From which it will be seen that Voltaire did not scruple to employ his adversaries’ weapons—and to use them with a most deadly skill and finish.

On October 10, 1736, a play called “Britannicus” could not be played at the Théâtre Français in Paris on account of the illness of the principal actress. A new comedy called “The Prodigal Son” by an anonymous author was therefore produced in its stead, and performed to a crowded house with enormous success.

It had been acted already by a company beaten up in that desolate neighbourhood of Cirey. Voltaire had written reams of letters about it to Mademoiselle Quinault, filled with rather doubtful jokes—which were apparently, however, to the taste of Mademoiselle and of the period. The “Prodigal” is in verse and five acts, and perhaps reaches a higher level than most of Voltaire’s easy comedies. There were many surmises as to its authorship. Voltaire himself suggested that it was by one Gresset. Before he withdrew the veil of anonymity, “The Prodigal Son” had been lavishly praised by most of its father’s enemies.

He had other pleasures just now, too, besides that success, to distract him from the thoughts of his health which, as usual, “went to the devil.” “Émilie, reading Newton, ... terraces fifty feet wide, balconies, porcelain baths, yellow and silver rooms, niches for Chinese trifles, all that takes a long time,” he wrote to Theriot. Passing travellers too came to Cirey, and told travellers’ tales about it when they returned to Paris. In this year, 1736, Voltaire began an immense correspondence with a Parisian agent of his, an Abbé Moussinot, to whom he wrote about investments and speculations, and whom he commissioned to buy tapestries, diamond shoe-buckles, and scrubbing brushes; reflecting telescopes and hair powder; thermometers, barometers, scent, sponges, dusters—everything in the world. “If you do not want to commit suicide, always have something to do” was one of his own axioms.

Even now, unfortunately for him, all these varied occupations did not give him so much to do that he could not read, re-read, delight in, and talk about until it became public property, a certain little bizarrerie of his versatile mind called “Le Mondain.” A gay little piece is the “Mondain,” three or four pages long, in very flowing verse, a little impertinent, perhaps, and quite volatile and careless. It was written about the same time as “Alzire.” It contains a flippant allusion to Adam and Eve, and the famous expression “le superflu, chose très nécessaire.” Those are the most memorable things in it. The most memorable thing about it is the fury of persecution it brought down on the author and the storm of hatred it excited. The offence was supposed to lie in the allusion to our first parents. The real offence was the name and reputation of Voltaire.

On December 21, 1736, he received a warning letter from his friend d’Argental in Paris, telling him that the “Mondain” rendered its author’s position once more unsafe. It is said that the authorities thought of warning the Marquis that he must no longer give refuge to such a firebrand. Voltaire and Madame had a hurried consultation. Madame wept not a little: for though she was a philosopher she was also a woman, and as a woman, and after her capacity, she loved Voltaire. She strongly opposed the idea of his taking refuge with Prince Frederick: but agreed that he must fly across the frontier. She went with him as far as four-mile distant Vassy, and they parted there, with many tears. The man’s heart was hot with anger and bitterness. The old serpent of injustice and oppression entered into every Eden he found. Madame only remembered that she loved him and that he must leave her. The strange convenances of the day, which permitted so many things, had a few rules, and those few had to be observed rigidly to make up for many laxities. If the Marquise could have gone with Voltaire to England or Prussia, all would have been well. But that was not permitted. Neither she could go with him nor he stay with her. They said good-bye in a bitter cold. It was winter—the winter had come so soon! A few days later there arrived in Brussels, in deep snow, one M. Renol, merchant.

No personal injustice which he ever suffered so deeply affected Voltaire as this one. In some cases if he did not deserve, he at least tempted, the anger of the authorities. But here! “Is it possible that anyone can have taken the thing seriously?” he wrote. “It needs the absurdity and denseness of the golden age to find it dangerous, and the cruelty of the age of iron to persecute the author of a badinage so innocent.” He went to Antwerp, to Amsterdam, and to Leyden. At Brussels “Alzire” was performed in his honour—for all that he was travelling incognito, and M. Renol, merchant, had no reason to be more interested in “Alzire” than anybody else. At Leyden crowds flocked to see him, and he was introduced to Boerhaave, the great doctor. He was at Amsterdam in January, 1737, received with all honour, “living as a philosopher,” studying much, working at Newton—as Voltaire alone knew how to work—at any hour of the night and day, passionately, thoroughly, devotedly. He superintended the printing of his “Elements of Newton’s Philosophy” then in the Dutch press. He tried to forget. But he could not. The offence was rank and smelt to heaven. He was abroad until March. Then in answer to the tears and prayers of his Marquise, he gave out he was going to England—and went to Cirey. But for those tears, but for that faith unfaithful which kept him falsely true, he would have gone to England as he said. “If friendship stronger than all other feelings had not recalled me, I would willingly have spent the rest of my days in a country where at least my enemies could not hurt me: and where caprice, superstition, and the power of a minister need not be feared.... I have always told you that if my father, brother, or son were Prime Minister in a despotic state I would leave it to-morrow. But Madame du Châtelet is more to me than father, brother, or son.” She was. She had been not a little sore and wretched while he was away. Prudence had made his letters perforce so cold! “He calls me ‘Madame’!” The overwhelming vigour of her affection brought him back to her. But even her entreaties for prudence could not keep him from writing a “Defence of Le Mondain,” and an answer to the criticisms thereon, called the “Use of Life.” His heart was hot within him. Fifteen years later the fever burnt still.

“You will say fifteen years have passed since it all happened” he wrote to d’Argental. “No! only one day. For great wrongs are always recent wounds.”

CHAPTER IX
WORK AT CIREY

The spring of 1737 passed quietly enough. Voltaire and Madame du Châtelet were occupied in scientific experiments, and as delighted as two children with wonderful discoveries and a dark room. They paid very little heed to the summer which was coming, tender and fragrant, to crown desolate Cirey with loveliness. Nothing was so unfashionable as Nature in the eighteenth century. Even the poets neglected her—save one ploughman in his barren North. To painters she served only as the unheeded background to a trim Watteau shepherdess courting a bashful shepherd on a fan. To Voltaire and his Marquise she hardly formed even a background. In all his writings there is not the slightest evidence that he had so much as a perception of natural beauty. He was fond of pointing out how much better off was a modern, cultivated, luxurious Frenchman, than a happy Adam in some wild Eden, and hereafter was quickly irate, after his fashion, with that absurd theory of Jean Jacques Rousseau’s that the “state of Nature is the reign of God.”