Between doubting and hoping, mistrusting, fearing he knew not what, in health always wretched (“my distempers ... make me utterly unfit for kings”), homesick, uneasy, longing at once to go away and to be persuaded to stay, Voltaire spent his second winter—in heaven. Hirsch had made the first something very like pandemonium. But there was life, interest, excitement in a fight. The dull anxiety, the ugly care to wake up to in the dead nights and the dark mornings—these were worse a thousand times. Well for Voltaire that now, even more than ever, he had to comfort him that best relief from all the fears, doubts, problems, and presentiments of life—hard work.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE QUARREL WITH MAUPERTUIS
In December, 1751, there appeared in Berlin, in two volumes octavo and anonymously, “The Century of Louis XIV.” by Voltaire.
The earliest idea of it was conceived by a wild Arouet of twenty listening to personal recollections of the Sun King from the old Marquis de Saint-Ange at Fontainebleau.
Arouet had heard with his own ears the strange tales told in Paris at that monarch’s death. In 1719, when he was five-and-twenty and falling in brief love with the exquisite Maréchale de Villars, her husband recounted him more anecdotes of that magnificent and miserable age. To write it had been a relief from Émilie’s shrewish tongue and inconvenient emotions, at Cirey. It was Voltaire’s “chief employment” in that first lonely summer there, before she joined him. He worked hard at it in Brussels. He found in it consolation for his mistress’s infidelity: and for her death. It involved him in an enormous amount of reading, and unparalleled labours in research. Since he came to Prussia, he hardly wrote a letter without alluding to it. He found in it balm for the wounds inflicted by a d’Arnaud, a Hirsch, and a king. As it drew nearer completion, his interest and excitement in it deepened daily. “I am absorbed in Louis XIV.” “I shall be the Historiographer of France in spite of envy.” Before the author had finished reading the proofs, a pirated edition of his work appeared in Holland and elsewhere. There was the usual scramble among the publishers for the profits. Voltaire appealed to Frederick; and wrote to Falkener, in English, trying, through him, to get a correct edition circulated in England. His efforts were astonishingly fruitless. An author had then not only no right to the moneys his brain had earned, but was not even allowed the privilege of correcting the work of that brain: and the more famous the author the worse his chances in both respects. No anonymity could conceal a Voltaire.
Boyer prohibited “The Century of Louis XIV.” in France, and its circulation in that country was enormous. The first authorised edition printed in Berlin was sold out in a few days. Eight new editions appeared in eight months. In those times, when to be educated was a rich man’s privilege and not a pauper’s right, such a success was unique. That it was deserved is proved by the fact that this is still the most famous history of that reign.
Voltaire had written it, as he always wrote, as a free man. But this time he had written, as he did not always write, as a free man who has no desire to offend the prejudices of the slave-dealers. He himself loved the glitter of that Golden Age: its burning and shining lights of literary genius, and the glory it gave to France. So far as he could be true and tactful, he was tactful. He did not run amok at abuses with that “strident laugh” which has been said to fill the eighteenth century, as he had run amok at them in that “Voice of the Sage and the People”—and in a hundred of his writings a thousand times before. When he wrote the latter part of the book in Prussia, it was in his mind always that he might some day—one day—soon—who could tell?—be not sorry to come back to France. If he could still tell the truth and not offend the authorities! If any man could have done it, that man was Voltaire. There is no writer in the world who so well knows, if he chooses, how to put blame as if it were praise, to turn censure into a dainty compliment, and to trick out harsh realities in a charming dress.
But now, as too often before, his reputation damned him in advance. Besides, did he not give the place of, and the witnesses to, that secret marriage of Louis XIV. and Madame de Maintenon? How imprudent! Some patriots “raised a noble clamour” against him for having praised Marlborough and Eugene, and a great party of churchmen condemned him for having gently laughed at Jansenism and Molinism.
The book was full of reason; that in itself was enough. “My book is prohibited among my dear countrymen,” wrote Voltaire to Falkener on January 27, 1752, “because I have spoken the truth.” And again, to President Hénault, “I have tried to raise a monument to truth and my country, and I hope they will not take the stones of the edifice to stone me.” The style, too, of the book, that style which has kept it alive, fresh, and vigorous for a hundred and fifty years, made it offensive in the nostrils of the solemn and approved historians of the period who held that an author cannot be learned without being dull, and if he is readable can be by no means worth reading. “Louis XIV.” is a bright example of Voltaire’s own aphorism, “A serious book should not be too seriously written.” Though he had spent years of his life, and endless trouble and activity in gathering his information, he wrote with the same spontaneous life and vigour as he wrote the contes he read to the Duchesse du Maine and her gay court; with not less inspiration than he flung on to paper in the morning the “Henriade” he had dreamt at night on his prison bed in the Bastille. In a word, “I tried to move my readers, even in history.” His own countrymen now understand him better; but it is to be feared many of his foreign students still suspect the fidelity of his facts because he puts them so gracefully, and fear that a sense of humour and a sparkling style are incompatible with sound judgment and deep learning, and that if an historian is really clever he must prove it by being excessively dull.
The success of the book must have exceeded its author’s eager hopes. It delighted England. D’Alembert, in his lodging over the glazier’s shop, and all the nobility of intellect in Paris, rejoiced in it. What matter if the Court frowned? Pirated editions appeared in Edinburgh, as well as London, Prussia, and Holland. The publishers were scrambling wildly for the proceeds. The author did at last get something—and shrugged his shoulders and was not ill-satisfied. After all, he had a better success than a monetary one. Lord Chesterfield called the book “the history of the human mind written by a man of genius.” Condorcet spoke of it as “the only readable history of the age.” Renault declared its author “le plus bel esprit” of the century. “Louis XIV.” excites men’s curiosity at every page. If the author had been deprived of the Historiographership of France, he was the Historiographer not the less.