That evening Voltaire was present incognito at the performance of “Alzire.” Of course he was recognised. For three quarters of an hour the howls of applause never ceased. Then he himself begged silence from the house. As he left it, the people, pressing on him, thrust odes of inflammatory flattery into his hand. This mob was enthusiastic enough. But those Academicians, his brothers, with all the world to conquer—their apathy lay heavily on his soul. If death came to him, the only young man of them all, would they go on with his scheme? He doubted them. “They are sluggards,” he said passionately to Tronchin, “who wallow in idleness; but I will make them march.” He must write them a Discourse to sting them and shame them. No man in the world had so much and so ably used the fine, pliant, delicate machinery of the French language, as he had. In the most perfect French in the world he had alike coquetted with women in drawing-rooms and spoken his great message to the race. He loved the tool with which he had carved immortal work. The day was not long enough to say what he had to say upon the language he had adorned. Far on into the night—brain and nerve stimulated by strong coffee—he wrote on the subject that possessed his soul. The sleep he had banished deserted him now when he called it. He wrote on. There was so little time! There was so much to do! Not afraid of death, but of dying before he had finished his work—that description was true to the finest shade of meaning. The coffee aggravated the internal disease from which he suffered. But he wrote on. On May 11th he could not go to a meeting of the Academy. But he could still write. The strong sun of that long life was fast sinking below the horizon, and the night coming when no man can work. The old brain nerved itself to one last effort. The old hand wrote on:
“Whoso fears God, fears to sit at ease.”
Doubtful in morals, and a most trenchant unbeliever, the scoffer Voltaire yet sets a splendid example to all inert Christians who, comfortably cultivating the selfish virtues, care nothing for the race and recognise no mission but to save their own miserable souls.
Who has done more good for the world—the stainless anchorite, be his cloister a religious one or his own easy home; or this sinner, of whom it was said at his death, with literal truth, that the history of what had been accomplished in Europe in favour of reason and humanity was the history of his writings and of his deeds?
CHAPTER XLIV
THE END
The accounts of the dying of Voltaire would fill a volume. Round this great deathbed were gathered persons who each had a different end to serve by differently describing it.
Villette wanted to prove himself the wise and unselfish friend; and Madame Denis must appear the tenderly devoted niece.
The Abbé Depery published an awful description of these last moments, which he declares he heard from Belle-et-Bonne. She was dead when he made the statement; and “it is easy to make the dead speak.” But if that fearful story had been true, this girl, who passionately loved her more than father and dedicated the remainder of her days to his memory, would hardly have repeated it. Lady Morgan, who saw her in Paris forty years later, declared that she spoke of the dying man’s peace, tranquillity, and resignation.
D’Alembert, Grimm, and Condorcet naturally wished to see a death, firm, consistent, and philosophic: and they saw it.
Dr. Tronchin, the sincere Christian, would fain have beheld a repentant sinner. Failing that, what could he see but the “frightful torment” of the wicked to whom Death is the King of Terrors, “the furies of Orestes,” the sæva indignatio of Swift?