Great.
At the end of 1772, the jealousy of foolish Denis made another little fracas at Ferney. A girl of seventeen, Mademoiselle de Saussure, the daughter of a famous doctor, and “a very wide-awake little person,” said Grimm, had the good fortune to amuse, and often visit, a Voltaire of seventy-eight. Madame Denis, who disliked Mademoiselle, not only for herself, but as being a relative of her sister’s supplanter, the second Madame Florian, made a scandal of the affair.
If ever that homely proverb, “Give a dog a bad name and hang him,” was true of anybody, it was certainly true of Voltaire.
It was wonderful that that sensitive niece did not find a cause of jealousy when, in the June of 1773, an old friend, La Borde, came back to Ferney, bearing with him as a present for Voltaire the portrait of Madame Dubarry, on which that charming and disreputable lady had imprinted two kisses. Her favour was worth having. Only twenty-seven years old, and but recently picked up from the gutter, she was the real ruler of France. She had dismissed Choiseul; she had made Terrai, that dissolute Comptroller-General of Finances, whose “edicts fell in showers”; and she used the public treasury as if it were her private purse.
Voltaire knew King and Court too well to neglect such a power. Somehow, in Geneva the winters had been getting longer and more snowy than ever; and always, in his mind, was that old, old idea of seeing Paris once again before he died. And there was no chance of a return if the Omnipotent Woman was unfavourable.
So Voltaire replied with that happy mixture of grace and effrontery for which his youth had been so famous, and in September, 1773, as has been noted, he sent Madame the sweetest little watch set in diamonds.