She did it. She took a seat on the end of his bed. She spoke to him in English, that old language of their quarrels and love, and by a tender name, long disused. Longchamp lit a couple of candles and retired—to listen to the conversation through the wall. It was the most marvellous conversation in the world. They spoke in French now. Émilie tried to excuse herself—somehow. The lean, furious, exhausted, unhappy man in bed started up.
“Believe you!” he cried. “Now! I have sacrificed health and fortune for you, and you have deceived me.”
And Émilie proceeded to explain with a perfect plainness of speech that Voltaire had long ceased to love her as a lover, and that since she must love someone, he should be pleased that her choice had fallen on a mutual friend, like M. de Saint-Lambert.
How the piercing eyes in the thin face on the pillow must have looked her through and through! Voltaire answered with a very fine irony: “Madame, you are always right; but if things must be so, do not let me see them.”
Before she left him, she embraced him. She had succeeded in her aim so far that he was calmer.
The rest of the night the energetic woman spent in appeasing Saint-Lambert, who considered Voltaire had insulted him.
Voltaire was ill in bed the next day. It must be allowed he had an excuse for illness this time. And behold, as the evening drew in, the young Marquis comes in person to make inquiries after the invalid’s health, and the invalid admits him. Saint-Lambert makes very handsome apologies for the hasty words which had escaped him in a moment of agitation. Voltaire takes him by both hands and embraces him. “Mon enfant, I have forgotten all. It was I who was wrong. You are at the happy age of love and pleasure. Make the most of both.”
The very next day the three met at supper at Madame de Boufflers’s, and all enjoyed themselves immensely. All idea of the post-chaise and Paris was dismissed. Did Voltaire recall that gay episode of his youth when he and de Génonville had shared the smiles of Mademoiselle de Livri?
In 1749, he actually wrote Saint-Lambert a beautiful gallant poem on the event which had for the time being so much disturbed his peace:
Saint-Lambert, it is all for thee
The flower grows:
The rose’s thorns are but for me:
For thee, the rose—