On March 7, 1732, it was played to a public who received it with a very tepid warmth; until the fifth act, of which they unmistakably disapproved. “One forgives the dessert when the other courses have been passable,” Voltaire wrote cheerily to Cideville. But one of his critics was not far from the truth when he said that if it had not been for its hits at the great, at princes, and at superstition, it would have had nothing of Voltaire in it at all.
It was dull; and Voltaire knew it. He employed the Easter holidays in writing a very good prologue to it. But if a bad dessert cannot spoil a good dinner, a good hors d’œuvre will not save a bad one. On May 13th Voltaire wrote to Theriot that he was resolved not even to print it, and it was withdrawn from Jore’s hands at the last moment. Some of its material was used in “Semiramis.”
The author of “Œdipe,” of the “Henriade,” and of “Charles XII.” had already not unnaturally turned his thoughts to that mistress who was the object of all literary men’s hopes, vows, and adorations—the French Academy. By December, 1731, there was a vacant chair there. Who had a right to it if not he? He was almost forty years old. He had already done great things; he was ripe to do greater. Even the authorities could not be blind to his deserts and to his powers. Richelieu was his friend, and used all his influence to help him. The thing was as good as done, when by secret malice, or very ill fortune, there appeared in print in the spring of 1732 that luckless “Epistle to Uranie,” written ten years earlier to that fair travelling companion, Madame de Rupelmonde.
There is nothing in that poem but its grace, cleverness, and sincerity which would excite comment if it appeared in a magazine to-day. Voltaire had called it “Le Pour et le Contre,” but it was certainly much more against revealed religion than for it. Yet it is in no sense offensively anti-Christian. It is not the poem of a scoffer, but of one who seeks truth diligently and “gropes through darkness up to God.”
The fact did not soften the authorities in the least.
“What do you think of it?” said the Chancellor of France to his secretary.
“Voltaire ought to be deprived of pen, ink, and paper,” was the answer. “That man has a mind which could destroy a state.”
“Uncertain Uranie” had before this solved her doubts by going into a convent. Her mentor saw but one course open to him. It was a very characteristic course—and used by him afterwards very freely. He denied the authorship of the ill-omened little work in toto; and, true to his principles of doing everything thoroughly, declared that the Abbé Chaulieu was the writer thereof, and that he (Voltaire) had heard him recite it at the Temple.
Nobody believed the story, it appears. At any rate, the Academy doors remained closed to him.
Many worldly-wise old friends of Voltaire’s—Fontenelle and Madame de Tencin among others—took the opportunity of the failure of “Ériphyle” to beg him about this time to give up that dramatic career for which he was evidently unsuited.