A few days earlier, on February 28th, at the earnest request of Wagnière and at a moment when he solemnly believed that his last hour had come, Voltaire had written down, clearly and firmly, his real faith:
“I die adoring God, loving my friends, not hating my enemies, and detesting superstition. February 28, 1778. Voltaire.”
So far as a few weak words can express any man’s attitude towards the Supreme Being and his own fellow-sinners, this confession expresses Voltaire’s.
It is still preserved in the National Library at Paris.
On the Tuesday, March 3d, Gaultier returned. He wanted, or rather his superiors, the Archbishop of Paris and de Tersac, the Curé of Saint-Sulpice, to whom he had showed the confession, said that they wanted, one more detailed and less equivocal. The truth was Saint-Sulpice would have liked the credit of such a conversion himself. This “man of little understanding and a bigoted fanatic,” as d’Alembert called him, was not a person to be offended. He had, as parish priest, the disposal of the bodies of those who died in his parish.
Voltaire would not see Gaultier. But from that stormy sick bed, on March 4th, he wrote the most graceful of conciliatory letters to offended de Tersac; and laconically announced to poor Gaultier, in a note, that Villette had given orders that until M. de Voltaire was better, no priest, except the Curé of Saint-Sulpice, should be admitted to the house.
Persistent Gaultier returned in a week and was again refused admission. Death-bed conversions were his speciality, and he was not going to be cheated of this one without a struggle. Meanwhile Voltaire upset all his plans by recovering rapidly. Paris, who had heard much more than the truth concerning this illness and confession, avenged herself for her anxiety by epigrams. It was right that the Curé of the Incurables should attempt such a conversion! The patient himself (whose every utterance was reported) declared that if he had lived on the banks of the Ganges he would have died with a cow’s tail in his mouth. To die with a lie in it did not shock Paris in the least.
To find excuses for Voltaire’s act, it is as necessary, as it is now impossible, to realise fully the conditions of life and death under a government which permitted no liberty of conscience, and in which men were either orthodox or anathema.
There were other troubles besides religious ones to harry this old patient of eighty-four out of a sick bed to the grave before his time.
Tronchin wanted Voltaire’s real good, and Voltaire’s real good meant Ferney and repose; while Villette was all for himself, pleasure, and Paris. One day the doctor turned the Marquis by force out of the sick-room. Villette called in a rival practitioner, Lorry—famous and freethinking—and no doubt was disappointed when Tronchin worked amicably side by side with his confrère.