A few days later a certain Abbé Martin thrust himself in and imperatively insisted that the sceptic should make confession then and there to him. “I have come for that. I shall not move an inch.”
“From whom do you come, M. l’Abbé?”
“From God Himself.”
“Well, well, Sir—your credentials?”
The Abbé was dumb. The inconsistent old Patriarch, feeling that he had been severe, went out of his way to be more than usually kind and agreeable during the rest of the visit.
But such incidents made one ponder. To avoid the sickness which would make confession a necessity was the obvious thing to do. But to keep well meant to rest. And every hour that struck, every turn of the wheel, brought fresh excitements, fresh work, fresh visitors.
On the very day of Gaultier’s visit, February 21st, came Madame du Deffand, whose long friendship and “herculean weakness” had enabled her to brave the crowds that surrounded Voltaire, and visit him first about a week earlier, on February 14th. Her account of that occasion has been lost. But the most ennuied and world-weary worldling of any time confessed that it had been delightful.
On this February 21st the event had lost the one great antidote to boredom—novelty. Denis was “gaupe,” and Villette “a plat person of comedy,” and Belle-et-Bonne damned with faint praise as “said to be amiable.”
But in the presence of Voltaire, her correspondent since her youth, her warmest sympathiser when blindness fell upon her, even Madame du Deffand forgot again for a while what a bitter and empty world that is where Pleasure is the only god and amusement the be-all and end-all of existence. Old Voltaire entertained her with a lively account of Gaultier’s visit.
But, all the same, he had not forgotten that that incident had a very serious side.