Voltaire himself wrote to Mme. du Deffand: “They say sometimes of a man, 'He died like a dog’; but, truly, a dog is very happy to die without all the ceremony with which they persecute the last moments of our lives. If they had a little charity for us, they would let us die without saying anything about it. The worst is that we are then surrounded by hypocrites, who worry us to make us think as they do not in the least think; or else by imbeciles, who desire us to be as stupid as they are. All this is very disgusting. The only pleasure of life at Geneva is that people can die there as they like; many worthy persons summon no priest at all. People kill themselves if they please, without any one objecting; or they await the last moment, and no one troubles them about it.”
Under suffering, age, and impending death, Voltaire’s bearing, as Carlyle acknowledges, “one must say is rather beautiful.” Voltaire had all his life “enjoyed” bad health. He had always a feeble constitution, and was a confirmed invalid for the greater part of his life, suffering from bladder disorder, and a variety of other diseases that would have soon finished an ordinary man. We may say he was sustained by his work, which was ever gay, even when most pessimistic. “My eyes are as red as a drunkard’s,” he writes, “and I have not the honor to be one.” His wit lasted in old age. A visitor to Ferney, hearing him praise Haller enthusiastically, told him that Haller did not do him equal justice. “Ah,” said Voltaire, lightly, “perhaps we are both mistaken.” To Bailly, the astronomer, he wrote, at the age of eighty-one: “A hundred thanks for the book of medicine which you sent me, together with your own [History of Ancient Astronomy], when I was very unwell. I have not opened the first. The second I have read and feel much better.” He kept himself at work with coffee. His interest was ever in his work. At the very last, the new dictionary he had proposed to the Academy was on his mind; it was not proceeding as rapidly as his indefatigable spirit desired. “J'ai fait un pen de bien; c'est mon meilleur ouvrage”—“I have done a little good; that is my best work,” was one of his latest utterances.
His physicians gave their opinion that he might have lived even longer than he did had he not been lured to Paris by his niece (unprepossessing Madame Denis) to superintend the production of his last tragedy Irene. Asked at the barrier if there was anything contraband in the carriage, he replied, “Only myself.” On entering Paris he received a shock in the news that his friend Le Kain, the actor, had been buried the day before. He was visited by Benjamin Franklin, who brought his grandson, whom they desired to kneel for the patriarch’s blessing. Pronouncing in English the words, “God, Liberty, Toleration”—“this,” said Voltaire, “is the most suitable benediction for the grandson of Franklin.” Poems, addresses and deputations came thick upon him, and his hotel was thronged with visitors of rank and eminence. The popular voice hailed the aged patriarch, especially as the defender of Calas, the apostle of universal toleration; and this title was more gratifying to him than any other.
In one house where Voltaire called on his last visit to Paris, the mistress reproached him for the obstinacy with which, in extreme old age (over eighty-three), he continued to assail the Church and its beliefs. “Be moderate and generous,” said she, “after the victory. What can you fear now from such adversaries? The fanatics are prostrate (à terre). They can no longer injure. Their reign is over.” Voltaire replied: “You are in error, madame; it is a fire that is covered but not extinguished. Those fanatics, those Tartuffes, are mad dogs. They are muzzled, but they have not lost their teeth. It is true they bite no more; but on the first opportunity, if their teeth are not drawn, you will see if they will not bite.” All that one man could do was done by Voltaire. More than any other, he helped to muzzle the mad dog of religious intolerance, lassoing it dexterously with his finespun silken thread, since replaced by a stronger cord. But the beast even yet is not dead; its teeth are not all drawn. Give it a chance and it will still bite. What we have to thank Voltaire for is, that he has left works which, as he himself said, are “scissors and files to file the teeth and pare the talons of the monsters.”
Voltaire was, as he said, stifled in roses. He sat up at night perfecting Irene, and his unwearied activity induced him at his great age to begin a Dictionary upon a novel plan which he prevailed upon the French Academy to take up. At the performance of his tragedy he was crowned with laurel in his box, amid the plaudits of the audience. To keep himself up under the excitement, he exceeded even his usual excess of coffee. These labors and dissipation brought on spitting of blood, and sleeplessness, to obviate which he took opium. Condorcet says the servant mistook one of the doses, which threw him into a state of lethargy, from which he never recovered. He lingered for some time, but at length expired on the 30th of May, 1778, in his eighty-fourth year.
Of course lying tales of dying horrors were floated, and disbelieved in by all who knew him. He wished to rest in his own churchyard, and let the abbé Gaultier and the curé de St. Sulpice squabble as to who should have, the honor of his conversion. His secretary, being alone with him, begged him to state what his view continued to be when he believed himself dying; and received this written declaration: “I die adoring God, loving my friends, not hating my enemies, detesting superstition”—“Je meurs eti adorant dieu, en aimant mes amis, en ne baissant pas mes ennemis, de testant superstition.” This dying declaration may be seen at the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris (Fr. 11,460), written, signed and dated by him in a still firm hand, February, 1778.
Into the stories told of Voltaire’s dying moments and many similar legends, my colleague, Mr. G. W. Foote, has fully entered in his Infidel Deathbeds. He quotes the following extract from a letter by Dr. Burard, who, as assistant physician, was constantly about Voltaire in his last moments:
“I feel happy in being able, while paying homage to truth, to destroy the effect of the lying stories which have been told respecting the last moments of Mons. de Voltaire. I was, by office, one of those who were appointed to watch the whole progress of his illness, with MM. Tron-chin, Lorry, and Try, his medical attendants. I never left him for an instant during his last moments, and I can certify that we invariably observed in him the same strength of character, though his disease was necessarily attended with horrible pain. (Here follow the details of his case.) We positively forbade him to speak, in order to prevent the increase of a spitting of blood, with which he was attacked; still he continued to communicate with us by means of little cards, on which he wrote his questions; we replied to him verbally, and if he was not satisfied, he always made his observations to us in writing. He therefore retained his faculties up to the last moment, and the fooleries which have been attributed to him are deserving of the greatest contempt. It could not even be said that such or such person had related any circnmstance of his death, as being witness to it; for at the last, admission to his chamber was forbidden to any person. Those who came to obtain intelligence respecting the patient, waited in the saloon, and other apartments at hand. The proposition, therefore, which has been put in the mouth of Marshal Richelieu is as unfounded as the rest.
“Paris, April 3rd, 1819.
“(Signed) Burard.”