Another time the quarrel is about a glass of Rhine wine. Rhine wine disagrees with this imprudent Voltaire! The imprudent Voltaire, is, not to put too fine a point upon it, very much out of temper with Émilie’s interference in the matter. And it takes the united and warmest persuasions of Breteuil and Graffigny to make him read “Jeanne” after supper as he has promised.
At one of the readings of “Mérope,” Madame du Châtelet, with her abominably clever tongue, turns it into ridicule and laughs at it. She knows her vain and sensitive Voltaire’s tender places, it seems, and for the life of her cannot help putting her finger on them just to see if he will wince. He always winces. He will not speak all supper time. After supper it is the nymph’s turn to be cross, and Voltaire shows the visitors his globes while she sits sulking in a chair, pretending to be asleep.
What an old, old story it is! What a weary, dull, aggravating old story! and what a happy world it might be still if all the miseries men carefully manufacture for themselves were taken out of it!
Yet another day, and there is a very bitter quarrel about some verses. Émilie says she has written them. Voltaire does not believe it. They both lose their tempers, and it is even said Voltaire takes a knife from the table and threatens her with it, crying, “Do not look at me with your squinting, haggard eyes!” Perhaps the story is exaggerated. It is to be hoped so. Madame de Graffigny speaks too of Voltaire’s wretched health; of his system of doctoring and starving himself; of his disposition at once kind, nervous, and petulant. He told her one day, she says, that Émilie was a terrible woman who had no “flexibilité dans le cœur” although that heart was good. The Graffigny adds on her own account that it was not possible to be more “spied” than Voltaire was, or to have less liberty. It must indeed be remembered that the Graffigny was speaking of a woman of whose superior powers she was always jealous, and whom she had learnt to hate. Émilie had at least one great good quality: she never abused other women behind their backs.
It has been said that lovers’ quarrels are but the renewal of love. There was never a falser word. Every quarrel is a blot on a fair page; forgiveness may erase it, but, at the best, the mark of the erasure is there for ever and the page wears thin. Perhaps Voltaire and Madame du Châtelet acted on the dangerous assumption that, since they could be reconciled to-morrow, it was no matter if they quarrelled to-day. Their attachment had now lasted not quite five years. It lingered nearly another ten. Every day Émilie drew the cords by which her lover was bound to her tighter—and a little tighter still; until that dramatic moment when she cut them for ever. As for Voltaire, he still warmly admired her genius; wrote her verses; forgave her temper, and held himself unalterably hers.
The life at Cirey—already the subject of a burlesque in Paris—was not what he had dreamed it might be. He was himself hasty, capricious, not easy to live with. But he was also most generous, most affectionate, and most forgiving. And faithful to the end.
CHAPTER XI
THE AFFAIR DESFONTAINES
In 1724, when Voltaire was thirty years old and in Paris, Theriot had introduced to him Desfontaines, then a journalist, and an ex-abbé. Their acquaintance was of the slightest. It had lasted only a few weeks when Desfontaines was accused of an abominable crime (then punished by burning), arrested, and cast into the Bicêtre. The impulsive Voltaire must needs get up off a sick bed, travel to Fontainebleau, and throw himself at the feet of the influential Madame de Prie and obtain Desfontaines’s discharge—on the sole condition that he should not live in Paris. Not content with this good office, he obtained from his friend Madame de Bernières the permission for Desfontaines to reside on her estates. Finally, he procured the revocation of the edict of banishment. Desfontaines could live in Paris and pursue his calling as before. All this for a man he hardly knew, who was an ex-priest, and a very bad writer, if not a very bad man. It was generous, unnecessary and imprudent. In brief, it was Voltaire.
He might have expected gratitude. He did expect it. Desfontaines wrote him a letter of warm thanks. Eleven years later he was scoffing in a weekly Parisian paper at Newtonianism, as revealed to the French in Voltaire’s “English Letters.” Then he must translate the “Essay on Epic Poetry,” which Voltaire had written in English, into French, very badly, so that the tireless author felt the necessity of re-translating it himself. Then, forsooth, M. l’Abbé must damn with faint praise “Charles XII.” and the “Henriade.” Even a sensitive Voltaire could only laugh at bites from such a miserable gnat. “I am sorry I saved him,” he wrote lightly in 1735. “It is better to burn a priest than to bore the public. If I had left him to roast I should have spared the world many imbecilities.” But even a gnat may hurt if it sting often and long enough. The early bliss of Cirey was disturbed by that petty malice. Now in one way, now in another, Desfontaines showed the truth of the shrewd saying that the offender never pardons. The gnat bites grew feverish and swollen. Voltaire had reason to believe, though he still found it hard to believe, that Desfontaines was in league with those other enemies of his, Jore and J. B. Rousseau. Was it possible? Could there be such ingratitude in the vilest thing that lived? It is to the credit of Voltaire’s character, that he gave his abbé the benefit of the doubt till there was doubt no longer. It was in 1736 he wrote that memorable “I hear that Desfontaines is unhappy, and from that moment I forgive him.” And the Thing stung again in a criticism on Voltaire’s “Elements of Newton”—meant to be offensive. He was again forgiven. Then he stung once more, and turned his benefactor into the liveliest, keenest, deadliest foe that ever man had.
When Algarotti was at Cirey in the November of 1735, Voltaire had addressed to him a few gay and graceful lines, meant only for his own eye, and in which the real nature of the relationship between the poet and Madame du Châtelet was plainly acknowledged. The verses fell into the hands of Desfontaines. He wrote to ask permission to publish them in his journal. Publish them! If all the world knew that Voltaire was Émilie’s lover, all the world had at least the decency of feeling to pretend that it knew nothing of the kind. Publish them! Voltaire, Émilie—nay, the dull bonhomme himself—protested passionately. Publish them! Not for a kingdom! But they were published. And Voltaire woke to revenge.