“Louis XIV.,” and correcting Frederick’s works, were not all of Voltaire’s literary work in Prussia. He was always composing bagatelles and compliments for the two Queens and the Princesses. He wrote Frederick—in the room next to him—gay verses as well as many letters: and was also busy with his famous philosophical poem called “Natural Law,” not published till 1756. He began here his great “Philosophical Dictionary”; and was further fanning the flame, by innumerable suggestions, of that light-bringer of the eighteenth century, that torch in a darkness which could be felt, the “Encyclopædia” of Diderot and d’Alembert. Its preface appeared in 1750 and its first volume in 1751. Voltaire called it “the dictionary of the universe”—“the bureau of human learning,” and should have found in its splendid audacity—a quality so dear to his soul—an antidote for many afflictions. Perhaps he did. It was never because he had idle hands that Satan found them mischief still to do. But he was homesick. He was in that pitiable state of body which makes the mind irritable and despondent. Paris had been stormy enough. But here one lived always over a volcano. That orange rind rankled still. If one royal hand caressed, there was the other that might scratch at any moment. The never-sleeping anxiety affected Voltaire’s vif temper, just as anxiety affects the temper of lesser persons. He was in a mood when he was sure to be offended by someone. This time the person was Maupertuis.
Born in 1698, in Saint-Malo, Maupertuis was four years younger than Voltaire, and in his precocious intelligence, ardent imagination, and unquenchable thirst for knowledge, not unlike him. But there the likeness stopped. Maupertuis studied in Paris, and then became that rare anomaly, a savant-soldier. He was also elected a member of the Academy of Sciences; and in 1728 spent six months in England, where he was made a member of the Royal Society and imbibed Newtonian opinions. In 1740, after an Arctic expedition which roused much public interest, he was made by Frederick President of the Berlin Academy, that he might form it “as you alone can form it.” Maupertuis married one of the Queen-Mother’s maids of honour, and lived in a fine house in Berlin close to the Royal Park, which his zoological tastes led him to turn into a kind of menagerie. Precise, pompous, and positive; boring society with his worrying exactness upon trifles even more than society bored him; inordinately vain, and with a sensitive temper made yet more inflammable by brandy and self-love; acutely conscious of his dignity, and without any sense of humour, the ex-tutor of Madame du Châtelet was the sort of person with whom, sooner or later, her lover was sure to disagree. Added to these facts, Voltaire’s pension from King Frederick exceeded that of Maupertuis by two thousand crowns; and while Maupertuis was socially dull, at the King’s suppers Voltaire’s conversation was even more brilliant than his writings.
On October 28, 1750, the naturalist Buffon had written to a friend, “Between ourselves, Voltaire and Maupertuis are not made to live in the same room.”
The first tiff between the uncongenial pair took place, in point of fact, in that very October of 1750, the autumn after Voltaire’s arrival in Prussia. There was a vacant chair in the Berlin Academy. Maupertuis wished it given to d’Argens—Voltaire, further seeing, to that Raynal, already his friend, afterwards the famous philosopher and historian. Voltaire won, with the help of Frederick; and Maupertuis was left surly and jealous. In the Hirsch affair Voltaire asked his help, and Maupertuis refused it. Maupertuis read “Louis XIV.” and compared it to “the gambols of a child”—heavy Maupertuis who could not have gambolled to save his soul.
Then, at the end of the year 1751, a certain book entitled “Mes Pensées,” by a young French adventurer called La Beaumelle, made some little stir in Berlin. The “Thoughts” were desultory, unequal, and very ill put together. D’Argenson wrote of the book that half of it was excellent, a quarter mediocre, and the other quarter bad. From the excellent part he quoted a shrewd axiom—“Happy the State where the king has no mistress, provided that he also has no confessor!” Two Berlin readers, at the least, included in the bad quarter this extraordinary sentence: “There have been greater poets than Voltaire, but never one so well paid.... The King of Prussia overwhelms men of letters with kindness for precisely the same reasons that a little German prince overwhelms with kindness a jester or a buffoon.” The passage was the joke of one of the royal suppers. But if Frederick and Voltaire laughed at it, it was not the less a joke that left a taste in the mouth. Then up comes La Beaumelle to Berlin. On November 1, 1751, he calls on the great Voltaire; and Voltaire, though he asks him to dinner and wastes on him four hours of his time, treats him with a civil chilliness which surprises La Beaumelle, who appears to have no idea that Voltaire has seen those “Pensées”; and attributes his cold manner to an indigestion.
La Beaumelle is much with Lord Tyrconnel, seeks to gain the good graces of Darget, perhaps even to sup with the King. He has owned to an admiration for Maupertuis. Voltaire bethinks himself presently of a little ruse to rid his path of this bramble. “Will you lend me your ‘Thoughts,’ M. Beaumelle?” Beaumelle lends the book; and after three days Voltaire returns it with the page containing the offensive remark upon himself and the King turned down.
But La Beaumelle did not take the hint.
On December 7, 1751, the King and Voltaire arrived in Berlin from Potsdam, and foolish La Beaumelle went again to see Voltaire. He attempted to explain away that remarkable sentence. But it was hardly capable of a favourable interpretation. Voltaire, on La Beaumelle’s own showing, behaved with self-control and dignity.
“Who showed the passage to the King?” says La Beaumelle.
“Darget,” answers Voltaire.