The life of Voltaire

by Evelyn Beatrice Hall

“I am your friend of twenty years.... Will it be to your honour to have renounced me and the truth for a Desfontaines?”

“Once again, do not listen to anyone who will counsel you to drink your champagne gaily and forget all else. Drink, but fulfil the sacred duties of friendship.”

“Make reparation, there is still time.”

“Everybody helps me but you. Everyone has done his duty, save you only.” And at last, “All is forgotten, if you know how to love.”

There are many such letters of the early days of this year 1739—generous and pathetic enough. It was certainly Voltaire’s interest to make Theriot speak the truth. But it may be believed that it was Voltaire’s heart that was hurt by his silence. Émilie wrote to the false friend, imploring: so did the easy-going Marquis, and the fat lady watered her letter with her tears. The affair would not have been Voltaire’s if he had left a single stone unturned. Madame du Châtelet wrote for him to obtain the influence of his prince—Frederick of Prussia. And all the wretched Theriot would say was, that if the episode had occurred, he had forgotten all about it. Madame de Graffigny recorded how, when she was at Cirey in that February of 1739, Voltaire received letters which threw him into a sort of convulsions, and Émilie came into her guest’s room (“with tears in her eyes as big as her fist”) to say the comedy they were to have played must be put off. The Graffigny was too graphic a writer to be literally accurate. But there is no wonder if Voltaire and Madame were greatly agitated and harassed as to what course to pursue next. The mission which took Madame de Champbonin, who must certainly have been one of the most good-natured women who ever breathed, to Paris in January, 1739, was to try the weight of her moral influence on Theriot. And at last the wretched creature, buffeted on all sides by letters at once heart-breaking, entreating, and indignant, did so far repent of his treachery as to eat his words and consent to appear in some sort as the accuser of Desfontaines.

And now Voltaire, having won his Theriot, must move heaven and earth that in all points his libel suit may be carried to a successful issue. It was the custom of that day for as many of the complainant’s friends as possible to appear before the magistrate when the suit was brought—just to see how they could influence impartial justice. “Nothing produces so great an effect on a judge’s mind,” the plaintiff in the present case wrote off plainly to Moussinot, “as the attendance of a large number of relatives.... Justice is like the kingdom of Heaven. The violent take it by force.” Voltaire had, then, not a friendly acquaintance in Paris who was not to be roused to help him. It was judged best that he himself should remain at Cirey. So Moussinot became his agent, and a very active agent he had to be. He was to hire carriages for the friends. He was to pay their expenses. All other business was to go to the winds. He was to search out nephew Mignot—Madame Denis’s brother—so that he might be useful in stirring up his relatives. He was conjured to pursue the affair “avec la dernière vivacité.” “No ifs, no buts: nothing is difficult to friendship,” the energetic Voltaire wrote cheerfully. The Marquis du Châtelet was sent up to Paris to see what he could do. Voltaire’s old school friends, the d’Argensons and d’Argental, were not a little active. Prince Frederick wrote influential letters to his Court at home. Paris was in a ferment. Europe itself was interested. It was a cause célèbre of quite extraordinary vivacity. Through January, February, and March of 1739, Voltaire himself was working feverishly at Cirey. He rained letters on his friends. He wrote anonymous ones on Desfontaines to be circulated in Paris, not at all decent and very much to the taste of the age. He was certainly a matchless foe. He thought of everything. The resources of his mind were as wonderful as its energy. He had the gift of making other people very nearly as enthusiastic as he was himself. To read his letters of this time, in cold blood one hundred and sixty years after, stirs the pulses still. The most apathetic reader himself feels for the moment Voltaire’s dancing impatience for revenge, his hot anxiety for fear miserable Theriot should be false at the last after all, his throbbing, vivid determination that he shall be true.

The vigour of the man seems to have worn out at last even the malice of his enemies. Desfontaines was told that he must disavow his “Voltairomanie”—or go to prison. So the honourable magistrate drew out a formula in which the honourable Desfontaines repudiated with horror, and in sufficiently servile terms, all idea of his being the author of that blasphemy and expressed “sentiments of esteem” for M. de Voltaire! The whole case may be said to have rained lies. Everybody lied. Desfontaines’s final lie was “done in Paris, this 4th of April, 1739.” Moussinot was commissioned to give Madame de Champbonin two hundred francs—which, to be sure, she deserved—and one hundred to the needy and complaisant Mouhy, who had been dubbed the author of the “Préservatif,” “telling him you have no more.”

The buffeting of that storm left Voltaire panting, feeble, and exhausted. “There are some men by whom it is glorious to be hated,” was an axiom of his own. Desfontaines was certainly one of them. But Desfontaines’s hatred had power to the end of his life to rouse him to a frenzy of indignation. “Take honour from me and my life is done,” had not, alas! been the spirit of either defendant or plaintiff in this case. But it had one good thing about it, though only one,—Voltaire’s dealing with Theriot. Theriot was forgiven as if Voltaire had been the Christian he was not.

On May 8, 1739, the two du Châtelets, Koenig (Madame’s mathematical professor—a very good mathematician and a very dull man), M. de Voltaire and suite left Cirey for Brussels. Voltaire had been at Cirey nearly five years. He had learnt to love its solitude, its calm, its facilities for hard work. He had learnt to dread towns if he had not learnt to love Nature. But Émilie wanted a change, so was quite sure that a journey and a different air were the very things for her lover’s deplorable health. The process of reasoning is not unusual. Was there not too a certain du Châtelet lawsuit, of which they were always talking, which was already eighty years old and could only be settled in Brussels? So to Brussels they went.

Voltaire had to be dragged away from a tragedy, from “Louis XIV.,” from elaborate corrections which he was making to the “Henriade,” and from the study of Demosthenes and Euclid. Madame had an iron constitution herself, and could be at a dance all night and up at six the next morning studying mathematics—for fear Koenig should find her a dunce. En route for Brussels, they stopped at Valenciennes, where they were entertained with a ball, a ballet, and a comedy. They had no sooner reached their quiet house in the Rue de la Grosse Tour, Brussels, than they left it to visit some du Châtelet relations, at Beringen, ten miles distant, and at Hain. They were back in Brussels by June 17th. The city put herself en fête for them. J. B. Rousseau, who lived there, was “no more spoken of than if he were dead.” Anyone with a human nature must have been pleased at that. Voltaire exerted himself and had a beautiful garden-party with fireworks one of those fine days to the Duc d’Aremberg and all the other polite society in Brussels. Of course he must needs superintend the firework preparations himself. Two of his unfortunate workmen fell from the scaffolding on to him, killing themselves, and nearly killing him. The event affected him not a little.