The death of Madame du Châtelet, the circumstances which attended it, and the celebrity of herself and her lover, combined to cause a great sensation. No elegies indeed appeared on the occasion,—"no tears eternal that embalm the dead;" but a shower of epigrams and bon mots—some exquisitely witty and malicious. The story of her ring, in which Voltaire and her husband each expected to find his own portrait, and which on being opened, was found, to the utter discomfiture of both, to contain that of Saint-Lambert, is well known.
If we may judge from her picture, Madame du Châtelet must have been extremely pretty. Her eyes were fine and piercing; her features delicate, with a good deal of finesse and intelligence in their expression. But her countenance, like her character, was devoid of interest. She had great power of mental abstraction; and on one occasion she went through a most complicated calculation of figures in her head, while she played and won a game at piquet. She could be graceful and fascinating, but her manners were, in general, extremely disagreeable; and her parade of learning, her affectation, her egotism, her utter disregard of the comforts, feelings, and opinions of others, are well pourtrayed in two or three brilliant strokes of sarcasm from the pen of Madame de Stael.[145] She even turns her philosophy into ridicule. "Elle fait actuellement la revue de ses Principes;[146] c'est un exercise qu'elle réitère chaque année, sans quoi ils pourroient s'échapper; et peut-être s'en aller si loin qu'elle n'en retrouverait pas un seul. Je crois bien que sa tête est pour eux une maison de force, et non pas le lieu de leur naissance."[147]
That Madame du Châtelet was a woman of extraordinary talent, and that her progress in abstract sciences was uncommon, and even unique at that time, at least among her own sex, is beyond a doubt; but her learned treatises on Newton, and the nature of fire, are now utterly forgotten. We have since had a Mrs. Marcet; and we have read of Gaetana Agnesi, who was professor of mathematics in the University of Padua; two women who, uniting to the rarest philosophical acquirements, gentleness and virtue, have needed no poet to immortalize them.
Of the numerous poems which Voltaire addressed to Madame du Châtelet, the Epistle beginning
Tu m'appelles à toi, vaste et puissant génie,
Minerve de la France, immortelle Emilie,
is a chef d'œuvre, and contains some of the finest lines he ever wrote. The Epistle to her on calumny, written to console her for the abuse and ridicule which her abstractions and indiscretions had provoked, begins with these beautiful lines—
Ecoutez-moi, respectable Emilie:
Vous êtes belle; ainsi donc la moitié
Du genre humain sera votre ennemie:
Vous possédez un sublime génie;
On vous craindra; votre tendre amitié
Est confiante; et vous serez trahie:
Votre vertu dans sa démarche unie,
Simple et sans fard, n'a point sacrifié
A nos dévots; craignez la calomnie.
With that famous ring, from which he had afterwards the mortification to discover that his own portrait had been banished to make room for that of Saint-Lambert, he sent her this elegant quatrain.
Barier grava ces traits destinés pour vos yeux;
Avec quelque plaisir daignez les reconnoitre:
Les vòtres dans mon cœur furent gravés bien mieux,
Mais ce fut par un plus grand maitre.