“When I shake my wig, I powder the whole Republic!”
The theatre was built, in spite of Rousseau’s remonstrances; actors brought from naughty Paris, and complimentary tickets for the first representation sent to the magnates of Calvin’s city. Not one of these, from the Mayor down to the constable, had any intention of going. All were thrilled with horror at the suspicion that some weak brother might be allured by the forbidden fruit. All were curious to know who the recreant would be, and burning with jealousy for the purity of the public morals. Early in the afternoon of the appointed day, loungers and spies stationed themselves on the bridge and road by which the delinquents must pass to Les Délices. The cordon lengthened and spread until the throng at Voltaire’s gates pressed back upon those pouring out of the city. When the theater-doors were opened, the crowd rushed in, still moved by pietistic and patriotic fervor; the seats were filled and the curtain rose.
Reckoning shrewdly upon the revulsion of the human nature he knew so well, Voltaire sent privily to the Cathedral of St. Pierre for the triangular chair of Calvin preserved there, with holy care, and introduced it among the stage-properties in the last scene. The Genevese municipality recognized it immediately, as did the rest of the spectators, but so intoxicated were they by now with the novel draught of “corrupting” pleasure, that they actually applauded its appearance!
We heard this story from the lips of the Lady-Principal of the pensionnat, upon the threshold of the barred doors of the theatre. Groups of girls sat under the spreading chestnuts; walked, arm-in-arm, up and down the avenues. The casements of the old house were open to the warm air. Boy, who had accompanied us, in defiance of the ordinance excluding young gentlemen, was the cynosure of the merry band, and being spoiled faster than usual by offerings of flowers, confectionery, kisses and coaxing flatteries.
A faintly-worn path beyond the theatre marks “Voltaire’s Walk.” It is shaded by a double row of splendid trees, and at the far end is a mossy stone bench on which he used to sit. It was easy for Fancy to conjure up the picture of what might have been there on the morrow of the theater-opening, and the image of him who was the life of the party, glorying insolently in their triumph. The meager figure wrapped in the gorgeous dressing-gown, remembered still at Les Délices—the sardonic smirk that poisoned equivoque and epigram; the Du Chatelet’s lover-comrade; the friend and slanderer of Frederick the Great; the pupil of the Jesuits, and the bon Chrétien, who “hated the priests;” the philosopher, who died, worshiping his Maker, and at peace with the world,—but who had, living, feared not God, neither regarded Man!
CHAPTER XXIX.
Calvin—The Diodati House—Primroses.
THE house in which Calvin lived and died has never been photographed. “Madame does not reflect how narrow is the street!” pleaded the picture-dealer to whom I expressed my surprise at this.