But her thoughts were not with husband, son, or friend (as, she still called her Voltaire), but with M. de Saint-Lambert. Wherever she was she wrote to him continually—letters filled with passion, abandon, tenderness, bitterness, doubt. He had purposed taking a journey in Italy, but renounced it at her pleading. She thanked him with the melancholy effusion and the humiliating gratitude of the woman who has obtained from her master a sacrifice she knows to be unwilling. She and her unsuspecting Voltaire came up to Paris. If she spent her time writing to her lover, Voltaire spent his in superintending the rehearsals of his new tragedy “Semiramis.” One day his versatility appeared in a new character, and he wrote a prologue for his “Death of Cæsar” for a girls’ school that proposed to act it. It is characteristic of the man that he adapted himself to this entirely new rôle with the most perfect flexibility and thoroughness. The prologue’s chief characteristics are its “ease and orthodoxy.” He wrote it leaning on a mantelpiece, on the spur of the moment. He included a charming little letter to the Sister Superior and even begged the prayers of that good lady on his behalf!
On June 28th he and Madame du Châtelet left Paris for Commercy, another seat of Stanislas, where that King then was.
Voltaire was ill and miserable and Madame a more impossible travelling companion than ever. On their route, at Châlons-sur-Marne, she must needs engage in the most vociferous, fatiguing dispute with the landlady of an inn over a basin of soup.
Commercy was as gay as Lunéville. There were the inevitable operas and comedies, and on July 14th Providence kindly arranged a total eclipse of the sun to further amuse the little Court. One of its number had astronomised ever so many years ago at Sceaux and at Villars: and had not forgotten those times.
On August 26th he returned to Paris, leaving Madame du Châtelet behind him. She did not complain of his neglect this time. King Stanislas also came up to Paris to stay for a few days with his daughter, the Queen. Voltaire arrived in the capital on the very day of the production of “Semiramis”—probably August 29, 1748.
There had long been forming a cabal against the piece, headed by enemy Piron and joined by most of the adherents of that dismal old playwright Crébillon, who had himself written a clumsy “Semiramis” in 1717. Well, conspiracy for conspiracy. What weapons you use against me, I have the right to use against you. That was Voltaire’s theory now as ever. He met cunning with cunning. He bought up half the seats in the house. He gave them to persons who could be absolutely relied upon to clap and cry at the right moments, and to drown all hisses with applause. Theriot helped him. The d’Argental husband and wife had been already active on his behalf. Voltaire too had boldly asked the patronage of King Louis and Madame de Pompadour, and the King, in consideration of the piece having been originally written for the late Dauphine, agreed to pay the expenses of putting it on the stage. If the play but once had a hearing Voltaire believed that no conspiracy could damn it.
The little scheme succeeded fairly well. M. de Voltaire’s friends wept and applauded to perfection. But the first three acts were received by the audience as a whole with only a very moderate warmth. And in the fourth, the play was nearly ruined. It was then the custom in France for the spectators to sit and walk about on the stage. During this fourth act, at a scene at the tomb of Ninus, there were so many of them, that the too enthusiastic player who took the part of the sentinel and was guarding the tomb, called out: “Make way for the ghost, if you please, gentlemen. Make way for the ghost!” which set the house in a roar. The playwright, to be sure, had no reason to find the incident amusing. He complained to the Lieutenant of Police, and in future performances of “Semiramis” the abuse was corrected.
That first night, then, was by no means so decidedly successful as its author had hoped.
On the second night, August 30th, M. de Voltaire, wanting to hear what his friends as well as his enemies said of the piece behind his back, disguised himself and went to the famous Café Procope, opposite the Comédie Française, and largely frequented by literary and theatrical people. He had been an amateur actor to some purpose, and understood the art of make-up as well as any professional on the boards. With cassock and bands, an old three-cornered hat, and an immense full-bottom unpowdered wig that showed hardly anything of his face except the sharp end of his long, pointed nose, he looked the part of an abbé to perfection. He put a breviary under his arm; arrived at the café; possessed himself of a newspaper; chose a dark corner; put on his spectacles, and read the paper over a modest repast of a cup of tea and a roll. The café filled presently—journalists, actors, some of the partisans of Crébillon and some of Voltaire—all fresh from the play and all anxious to air their views thereon. That sensitive, thin-skinned, long-nosed abbé in the corner had to exercise all his self-control to keep himself from contradicting an enemy who criticised unjustly, or a friend who praised foolishly. But he did it. The rôle pleased his sense of humour. And one or two of his critics quoted some of his fine passages not amiss. He sat there for an hour and a half, keenly attentive to the conversation. The result as a whole was not unsatisfactory. The play would do.
It ran for fifteen nights in succession. When a month or so later a vile parody appeared on it, Voltaire, supported by her father’s friendship, begged Marie Leczinska to suppress that parody. But the Queen, remembering Voltaire not as the man whose “Indiscret” and “Mariamne” had charmed her youth, but as the imprudent friend of Madame de Pompadour, coldly declined to interfere. The Pompadour herself could do little. But the parody did not much harm the original after all. On October 24, 1784, “Semiramis” was performed at Fontainebleau and well received. The play is still of interest to English people—not for itself, but for the “Advertisement” which precedes it: and which contains the most famous and the most adverse criticism upon Shakespeare in the world. He was “a drunken savage”; and “Hamlet” “a coarse and barbarous piece which would not be endured by the dregs of the people in France or Italy.” In his head “Nature delighted to bring together the noblest imagination with the heaviest grossness.” This was Voltaire’s most remarkable word on the great Englishman. But it was not his last.