To the Hermitage (58 page)

‘See for yourself. Come, sir, I shall arrange it. Promise me.’

‘But my legs, sir, truly, my legs.’

‘And what do you do next in Paris, Monsieur Frankling?’

‘What do I do? What can you possibly do after meeting Diderot? You go and meet Voltaire.’

‘He’s in Ferney.’

‘But is he, sir, is he? Ask again.’

‘You mean he’s here? Then I have to meet him.’

When our man returns to the rue Taranne that night, he finds himself staring again at the manuscript he has left lying open on his desk. He thinks again of the big man in the half-glasses and the beaver hat. He thinks of the Indian wonderlands, the great swamps and forests and tree-frogs of Louisiana, the great downpour of falls at Niagara, the Indian peoples, the smell of the skunk, the caribou splashing in the lakes, the noise of the whippoorwills in the woods. He writes a little blessing to those dear Louisiana lands, the old transatlantic provinces, now to have a different future: ‘May there never be born in any one of them, or if so may he die at once, by the stroke of the hangman or the dagger of a Brutus, a citizen who is so powerful, and so much the enemy of human happiness, to devise for himself the project of becoming its master.’

He thinks a moment, and then adds a benign coda: perhaps if so the world might create just one republic that is able to defeat the law otherwise written in the great Book of Destiny: ‘The decree pronounced against all the things, all the societies, all the people of this world; that all have a birth, a flowering, a tiresome old age, and then a death.’

And so, thanks to Franklin, it finally happens. The two men who really do have to meet sometime during their lifetimes manage to meet at last. There, in the bare darkened drawing room of someone’s Paris hotel particulaire, he sits, clad in a dressing gown, the most famous man of the age. He’s been carefully arranged in a big armchair. His bony feet are naked, a turban is wound round his head. He’s eighty-four years old now, visibly tired, coughing heavily. Over that long lifetime that reaches across reign after reign he’s written more words than almost any other wordsmith could manage: more even, when our man honestly thinks about it, than he has himself. His collected works will run to over a hundred volumes, constructing yet another financial disaster for poor Caron, Beaumarchais, who when he turns his eyes from sponsoring American insurgency will decide to buy up all his posthumous papers and rights. Then his papers themselves will scatter themselves like parachuting seeds through all the libraries, private and public, of the world. His letters already cover the world in hopeless variety: so many, to so many people, on so many different things. He’s performed in all the familiar genres: poetry and prose, comedy and tragedy, fiction and history, satire and squib. He’s assumed many identities, taken over a hundred pseudonyms; even the name by which all know him, Voltaire, is not his true name. Just finding the man again – tracing his signatures, discovering his different roles in life, finding his books and records – will provide many with their own life-work.

Now, in this April of 1778, he’s come back to Paris. Posterity stalks him everywhere he goes. Even his old enemies have become his friends. ‘Author! Author!’ they shouted out two nights ago at the Théâtre Français, where his latest creation, the tragedy
Irene
(neither age nor travel stop him writing) is now playing. Court and censor have always denied him; yet court and censor were there in the audience to hail him – with the one conspicuous exception of His Serene Majesty himself. Mozart is playing in Paris, but this particular auditorium is on this night where everyone wishes to be. The dark classical tale has unfolded, but that is nothing compared with the second and greater drama. The author’s bust by the excellent Caffieri is set centre-stage. The comedians and tragedians reappear to place laurels on his head, in the supreme apotheosis. Then, as rumour buzzes through the theatre, the shout begins to rise. ‘Author! Author!’ Soon the plaster cast is replaced by the living author, fetched down from his box, the laurels on the bust removed and placed on the living head. ‘Author! Author!’ The standing ovation lasts for more than five minutes. ‘Author! Author!’ shout the vast street-crowds of Paris the moment he sets foot outside. ‘I may suffocate, but it will be under a shower of roses!’ he cries with his usual grace and felicity, as he struggles through the mêlée to make it to his carriage. Apotheosis!

‘Monsieur Talleyrand was here, and also Monsieur Frankling,’ says Madame Denis, stout and ever self-interested, as she leads our man up the stairs of the private hotel.

‘How was Monsieur Frankling?’

‘Oh, the American insisted in speaking in French, and he insisted in speaking in English, so nobody understood anything. But it was very important. If only Rousseau had been there as well.’

