A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times, Volume 6

by François Guizot

Voltaire, however, returned to that Paris in which he was born, in which he had lived but little since his early days, to which he belonged by the merits as well as the defects of his mind, and in which he was destined to die. In spite of his protests about his being a rustic and a republican, he had never allowed himself to slacken the ties which united him to his Parisian friends; the letters of the patriarch of Ferney circulated amongst the philosophical fraternity; they were repeated in the correspondence of Grimm and Diderot with foreign princes; from his splendid retreat at Ferney he cheered and excited the literary zeal and often the anti-religious ardor of the Encyclopaedists. He had, however, ceased all working connection with that great work since it had been suspended and afterwards resumed at the orders and with the permission of government. The more and more avowed materialistic theories revolted his shrewd and sensible mind; without caring to go to the bottom of his thought and contemplate its consequences, he clung to the notion of Providence as to a waif in the great shipwreck of positive creeds; he could not imagine

“This clock without a Maker could exist.”

It is his common sense, and not the religious yearnings of his soul, that makes him write in the poem of La Loi naturelle,—

O God, whom men ignore, whom everything reveals, Hear Thou the latest words of him who now appeals; ‘Tis searching out Thy law that hath bewildered me; My heart may go astray, but it is full of Thee.

When he was old and suffering, he said to Madame Necker, in one of those fits of melancholy to which he was subject, “The thinking faculty is lost just like the eating, drinking, and digesting faculties. The marionettes of Providence, in fact, are not made to last so long as It.” In his dying hour Voltaire was seen showing more concern for terrestrial scandals than for the terrors of conscience, crying aloud for a priest, and, with his mouth full of the blood he spat, still repeating in a half whisper, “I don’t want to be thrown into the kennel.” A sad confession of the insufficiency of his convictions and of the inveterate levity of his thoughts; he was afraid of the judgment of man without dreading the judgment of God. Thus was revealed the real depth of an infidelity of which Voltaire himself perhaps had not calculated the extent and the fatal influences.

Voltaire was destined to die at Paris; there he found the last joys of his life and there he shed the last rays of his glory. For the twenty-seven years during which he had been away from it he had worked much, written much, done much. Whilst almost invariably disavowing his works, he had furnished philosophy with pointed and poisoned weapons against religion; he had devoted to humanity much time and strength; one of the last delights he had tasted was the news of the decree which cleared the memory of M. de Lally; he had received into his house, educated and found a husband for the grand-niece of the great Corneille; he had applied the inexhaustible resources of his mind at one time to good and at another to evil, with almost equal ardor; he was old, he was ill, yet this same ardor still possessed him when he arrived at Paris on the 10th of February, 1778. The excitement caused by his return was extraordinary. “This new prodigy has stopped all other interest for some time,” writes Grimm; “it has put an end to rumors of war, intrigues in civil life, squabbles at court. Encyclopaedic pride appeared diminished by half, the Sorbonne shook all over, the Parliament kept silence; all the literary world is moved, all Paris is ready to fly to the idol’s feet.” So much attention and so much glory had been too much for the old man. Voltaire was dying; in his fright he had sent for a priest and had confessed; when he rose from his bed by a last effort of the marvellous elasticity, inherent in his body and his mind, he resumed for a while the course of his triumphs. “M. de Voltaire has appeared for the first time at the Academy and at the play; he found all the doors, all the approaches to the Academy besieged by a multitude which only opened slowly to let him, pass and then rushed in immediately upon his footsteps with repeated plaudits and acclamations. The Academy came out into the first room to meet him, an honor it had never yet paid to any of its members, not even to the foreign princes who had deigned to be present at its meetings. The homage he received at the Academy was merely the prelude to that which awaited him at the National theatre. As soon as his carriage was seen at a distance, there arose a universal shout of joy. All the curb-stones, all the barriers, all the windows were crammed with spectators, and, scarcely was the carriage stopped, when people were already on the imperial and even on the wheels to get a nearer view of the divinity. Scarcely had he entered the house when Sieur Brizard came up with a crown of laurels, which Madame de Villette placed upon the great man’s head, but which he immediately took off, though the public urged him to keep it on by clapping of hands and by cheers which resounded from all corners of the house with such a din as never was heard.”

