The life of Voltaire

by Evelyn Beatrice Hall

Four days later, on February 25th, about midday, he was dictating in bed, when suddenly, in a violent fit of coughing, he broke a blood-vessel. Wagnière, terrified, rang the bell loudly. Madame Denis ran into the room, and Tronchin was summoned immediately. It had been so easy to laugh at Gaultier with a blind old mondaine when one felt lively and well! But now—call him at once! Turning to the persons in his room, the old man bade them all remember that he had fulfilled “what they call here one’s duties.” Tronchin came, bled the patient, and, what was likely to be far more useful, sent him a very excellent and strong-minded young nurse who was to refuse admission to all visitors, and a surgeon who was to stay in the house all night.

Meanwhile, Protestant Wagnière, who regarded his master’s dealings with the priests as disgraceful to his honour in this world and very unlikely to save his soul for the next, had not summoned Gaultier.

The next day, February 26th, Voltaire wrote the priest a little note: “You promised, Sir, to come and hear me. Come as soon as you can.” Madame Denis added her entreaties in a postscript. But, it being nine o’clock at night when Gaultier received the letter, he did not come to the Hôtel Villette till the next day, when his penitent could not, or would not, see him.

By Sunday, March 1st, he was well enough to listen to La Harpe reading a canto of “La Pharsale”—so loudly that he could be heard in the street.

On the Monday morning d’Alembert came to see the sick man. Voltaire told him that he had “taken the leap,” and sent for Gaultier. There had been other priests, said d’Alembert, writing to Frederick the Great, who had thrust themselves into his room, preaching at him like fanatics, “whom the old Patriarch, from goodness of heart, had not ordered to be thrown out of the window.” Gaultier was more moderate and reasonable than his brethren; and, thinks d’Alembert, if Voltaire has the natural weakness to feel that it is of consequence what becomes of the remains of poor humanity after death, he is right to do as he proposes to do—as all the world does, the good Protestant as well as the godless pagan. This is d’Alembert’s attitude toward the matter throughout.

Later on that same day, Gaultier reappeared. He was ushered into the sick room. Voltaire sent the servants out of it. Wagnière listened at the door, which was luckily only a sort of paper screen. He was very much agitated by those fears for his master’s honour. When Voltaire called him and bade him bring writing materials, the servant was too moved to answer the question as to what ailed him. Voltaire took the pen, wrote his statement or profession of faith, which declared that he had confessed to Gaultier, that he died in the Catholic religion in which he was born, and that if he had scandalised the Church he asked pardon of God and of it. D’Alembert—the truthful d’Alembert—says that Voltaire told him he added the last phrase at the request of the priest “and to have peace.”

But to that “zeal in concessions,” which had always made him as vigorously thorough in his lies as he was thorough in his good deeds, the addenda may in part be attributed.

The Marquis de Villevieille and Abbé Mignot readily signed what Gaultier lightly called “a little declaration which does not signify much.” Wagnière hotly declined.

Before leaving, Gaultier proposed to give the sick man the Communion. Voltaire excused himself. He coughed too much, he said. He gave Gaultier, according to the custom, twenty-five louis for the poor of the parish, and the priest left.

There was one man about Voltaire, but only one, who wished him to declare, not what it was expedient to think, but what he really thought: what were the convictions of his soul, and the creed of his heart.