The Paris which had once imprisoned him for teaching it how to become free, and persecuted him for opposing persecution, was at last the Paris of Voltaire, and not the antechamber of the Kings of France.
On the day after his arrival, Wednesday, February 11, 1778, he received three hundred visitors. In an outer room were Madame Denis and Villette. And within, his crown an old nightcap and his royal robes an ancient bedgown, sat the King of intellectual France. The courtier bred in Courts knew well how to play his Majesty. Easy and gracious in manner, no visitor went away without a mot, an anecdote, a happy quotation he could repeat to his friends—“I heard it from the great Voltaire.” One of the guests was the perfidious La Harpe, who had not seen his old friend since they parted in anger at Ferney ten years ago, and who found, he said, the wit undimmed, the memory unimpaired.
In intervals between the departure of one guest and the admission of the next—if there could have been any such intervals—the old playwright dictated a new line or a correction for “Irène” to Wagnière, and then went on receiving half Paris. “All Parnassus was there, from the mire to the summit,” said Madame du Deffand. In that crowded day, her old friend found time to write her a little note and tell her how he had arrived, dead, but was risen again to throw himself at the feet of his Marquise.
Thursday, February 12th, brought a congratulatory deputation from the Academy, which was represented by three personal friends of Voltaire—Saint-Lambert, Marmontel, and the Prince de Beauvau. His Majesty received them with “a lively recognition,” and sent a cheerful message to the Academy that he hoped to visit it in person.
Gluck, the great musician, and Piccini the lesser, came to do homage, one after the other, on February 13th. “Ah! that’s as it should be!” says old Voltaire. “Piccini comes after Gluck.”
The Comédie Française sent a congratulatory deputation on Saturday, the 14th, and much laboured flattery in an address delivered by Bellecour and Madame Vestris. Voltaire responded in the same manner—exaggerated. “We all played comedy beautifully!” he said, with a twinkle, afterwards.
For the rest of that day his talk to his guests was graver than usual. He discussed politics with them—and the French politics of 1778 were enough to sober Folly itself. A weak King, a ruined Treasury, a corrupt Church—and, as Voltaire himself wrote to Florian a week or two later, in the social state “a revolting luxury and a fearful misery.”
He showed his guests a letter he had just received from another King who was neither fool nor feeble, and who ruled a kingdom which beside starving France was Utopia, El Dorado, Paradise.
By Sunday, February 15th, Voltaire was ill. But then Tronchin was in Paris! Voltaire had not written to that old friend for a matter of ten years—except “a billet-doux on arriving” in the capital. But though Tronchin disapproved of almost everything Voltaire did and thought, the good Doctor loved the man as a woman loves an engaging and ill-trained child.
He forgave the ten years’ silence and the Châtelaine theatre, even old Voltaire’s truculent unbelief—came to him, looked at him with those serene, wise eyes, forbade all going out, and commanded absolute rest.