“All the women stood up. I saw at one time that part of the pit which was under the boxes going down on their knees, in despair of getting a sight any other way. The whole house was darkened with the dust raised by the ebb and flow of the excited multitude. It was not without difficulty that the players managed at last to begin the piece. It was Irene, which was given for the sixth time. Never had this tragedy been better played, never less listened to, never more applauded. The illustrious old man rose to thank the public, and, the moment afterwards, there appeared on a pedestal in the middle of the stage a bust of this great man, and the actresses, garlands and crowns in hand, covered it with laurels; M. de Voltaire seemed to be sinking beneath the burden of age and of the homage with which he had just been overwhelmed. He appeared deeply affected, his eyes still sparkled amidst the pallor of his face, but it seemed as if he breathed no longer save with the consciousness of his glory. The people shouted, ‘Lights! lights! that everybody may see him!’ The coachman was entreated to go at a walk, and thus he was accompanied by cheering and the crowd as far as Pont Royal.”

Thus is described in the words of an eye-witness the last triumph of an existence that had been one of ceaseless agitation, owing to Voltaire himself far more than to the national circumstances and events of the time at which he lived. His anxious vanity and the inexhaustible movement of his mind had kept him constantly fluctuating between alternations of intoxication and despair; he had the good fortune to die at the very pinnacle of success and renown, the only immortality he could comprehend or desire, at the outset of a new and hopeful reign; he did not see, he had never apprehended the terrible catastrophe to which he had been thoughtlessly contributing for sixty years. A rare piece of good fortune and one which might be considered too great, if the limits of eternal justice rested upon earth and were to be measured by our compass.

Voltaire’s incessant activity bore many fruits which survived him; he contributed powerfully to the triumph of those notions of humanity, justice, and freedom, which, superior to his own ideal, did honor to the eighteenth century; he became the model of a style, clear, neat, brilliant, the natural exponent of his own mind, far more than of the as yet confused hopes and aspirations of his age; he defended the rights of common sense, and sometimes withstood the anti-religious passion of his friends, but he blasted both minds and souls with his sceptical gibes; his bitter and at the same time temperate banter disturbed consciences which would have been revolted by the materialistic doctrines of the Encyclopaedists; the circle of infidelity widened under his hands; his disciples were able to go beyond him on the fatal path he had opened to them. Voltaire has remained the true representative of the mocking and stone-flinging phase of free-thinking, knowing nothing of the deep yearnings any more than of the supreme wretchlessness of the human soul, which it kept imprisoned within the narrow limits of earth and time. At the outcome from the bloody slough of the French Revolution and from the chaos it caused in men’s souls, it was the infidelity of Voltaire which remained at the bottom of the scepticism and moral disorder of the France of our day. The demon which torments her is even more Voltairian than materialistic.

Other influences, more sincere and at the same time more dangerous, were simultaneously undermining men’s minds. The group of Encyclopaedists, less prudent and less temperate than Voltaire, flaunted openly the flag of revolt. At the head marched Diderot, the most daring of all, the most genuinely affected by his own ardor, without perhaps being the most sure of his ground in his negations. His was an original and exuberant nature, expansively open to all new impressions. “In my country,” he says, “we pass within twenty-four hours from cold to hot, from calm to storm, and this changeability of climate extends to the persons. Thus, from earliest infancy, they are wont to shift with every wind. The head of a Langrois stands on his shoulders like a weathercock on the top of a church-steeple; it is never steady at one point, and, if it comes round again to that which it had left, it is not to stop there. As for me, I am of my country; only residence of the capital and constant application have corrected me a little.”