The life of Voltaire

by Evelyn Beatrice Hall

He paid a brief visit to d’Alembert’s office, and then got into his carriage again. The crowds had increased. All sorts and conditions of men were here to welcome him who had pointed the way to freedom—who, unlike all other kings, was of the people, and so, for them. Frenzied, as in another frenzy they had hooted the Calas to judgment through the streets of Toulouse, and as but a very few years later they might have hooted Voltaire himself to the Place de la Guillotine, they applauded and worshipped him now. The Villettes and Madame Denis met him at the Comédie Française. Their protection was necessary. The people clambered on the carriage itself to see him, to touch him. One man seized Belle-et-Bonne’s little hand instead of the Patriarch’s. “Ma foi!” he said. “This is a plump hand for eighty-four!”

She and Madame Denis preceded him to the box set aside for the Gentlemen-in-Ordinary. Then, with the women pressing on him and plucking the fur from his pelisse to keep as souvenirs, Voltaire made his way through the house to the passionate acclamations of the crowded audience. He would fain have concealed himself behind Belle-et-Bonne and his portly niece. “To the front!” cried the gods. And to the front he came. Opposite him was the royal box, in which was d’Artois who had been with the Queen at the opera, but had slipped away to do homage to a greater royalty.

Then another cry shook the house. “The crown!”

Brizard, the actor, came forward and put a laurel crown on the old poet’s head. “Ah, God! You will kill me with glory!” he said. He took it off and put it on Belle-et-Bonne’s. And the house bade her give it back to him. He resisted. And then Prince de Beauvau came forward and crowned him again. By this time the whole auditorium was on its feet. The passages were full to suffocation. The actors, dressed for their parts, came before the curtain to join in the enthusiasm. The delirium lasted for twenty minutes. The air of the theatre was black with the dust caused by the movement of so great a multitude, struggling to see.

At last the play began. It was “Irène,” of course—“Irène,” now at its sixth representation.

The audience had read their own meaning into its lines. They applauded wildly throughout. At the end the curtain was raised again. On the stage was a pedestal, and on the pedestal the bust of Voltaire which had been brought from the hall of the Comédie where it had recently been placed. Actors and actresses were grouped round it, holding garlands of flowers. Some of the audience, despite the new regulations, had crowded on to the stage for a better view.

Then Brizard, dressed for his part of monk in “Irène,” placed his laurel garland on the head, and the whole company followed his example. From the house burst a roar which sounded as if it was from one throat as it was from one heart. For the first time in France, said Grimm, there was no dissentient voice. “Envy and hatred, fanaticism and intolerance, dared not murmur.” Perhaps even at that delirious moment the old Patriarch recognised the triumph, not as his, but as philosophy’s: and rejoiced the more. “It is then true, Sire,” he wrote on April 1st, in his last letter to Frederick the Great, “that in the end men will be enlightened, and those who believe that it pays to blind them will not always be victorious.”

March 30, 1778, is a great day in the history of France as celebrating, not the honour of Voltaire, but of that “happy revolution he had effected in the mind and the conduct of his century.”

Villette drew him forward to the front of the box, and while he stood there for a moment the applause redoubled.

Then Madame Vestris, who had played “Irène,” came forward and recited an ode by the Marquis de Saint-Marc. Voltaire, writing to Saint-Marc the next day, thanked him for having made him immortal in the prettiest verses in the world. The ode was not bad; but if it had been it would have been applauded and encored just the same. Copies were circulated through the house.