So much blest, then, live for aye
Lovely years with pleasure crown’d.
The King brings peace with him. Oh may
Your foes be nothing: and alway
You both your conquests keep!
But, after all, though she was an astute, cool-blooded Pompadour, she was a woman too and loved a compliment; and that her entourage should be aware she received such beautiful ones as that.
It soon reached the ears of poor Marie Leczinska, patient and dignified in the dreary and respectable seclusion of her apartments. The days were long gone when, a bride of one-and-twenty, she had called Voltaire “my poor Voltaire” and pensioned him from her own purse. The ugly daughters, Mesdames, too, had still some influence over their royal father, the King, and were not slow to use it.
Old Roy took occasion to sententiously point out in a dreary poem how abominable it was to allude to royal—mistakes: and how the loves of gods and kings were never meant for the comment of the vulgar. The unlucky Voltaire was further suspected at the moment of having been the author of some lines to the Dauphine, whose gay philosophy offended the King. He denied the authorship, of course, in toto. But that was very little use. It was whispered that Mesdames, the daughters, so worked upon Louis that he signed a decree of banishment for Voltaire, without even consulting Madame de Pompadour. That would seem to have been an addition to make a good story better. There was most likely no edict of banishment on paper. Voltaire himself denied that there was ever any idea of such a thing. But on January 13, 1748, coming gaily to Versailles and not in the least anticipating any evil effect from the charming audacity of his verses, he found the Court too hot to hold him. He dined in Paris that night at a coffee-house, with a few other literary men. He arrived rather late. He had come straight from Versailles, and alone of the company knew what had occurred there. He made his dinner, after his frugal fashion, off seven or eight cups of black coffee and a couple of rolls, and was very talkative and amusing. The conversation turned on the newly imposed tax on playing-cards, and on luxury. When the dinner was over other visitors at the coffee-house gathered round him and “plied him with questions.”
He was not exiled. But he had committed an offence which made it expedient to Go. He knew the Pompadour much too well to suppose she would put her position in jeopardy by trying to save a friend, even if he were a Voltaire. “Circumspection is all very well,” he had once written to d’Argenson, “but it is a melancholy thing in poetry: to be reasonable and cold is almost the same thing.” For his part, he would rather write even compliments and madrigals as he chose, and be banished for them, than remain at Court, tongue-tied and careful. If the Historiographership and the Academy and the solemn joy of signing oneself Gentleman-in-Ordinary to the King did not give one freedom, they were useless. Neither Voltaire nor Émilie had seen Cirey for many months. On the whole, it was best to go. They left Paris in the deep midwinter at nine o’clock on a January evening, 1748, with the snow thick on the ground and a temperature many degrees below freezing-point.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE MARQUIS DE SAINT-LAMBERT
One of Madame du Châtelet’s idiosyncrasies was to travel only by night; and another, to overload the travelling carriage with luggage. She insisted on having her way in both particulars this time. It has been aptly said of Voltaire that he was at once patient and hasty. He certainly must have been patient to take the road with a woman whose packages frequently numbered a hundred and who could never travel without her lady’s maid. That he usually lost his temper on such journeys, is simply to say that he was human.
On the present occasion, as they were nearing Nangis, the hind spring of the carriage broke, and the overladen vehicle fell over on the side of Voltaire. Madame du Châtelet, large and bony, the femme de chambre (whose weight and figure history does not record), and a vast quantity of bandboxes and parcels, came tumbling on the top of him. He relieved his feelings by uttering “piercing shrieks.” Two footmen, by getting on the roof of the overturned carriage and dragging their mistress, the lady’s maid, and the bandboxes up through the doors “as from a well,” at last released M. de Voltaire in the same manner. It was bitterly cold and a brilliant starlight night. The two footmen, aided by the postillions, tried to set the carriage straight again, and failed. One of the postillions rode on into the next village for further assistance. And Voltaire and Émilie sat by the roadside on the carriage cushions, and would have been “perfectly happy” shiveringly studying astronomy, if they had only had a telescope. They were philosophers, after all.
The carriage was mended at last. But it had not gone fifty paces before it broke down again. The workmen, who considered Madame had underpaid them, had to be brought back by force—and promises. At last the carriage was able to proceed at a walking pace the nine miles to the Château of Chapelle, where the travellers halted. They reached Cirey about the middle of January, 1748, without further adventure.
The month they spent there was a gay one. Neither was anxious for too many tête-à-têtes. The honeymoon had set for ever. When they were alone, each wrote all day; in the evenings they read aloud together or played trictrac. Émilie had an aggravating habit of keeping her Voltaire waiting till supper was cold while she finished “a little calculation.” That her Voltaire, himself orderly and punctual, was extremely vif at the delay need not be doubted. Madame du Deffand had once said that he followed Émilie like a faithful dog with the collar round his neck. Well, the dog was faithful still. But the collar irked and worried him; and there were times when he snapped at the hand that had put it there.