The truth is he was a great deal too clever to be wasted. Was it a diplomatic letter that was required? The Historiographer had had practice in such things, and would naturally do them better than anyone else. A poem? He was a poet. An epigram? Once upon a time his epigrams had been so dangerously clever that he had positively been bastilled for them. Four days after the fête the newly made courtier had written to Theriot that he was so utterly weary he had neither hands, feet, nor head. He spent the whole day hunting up anecdotes and the whole night making rhymes. He had the reputation of a wit, and the Court felt defrauded if he did not make a bon mot every time he opened his lips. Then came the French victory of Fontenoy over the English—and of course the Historiographer must celebrate that historical event in an ode. It is but just to Voltaire to say that if he was in some sort belying his principles by being at Court at all, when there, he did, in so far as might be, live up to them. He had pleaded for peace pretty openly in those official documents, and pointed out better ways to glory than the way of battle.
But, after all, though war is deplorable, if war there must be, let Us win by all means if we can. Even a peace advocate might feel some such sentiment. One peace advocate, with his facts drawn direct from a letter of d’Argenson’s, written from the scene of action itself about May 16, 1745, sat down in a fine glow of enthusiasm and produced his heroic poem, of three hundred lines and entitled “Fontenoy,” on the spot. Paris was delighted. The King was content. Five editions were sold in ten days. The Historiographer, of course, corrected, embellished, altered, indefatigably. “This battle has given me a great deal more trouble to celebrate than it gave the King to win it,” he observed, very truly. He was plagued out of his life by the Court ladies who really must insist on the poet flattering in his poem all their cousins and lovers who had taken even the smallest part in the fight. “My head swims,” he wrote. He grumbled. But he was not ill content. Presently, “Fontenoy” received the compliment of being clumsily burlesqued, and a gay Voltaire answered the burlesques in a “Critical Letter from a Fine Lady to a Fine Gentleman of Paris”—dainty, light, rallying, graceful—and as good-humoured as witty. If his “Princess” had won him favour, “Fontenoy” had sealed it. He had gained the King. To keep him there remained but to gain also the woman and the priest who ruled him.
Looking back long after on this period of his life—“It was not the time of my glory if I ever had any,” said Voltaire. It was not. To fawn on that sensual stupidity the King, to cajole the Pope, to flatter the mistress—they were not occupations that commended themselves to a man with such a passion for work and such a supreme consciousness of a mission in life crying aloud to be fulfilled, as Voltaire. But the end—the end was everything. How should he speak truth if he were gagged? What hope of freedom to speak in these times without the royal indulgence? The means were contemptible enough, be it granted. But they were the only means. What matter how dirty the road if it led to the goal? That was Voltaire’s idea—not high-minded, nor quite without excuse, and perfectly characteristic. He plunged through that Court mire alert, gay, and vigorous; flattered the women; amused the courtiers; was eternally witty and gallant; and just sarcastic enough in his wit to make himself respected.
And then he set to work to gain the Pope. Hardly any other transaction of his life shows him as matchlessly clever and ingenious as this one. He was a sceptic—that is, if a sceptic be one who believes in a creed of his own rather than the creed of other persons. He had the reputation of an atheist. The Church had banned his books, and discovered some subtle innuendo against herself in every line he wrote. Worse than all, the man was a satirist, a jester, a mocker, who viewed the huge pretensions and the gigantic claims of Rome with a cynic gleam in his eyes and a laugh on his lips.
He started his bold campaign by reading the whole of the Pope’s works and complimenting that very good-natured representative of St. Peter, Benedict XIV., on their ability. Benedict thereupon sent his “dear son” a couple of beautiful medals with his own portrait engraven thereon as a return civility. “He looks like a bon diable,” wrote the graceless Voltaire to d’Argenson, “who knows pretty well how much all that is worth.”
And then on August 17th Voltaire wrote to beg permission to dedicate that “Mahomet,” which Lord Chesterfield had considered a covert attack on Christianity, to his Holiness himself. The letter with which he sent the play is a masterpiece of subtlety. The Voltairian daring and adroitness, which are without their counterpart in history, succeeded of course. If one can be at once supremely bold and supremely clever, success is a foregone conclusion. Voltaire was lucky in his man—and knew his man to perfection. Benedict XIV. was bonhomme rather than an ideal pope, and did accept his own infallibility and the astounding assumptions of his Church, with a great many comprehensive qualifications.
He was quite wise enough in his generation to perceive that it was better to have a subtle Voltaire for a friend than an enemy. He therefore sent him his Apostolic Benediction: and accepted the dedication of “your admirable tragedy” in a charming letter dated September 19th. Voltaire, on his part, said he laid a work against the founder of a false religion at the feet of the chief of the true religion: “kissed the Pope’s holy feet” and “sacred purple” indefatigably in every letter he wrote; flattered the cardinals and went into ecstasies over Benedict’s virtues. The correspondence between the two was printed as a preface to a new edition of “Mahomet” in French and Italian; and M. de Voltaire, with his tongue in his cheek and not a little satisfaction in his soul, is proclaimed before all men the protégé of Rome!
Long before this desirable consummation, as far back as May 3d of this 1745, he had written with a gay confidence that the devout might now ask his protection for this world and the next. The subject never ceased to afford his sense of irony the most delicious amusement. But better than being amused he was henceforth “covered from his enemies by the stole of Heaven’s vicegerent.” The Pope, it has been seen, did not accept the dedication of “Mahomet” until September. Before that Voltaire was hard at work to win another influence—the influence of Madame d’Étioles, afterwards the Marquise de Pompadour.
The summer of 1745 was but a dull summer at Court. In May the King joined his army. What were the courtiers and flatterers to do with no one to flatter and toady? The firmament was dark without its Sun: and would have been darker yet but for the steady rising of one brilliant star. Clever head and cold heart, a cool and persistent ambition, a most subtle intellect, and a morality which never interfered with an early and plainly avowed intention to become the King’s mistress—such was the woman who “with her harlot’s foot on its neck” ruled France for nineteen years, lost it India and Canada, and spurred it, galloping, to the Revolution. With every charm, every grace, every accomplishment that can make a woman irresistible—all carefully learnt for that one noble end, the King’s subjugation—five-and-twenty years old, the wife of a wealthy bourgeois, M. d’Étioles, living in the country, and having already begun, and coolly waiting to finish, her conquest of the royal heart—such was the Pompadour when Voltaire first knew her. In May he was her correspondent. In June he was her visitor—drinking her tokay, and paying her the loveliest compliments, and discussing with her gravely all subjects in heaven and earth, for she had not only natural cleverness, but a fine cultivation, and, in her heart, said Voltaire, was always “one of us.” She confided in him her design on—she called it her passion for—the King.
In July Voltaire was addressing verses to his “dear and true Pompadour” and saying he might well call her in advance by a name which rhymed with “amour” and would soon be the loveliest name in France. She was formally created Marquise and came up to Court. She was the mistress of Louis. She was the mistress of France. And—she was the friend of Voltaire.