‘Oh yes,’ murmurs our man. There are vast paintings on the staircase, torches on the walls. In a room where the shutters are almost closed, he’s sitting there shaded in half light. It all feels so familiar, as if it has happened once before. There are the monkey features, there is the wicked grin, perhaps just a bit sunk back into itself these days. There he is, witty and snappy and spiteful at an age when most men would be bent and bitter and glum: the brigand of Lake Geneva, jack of all trades and master of most of them too. His spiky tongue licks his large red lips as he sits there shoeless in the armchair: exactly as he sat in the statue that haunts the Empress’s court.

Madame Denis moves the rugs and cushions and sits down to eavesdrop on the talk. But what can be said to him? He’s often been bitter and spiteful, yet no one has done more for humankind: defended liberty, supported freedom, brought the wisdoms of Locke and Newton into the Popish thought-world of France. He’s known exile, beating, disgrace, prison and excommunication. He’s lived with the great powers of the age, and played his part in raising them high or bringing them low. He’s paid plenty of homage to princes and popes and potentates, but with cleverness and cunning enough they now pay homage to him. These days it’s Frederick of Prussia who flatters the philosopher, rather than the other way round, and who plans monuments in his honour, even sending him his bust from Potsdam with inscribed on the base not his name, Voltaire, but one simple word: ‘Immortal.’ So he is.

Now he’s a crown prince of Philosophy: grand, glorious, very rich. His wealth sometimes seems a mystery, given his claims to persecution. Yet however he won it he’s put it to use: acquired his own hectares and territories, founded his own city, created his own Hermitage. Once Ferney was said to be on the edge of Geneva; now it’s Geneva that sits on the edge of Ferney. He’s cultivated his gardens, grown his pomegranates, tended his vineyards, reared his fat sheep, thousands of them grazing once uncultivated fields. He’s set up studios, workshops, lofts, factories; eighty watchmakers depend on his employment. He’s entertained everyone, either at his huge table at Ferney or through the more abstract means of print and book. Ferney itself has become his private city, empire, court, a principality where princes come to attend on thinkers. His plates are of silver, his coat of arms decorates every door. He wished to be honest, and he wished to be famous; he wished to be virtuous, wished to be noble; wished to be Olympian and indifferent, wished to be very rich. In his eighty-four years he’s succeeded, made his grand deal with Posterity. He’s written and performed in all of his own plays; and for an eighty-year lifetime he’s played in the biggest play of all, the one with the noble hero whose name was Arouet but is now called Voltaire.

He’s coughing, spitting, and probably dying, wearing himself out in Paris in one vast final moment of fame. Yet as Frederick has admitted at last, he truly is immortal. He’s become his own statue, transfigured himself into his own waxwork, grown into his own bust. He’s sitting there Houdon-like, the same grinning monkey, but lit up with sparky animation; the stout niece sits protectively beside him, eyeing his visitor distrustfully, handing him protective cups of chocolate. He’s the talk of all Paris now, everyone chattering about his safe return.

‘Cher maître,’
our man says, going forward, kneeling, putting out his hands. ‘Embrace me, as one honest man to another. I am Diderot. I think I’m not entirely unknown to you.’

‘My dear Diderot, my fellow Socrates, my honest and able brother in thought. We’ve known each other for ever, but we’ve left this meeting remarkably late.’

‘I hoped one day I would come to Ferney.’

‘But you didn’t.’

‘So it was written, or not written.’

‘Was it? Well, what should we say to each other now?’

Madame Denis sits watching, listening carefully, no doubt knowing every wise and witty word is worth at least a livre.

‘Shakespeare,’ says our man, trying a fast opening serve.

‘Don’t mention it,’ says the grinning monkey.

‘I love him,’ says our man.

‘Amazing. And I do not.’

‘Nothing in the world would please me better than to be able to stand beneath his enormous statue and reach up to touch his fine testicles,’ our man ventures.

‘Indeed?’

‘If by that means I could inherit by proxy what is surely the world’s greatest act of generation.’

‘I fear you’re as vulgar as he is. And I had you for a man of reason.’

‘So, as I admire him, you condemn him?’

‘I condemn him, my dear sir, for his grossness of imagination. I denounce him before the seats of judgement for his want of philosophy. I dismiss him for his grotesque naïveté, his confusion of artistic purpose, his unwavering want of taste.’

