He was soon to be a sort of father-in-law. Villette, now some forty years old, and having run away from an intrigue and a duel in Paris, met Belle-et-Bonne at Ferney; saw her walking in the procession of the fête of St. Francis (always kept enthusiastically by the colony of François Marie Arouet), with flowers at her breast, a basket with doves in it in her hand, and her face bright, beautiful, and blushing.
What was there to do but to fall in love with her? Wagnière, who hated Villette, said that he played fast and loose with Mademoiselle for three months. However that may have been, Voltaire approved of his suit. To be sure, Belle-et-Bonne was too good for him. But she had no dot—if a pretty face, an innocent heart, youth, dignity, and intelligence count for nothing—so she would have no choice. And any husband is better than none—when none means a convent. Enfin, where to find a French marquis of stainless reputation in the eighteenth century? It was said that Voltaire had offered Villette a dot with his wife, and the disinterested Villette had refused it. And if that is not a sign of reformation—what is?
So in November, 1777, Mademoiselle de Varicourt was married in the Ferney chapel at midnight, with her six uncles preceding her up the aisle, and Papa Voltaire, in Catherine’s sable pelisse, to give her away.
The young couple spent the honeymoon at Ferney, and through it Voltaire was working at his last two plays, “Irène” and “Agathocle.”
It is marvellous, not so much that a man of eighty-three should write bad plays, as that he should write any.
No wonder that the new tragedy, “Irène,” went ill at first. And not so very wonderful that the old playwright should follow his immemorial habit and rewrite till it satisfied him. He lost three months over it. And, as he remarked most truly, “Time is precious at my age.”
So when “Irène” was impossible he turned to “Agathocle.”
Madame Denis’s easy tears and laughter over the two pieces were no sound criticism. Villette and Villevieille, then staying at Ferney, admired politely as visitors. The playwright, whose vanity has been excellently defined as “a gay and eager asking of assurance from others that his work gave them pleasure,” was delighted with the compliments. But he accepted correction in that spirit which showed that his vanity “never stood in the way of self-knowledge.”
“If I had committed a fault at a hundred,” he said, “I should want to correct it at a hundred-and-one.” So when Condorcet, more honest than the visitors, paid him the finer compliment of assuring him that such work as he had produced in “Irène” was not worthy of his genius, he took that assurance in excellent part; and though by January 2, 1778, “Irène” had been read and welcomed by the Comédie Française, he went on correcting and altering it to the end of the month.
He was spurred to do his best by the fact that Lekain declined to play the rôle written for him. No letters could have been kinder, wiser, or more conciliatory than those his old host and friend wrote to the great player.