Voltaire had not been a romancer hitherto. He did not find it in him to invent plots now. “Zadig” is founded on a story by English Thomas Parnell; and “Micromégas” pretty openly taken from Cyrano de Bergerac’s “Journey to the Moon.” But as the “amazing genius” of Shakespeare took the stillborn children of lesser men’s brains and breathed on them the breath of life, so did Voltaire. Everything that makes a story immortal is his own in those matchless contes. Charm, wit, delicacy, an exquisite lightness of touch, the finest taste in satire, humour, variety, epigram, gaiety—with that ever-present undercurrent of biting meaning—almost all the Voltairian gifts are here. Every story is a pungent satire on the King, Court, régime, or religion of that evil day. The characters are very palpably drawn from life. In “Zadig” there is a certain Yebor who could by no possibility be anyone else than Boyer, the Âne of Mirepoix.
The graceless old Duchess, sitting up in bed, thoroughly enjoyed hearing her order castigated. She laughed loud and long to see how this Voltaire always had his whip on the raw.
No wonder she was eager for the tales to be given to the larger public of her court. The imprisonment was becoming wearisome. The unlucky Longchamp was ennuied to death. Voltaire’s health began to suffer for want of light and fresh air. The secret of his whereabouts had been kept so well, that his enemies at Court supposed him to be on the road to Frederick and Berlin.
Everybody was glad when one fine day, probably about the end of November, Madame du Châtelet appeared with the news that the storm had blown over, that the unlucky utterance was more or less forgotten, and the gambling debts settled—somehow. The autocratic little Duchess was not going to part with her Voltaire now she might enjoy him openly. He and Madame du Châtelet joined her throng of gay satellites. There were comedies, operas, and balls. Voltaire, Émilie, and Madame de Staal all took parts in his play of “The Prude,” imitated from Wycherley’s “Plain Dealer,” and now played for the first time—December 15, 1747. They acted “Issé” by La Motte, “Zélindor” by Moncrif, and “Les Originaux,” a comedy by Voltaire, first performed at Cirey. Émilie took the part of Issé; was Fanchon in the “Originaux,” and Zirphé in the opera of “Zélindor.” If she was one-and-forty years old and would dress her parts, not to suit them, but her own love of finery, it must be confessed that she was matchlessly accomplished and versatile.
Voltaire, after the manner of the days when he was lover indeed, improvised gay verses of compliment to her. “Madame du Châtelet,” he wrote to a friend, “sang Zirphé correctly and acted with nobility and grace: a thousand diamonds were her least ornament.”
Besides play-acting there was an orchestra of marquises and viscounts. Dancers from the Opera amused the pleasure-loving little court. A delightful girl of thirteen carried that art to its highest perfection and charmed everyone with her grace and talent. And, in the bad quarter of an hour before dinner, Voltaire read the contes composed for the Duchess, to the Duchess’s guests gathered together in the great salon.
The visit came to an end about the middle of December, when Voltaire had been at Sceaux about two months. Once more in Paris, he busied himself with a very pretty little ruse, by which he evaded the piracy of publishers and had two hundred private copies of “Zadig” printed to give to the Duchess and her friends, before the rest of the world had read it.
Then came the pleasing news that on December 30th “The Prodigal Son” had been played in the private apartments before the King by a distinguished company of amateurs: and that his Majesty had deigned to be amused. Amateur theatricals had a vogue only second to gaming in eighteenth-century France. To play the smallest parts in the feeblest piece in the King’s presence, men and women made incredible sacrifices of fortune, of honour, and of truth. Madame de Pompadour’s femme de chambre obtained a commission in the army for one of her friends by procuring, for a duke, the very minor rôle of a policeman, who had only two lines in his part, in “Tartuffe.” The clever Pompadour herself was an actress of no mean ability. She took a part in the “Prodigal.” Voltaire had not been behindhand in encouraging her histrionic tastes. He does not appear to have been present at this performance of his comedy. When a play had already been performed in public (and “The Prodigal Son,” it will be remembered, was played, anonymously, in October, 1736), it was not etiquette to invite its author to witness its début before royalty. But it pleased his bored Majesty so much that, on the strength of it, Madame de Pompadour obtained for her brilliant Voltaire the delightful right and privilege of being henceforth always a spectator at the plays acted in the private apartments. And this unlucky Voltaire, in his enthusiasm and gratitude, must needs look among his papers and discover a poem, which, with a little artful alteration, will express his thanks to the mistress.
Nothing would ever have made Voltaire cautious. Audacity was in his nature, and there was no preventing it oozing out, like Bob Acres’s courage, at the tips of his fingers whenever he got a pen in his hand. To be sure, if he had been circumspect he could not have been half so witty. If wit is not spontaneous, it is rarely wit at all. And this verse really would not have done him the slightest harm, if the favourite had but kept it to herself.
Every grace and charm and art,
Pompadour, in you is found.
And it is alike your part
To be the treasure of one heart
And a Court’s delight.