There were, too, going on at the same time various mean domestic disagreeables—literally storms in teacups. Formey, writer of memoirs, but not always of reliable memoirs, records how Voltaire complained to the King of the bad sugar, coffee, tea, and chocolate served to him; how the King apologised, and altered nothing; and how angry the great Voltaire demeaned himself to be over these trifles. Did he remember that he had written hotly to Alliot, King Stanislas’s chamberlain at Lunéville, in 1749, just before the death of Madame du Châtelet, on a like subject? “I can assure you at Berlin I am not obliged to beg for bread, wine, and candles.” And now! The truth is best summed up by the most thorough and minute of all Voltaire’s biographers, Desnoiresterres. “He used, and thought he was entitled to use largely, a hospitality which he had only accepted after many invitations and prayers.” He asked his friends to dine with him on “the King’s roast” without any fear of exceeding his rights as a guest. Formey adds that he appropriated the candle-ends which were the servants’ perquisites; and records that, through meanness, when the Court was in mourning he appeared in a borrowed black suit and returned it to its portly owner, cut to the dimensions of the lean Voltairian figure. The story seems to be that lie which is part of the truth. True or false, it is not worth examination. No doubtful anecdotes are needed to prove that Voltaire was the sensitive philosopher whose delicate body made him singularly unphilosophic in trifles; or that in money affairs he was at once exceedingly generous and prudently thrifty.
But he had to do now with a money affair in which his prudence, alas! was only conspicuous by its absence.
In November of 1750 had begun his too-famous affair with Hirsch, Jew usurer of Berlin.
He had been first brought into relations with the shifty Israelite on November 9th. On the day following he played “Cicero” in his “Rome Sauvée”—a blaze of jewels, borrowed from the Hirsch father and son. On November 23d he received Hirsch fils (Hirsch fils transacted all the business, Hirsch père being well stricken in years) in his room at Potsdam quite close to the unconscious Frederick; and there, forsooth, M. de Voltaire, with the aid of M. Hirsch, plans to do on the quiet a little illegal stock-jobbing. Several years before, the Elector of Saxony had established a bank in Dresden. It issued such an immense number of notes that “the currency of Saxony was inflated: for a time a note of one hundred thalers was worth but fifty.” Frederick, when the Silesian war made him master of Dresden, stipulated that Prussian subjects holding these notes should be paid in full. This went on for three years; but in 1748, Frederick, yielding to the remonstrances of the Elector, forbade his subjects to purchase these notes or to bring them into the Prussian kingdom at all. Such notes it was, which on this fatal November 23, 1750, a cunning M. de Voltaire commissioned Hirsch to purchase, and then to sell again in Saxony, receiving of course their full nominal value. To effect this purchase, Voltaire gave Hirsch negotiable bills worth 2,500l.
One of these bills was a draft on Voltaire’s Paris banker for 1,600l., “not payable for some weeks.” Bill two was a draft for 650l. by old father Hirsch—or Hirschell, as Voltaire called him—on Voltaire himself. In exchange for these two bills, Voltaire held the borrowed jewels.
There is nothing more remarkable about Voltaire, considered in his character of a literary man, than the fact that he was always speculating, and except on this occasion, hardly ever unsuccessfully. But a Court is no place for a secret. By November 29th some rumour of his guest’s little affair had reached Frederick. On December 1st that procrastinating Hirsch had not even started on his journey to Dresden. Hirsch is pretty cool about the whole business, it appears, and not inclined to hurry himself. Voltaire’s dancing, agitated impatience spurs him off at last. From December 1st to 12th he is in Dresden—delaying, making excuses and cashing never a Saxon note. (All he did do was to raise money on the Paris draft for 1,600l. Voltaire had given him, and trade on his own account.) Voltaire entirely loses his temper, stops the payment of that draft on his Paris banker, and summons Hirsch home at once. He comes. Still pretty cool is M. Hirsch. Rather injured, if anything, in fact. It is not pleasant, M. de Voltaire, “to have sold a bill of exchange which the drawer protested;” and that is what happened to me about that Paris draft of yours! I have the paper now—entirely worthless of course. But M. Hirsch takes care to keep it very securely all the same. For a Hirsch to have such a document signed Arouet de Voltaire may be rather an awkward thing for the King’s visitor; and so, a profitable one for a Hirsch, as giving him a hold over his client. He has, or fancies he has, the whip hand of M. de Voltaire, who cannot make himself very disagreeable, thinks Hirsch, since the whole affair is illegal and under the rose.
On December 16th, Voltaire, come to Berlin with King and Court for the Christmas carnival, receives Hirsch. The two draw up a document, “a complete settlement.” Hirsch gives back Voltaire his unused drafts “and expressly engages to return the bill upon Paris.” Voltaire, in exchange, is to buy
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From an Engraving after a Painting by Tourmere