Among the many other poor and generally worthless literary hangers-on, whom the most generous literary genius of any age had commissioned his agent Moussinot to assist with gifts of money, was one Baculard d’Arnaud. A conceited young writer of very fluent rhymes and three, dull, unacted tragedies, was d’Arnaud.
But he was needy and a man of letters. That was enough for Voltaire. He procured him the post of Paris correspondent to King Frederick for which Raynal and Fréron had competed unsuccessfully, and on April 25, 1750, young d’Arnaud arrived in Berlin, with letters and verses from Voltaire to the King. A personable young man was Baculard. A gay head, very easily turned. Was it to pique Voltaire that Frederick gave Voltaire’s protégé a pension of five thousand francs yearly, and compliments much above his merits? If so, that aim failed at first. On May 19th, Voltaire wrote to young d’Arnaud the kindest of friendly letters. On May 31st, d’Arnaud wrote to Voltaire saying that he was waiting for him “as a child awaits his father.” The father was not hurrying himself, it appears.
On June 22d, Voltaire and his company of clever amateurs were at Sceaux, and played “Rome Sauvée” to the Duchesse du Maine and her court, Voltaire taking Cicero, and Lekain, Lentulus Sura.
On June 23d, Collé, writer of memoirs, meets Theriot, that idle gossip of a Theriot, who tells Collé a most piquant, incredible story about the great Frederick and little Baculard d’Arnaud. Then friend Marmontel, also writer of memoirs (and of memoirs written, it must be remembered, many years after the events they chronicle), tells how he and Theriot went together to see Voltaire one morning and found him writing in bed as usual. Theriot played the part of candid friend. “I have news to tell you,” says he. “Well, what is it?” asks the writer in bed. “D’Arnaud has arrived at Potsdam and the King has received him with open arms.” “With open arms?” says Voltaire. “And that d’Arnaud has written him an Epistle.” “Dull and bombastic, I suppose?” “On the contrary, very good, and so good the King has replied by another Epistle!” “What! the King of Prussia an Epistle to d’Arnaud?” says the person in bed, roused a little. “Someone has been gaming you, Theriot.” But Theriot produces copies of the two Epistles from his pockets. Voltaire stretches out a lean hand, seizes and reads them. “What rubbish! What platitudes!” says he, reading d’Arnaud’s verses to Frederick. But Frederick had not thought so. Then he comes to Frederick’s verses to d’Arnaud, and reads “for a moment in silence and with an air of pity.”
D’Arnaud, by your genius fair
You will warm our bleak North air;
And the music of your lyre
Kindle quick my muse’s fire—
and so on; and so on. Not much in that, to be sure. But when he came to the last verse—
The French Apollo ’gins to die
And his term of fame is nigh.
Come then, you, and take his place,
Rise and shine: outgrace his grace.
The sunset of a gorgeous day
A finer sunrise brings alway—
he sprang out of bed as if he had been stung and danced about the room in a fury. “I will go! I will go!” he cried, “if only to teach him to know mankind!”
That “sunset” had accomplished Frederick’s purpose. Perhaps he had guessed it would. He was certainly too astute to really think that a d’Arnaud’s twinkle would show at all in a sky where the sun of a Voltaire’s genius beamed and burnt.
“To sit high is to be lied about.” Many of Marmontel’s “facts” are conspicuously inaccurate. But if this story be true—and having regard to Voltaire’s character it sounds at least as if it had truth in it—no doubt remains that he was quite clever enough to disguise his anger. A gay little versified reproach to Frederick dated June 26, 1750—that was all. The very reproach was written from Compiègne, whither the Gentleman-in-Ordinary had gone to beg the permission of Louis XV. to visit Frederick II. Frederick was to pay all expenses of the journey. Voltaire would put the cachet of genius on the King’s prose and verse which just missing that, just missed everything. He left his house in the Rue Saint-Honoré in the joint care of Longchamp and Madame Denis, giving the latter a handsome income for its maintenance. He apologised to his friends for leaving them.