There was another source of trouble going on at the same time. Who could have expected that a Voltaire and a d’Arnaud could share a kingdom in peace? “Do you not know,” Voltaire said once, “that when there are two Frenchmen in a foreign court or country one of them must die?” He had forgiven that “rising sun” affair; but he had not forgotten it. This d’Arnaud, too, was the most absurd, conceited, ungrateful simpleton imaginable.
Voltaire had not only lent him money. He had done much more than that. He had tried to make his protégé fit for some good post—to make him improve, for instance, a shameful handwriting. He had introduced him to Helvétius. He is “as my son,” “he has merit,” “he is poor and virtuous.” In return Baculard had paid his master some fine compliments; and in 1739 had written a preface for a new edition of M. de Voltaire’s works, in which the flattery was so fulsome that M. de Voltaire himself cut out, or toned down, some of the most eulogistic passages.
Then came Baculard’s invitation to Prussia. He gave himself the finest insolent airs. He pretended to be surprised at the smallness of the handsome pension Frederick had given him. If he was not of the suppers, he had every other honour. He was received by the princes, and play-acted with them. The story goes that being given a part in “Mariamne” too small for his conceit, he did it as badly as he could; and Voltaire lost his temper with him and cried out “You are not clever enough for the rôle; you do not even know how to speak the words!” But Baculard’s hot head was turned. The princes, and that negligible quantity, Frederick’s wife, had taken him up and were playing him off against Frederick’s Voltaire. Then the misguided young man was positively foolish enough to ally himself with Voltaire’s enemy, Fréron, and to attack the wickedest, cleverest foe that ever man had. Baculard wrote Fréron a letter to be shown about Paris, in which he not only denied the authorship of that flattering preface written in 1739, but added that Voltaire himself had inserted therein “horrible things” against France.
And of a sudden, Voltaire flung off the encumbering mantle of comfortable prosperity he had worn for so short a time and was at his foolish bombastical minor poet, tooth and nail.
On November 14, 1750, he wrote to tell his Angel of the affair. Then he wrote to King Frederick and insisted on Frederick taking his part—cool Frederick who would fain have conciliated both parties. “I cannot meet the man, Sire! He is going to-day to Berlin in Prince Henry’s carriage, why should he not stop there to study, to attend the Academy—whatever you like! I do not mention the word renvoi, but that is what I mean. And I leave all to the goodness and prudence of your Majesty.”
On November 24th a very triumphant uncle wrote to his niece that “the rising sun has gone to bed.” D’Arnaud in fact had been ordered to leave Berlin in twenty-four hours and—the King had forgotten to pay the expenses of his journey. Voltaire was victorious. Most of his friends and all his enemies both in Paris and Berlin had been watching that quarrel with a scrutiny seemingly out of all proportion to its importance. D’Arnaud had gone into obscurity for ever. But the easily elated Voltaire was not long elated this time somehow. Here again was food for thought. If one favourite was lost as suddenly as a bright exhalation in the evening and no man saw him more, why not another? “And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer, never to hope again.”
The victory left Arouet strangely pensive.
D’Arnaud had not only wrought mischief, it appears, but left a train of it behind him. His patron, Prince Henry, had long desired a copy of that firebrand, that stormy petrel, the “Pucelle.” Just before his dismissal, the obliging d’Arnaud had helped the Prince to corrupt Voltaire’s secretary, Tinois; and paid him to copy some cantos of the poem for the Prince, by night. Tinois was a young man whom Voltaire had taken into his service when he was at Rheims in October, 1749, for no better reason than that he had written rather a pretty verse after reading “Rome Sauvée.” On January 3, 1751, Voltaire wrote to Madame Denis that he had dismissed Tinois, and that Prince Henry had sworn to keep the “Pucelle” secret and safe. But if “put not your trust in princes” had long been the burden of Madame du Châtelet’s and of his niece’s warnings, it had sunk into Voltaire’s soul now. He was not at ease.
The successor of the faithless Tinois gave him further trouble.
The new secretary’s name was Richier. He had a friend called Lessing who was to be the great German writer, but who was now obscure, poor, and unknown, two-and-twenty years of age, and trying to make a livelihood in Berlin by copying and translating. Richier introduced him to the great Voltaire; and the good-natured Voltaire gave Lessing work and became very much his friend. Then the foolish Richier lends Lessing a volume of Voltaire’s “Century of Louis XIV.”—the work and pride of so many years—and now almost ready for the press. Lessing leaves Berlin—with the volume. Considering the fact that the upright character of Lessing was not then a notorious thing, it is not wonderful that Voltaire was alarmed. Suppose Lessing should publish the volume on his own account, and in its imperfect state! Voltaire wrote Lessing a very courteous letter asking for its return. And Lessing sent back the manuscript with some very ill-timed jokes. Lessing, it must be remembered, was nobody, and young; and Voltaire was past middle life and the most famous literary man of his period. The offender never forgave Voltaire for having suspected that he would make dishonourable use of his manuscript. But, after all, Voltaire seems to have been more sinned against than sinning.