‘In that case you hate him for his greatness, surely? For not writing like yourself?’

‘It’s a good standard.’

‘You are condemning a man who was cleverer, wiser, more capacious even than you.’

‘Now, sir, you’d better go,’ cries Madame Denis, rising.

‘No, Marie-Louise, I have to answer this,’ says the Immortal. ‘I am over eighty, older by decades than you, old enough to be truly proud.’

‘You are also old enough to be dead,’ says our man. ‘No one could ever wish it, but before it happens tell me what I always wanted to know. You’ve written more than any of us,
cher maître.
Written more wisely, more fluently, more wonderfully. But did you never perhaps . . . tire of it?’

‘Tire of it?’

‘Tire of writing, I mean.’

‘No, I never tired of writing. That would be like tiring of existing. Writing is everything. What about you? Did you? Surely not?’

‘I’m here to confess at your knees, as I would never confess to any other soul in the world,’ says our man.

‘Tell me, my son.’

‘I know my sins,’ he says, getting onto the floor. ‘I have talked too much. I was born to chatter foolishly and tell the truth. To anyone: friends, enemies, total strangers. It was rarely in my best interest.’

‘Get up, sir.’

‘I was never wise. I fell into the delight of ideas, the joy of imaginings, the wonder of fictions. I loved dialogues and dramas. I watched truth come and go. I dwelt among plots and mystifications. You know I made the
Encyclopedia
.’

‘You know I know,’ says the Immortal, ‘I wrote for it too, at your request. Along with so many other honest men.’

‘Yes, everyone wrote, everyone with a decent mind and enough honour. But I’m not proud even of that. I’m much prouder of the things I never finished, the work I left undone.’

‘Why do you want to tell me this?’

‘I’m already well past my sixtieth year . . .’

‘Your sixtieth? I’m way past my eightieth.’

‘I’m weary of strife and harassment. The world’s turned foolish and gone way past me. I seem to long only for obscurity and a nice quiet death.’

‘There’s nothing quiet about death.’

‘But, sir, when the day comes to us, what will it all have meant? For you to have been Voltaire? For me to have been Diderot? Though I realize your two syllables are destined to survive far longer than my three.’

‘Of course we’ll survive. All of us. Ours is the age that made the difference. And not just in France, my dear sir, in the world as it rolls.’

‘In Petersburg, I saw your bust by Houdon.’

‘There are several, you know. There’s another in Paris. It made his name. Now they are asking him to do a plaster George Washington.’

‘And Pigalle is doing one of you? To tell you the truth, he’s done me too.’

‘Yes, Frederick of Prussia is paying. And Rousseau is going mad with jealousy.’

‘Good. It’s wonderful.’

‘Listen to the poem I wrote about it: “Poor Jean-Jacques, with hostile stare, / Cries: ‘Not a statue to Voltaire? / Please, I’m the one your chisel should / Honour for the greater good / I must protest, it isn’t fair, / Not one more statue to Voltaire.’ ”’

‘It’s perfect,’ cries our man, chuckling. ‘How Jean-Jacques despises us.’

‘Of course. He’s made an altar to himself alone.’

‘Perhaps we all have.’

‘And they will remember us all, sir, but in very different ways. They will remember Rousseau’s empty weeping foolish heart. Your spinning chatter. My infinite wisdom. Each of us has his own metamorphosis.’

The Immortal coughs.

‘I think he’s tiring,’ says Madame Denis. ‘He got quite exhausted after his apotheosis.’

‘Of course,’ says our man rising.

‘No no, my friend, don’t go. You must tell me. What was she like, in the fair flesh? The Semiramis of the North?’

‘The Empress?’

‘Cateau.’

‘Cateau?’

‘That’s what I called her. I loved her, of course.’

‘But you never even met her, I thought.’

‘There was a cosmic radiance. A fatal attraction. An electricity. A magnetism.’

‘Obviously something to do with power.’

‘I have never despised power. I helped her to her power. I did all I could to make her great.’

‘She is.’

‘But what was it like to go there in the flesh? To see her? To stand before her?’

‘I’ll confess everything to you again. It was truly wonderful. When I went there to her court from our land of the free, I was a slave. When I left her land of slaves, I felt a free man. I dare say I loved her too.’