Voltaire in Love (20 page)

The year 1740 was fatal to three crowned heads. Frederick William of Prussia's death was followed, within a week of each other at the end of October, by those of the Emperor Charles VI and the Empress Anne of Russia. Charles VI had no male heir; he left his possessions to his twenty-three-year-old daughter, Maria-Theresa, having made an agreement with the sovereigns of Europe
(the Pragmatic Sanction, 1713) by which they were to respect her rights. No sooner was he dead, however, than they all remembered that they had wives or female ancestresses through whom they themselves might have a claim to the Empire. Europe was thrown into confusion. Frederick wrote to Voltaire, ‘this death has disturbed my pacific ideas', and then, bursting, as he loved to do, into French verse:

This may not have been very elegant but was perfectly clear.

Fleury wrote to Voltaire, who was still at The Hague. He knows Voltaire through and through, a good, honest man. But he was once young and has been too long in growing up. When young he kept what mistaken people called good company, that of the greatest in the land. These high and mighty lords had spoilt Voltaire, they praised him and were right to do so, but they gave way to him in everything and went too far. Now Voltaire himself has become aware of all this and in his letter to the Cardinal, which has given great pleasure, he speaks respectfully of religion. A civilized man owes two main duties – to his King and to his creator – even barbarians know that. It is time that Voltaire should return to his native land with these thoughts in mind. His talents do honour to his country, now he should put them to a patriotic use which will bring him lasting fame.

This letter expressed, with affectionate moderation, the official view of Voltaire. He was an
enfant terrible,
and it was time he grew up. The clever old priest was now going to give him a chance of serving his country instead of sitting on its frontiers flouting and annoying the authorities. He told him to go to Berlin and see what Frederick intended to do in the new international situation. Fleury himself, old (he was eighty-seven), wise, and ruler of a land that had all the territory it wanted, was in favour of the
status quo,
but if others were going to snatch and
grab he might have to reconsider his position. Why had Frederick suddenly sent troops to Silesia? Fleury waded through the
Anti-Machiavel
and found no answer there. He now had two official envoys in Berlin, Valory and the Marquis de Beauvau; they were both at sea. Perhaps Frederick would open his heart to his great new friend.

Pleased as Punch, without having seen Émilie between the two visits, Voltaire started off for Berlin. There were one or two little matters he wanted to settle on his own account, apart from his important mission. Frederick must be made to pay Voltaire's out-of-pocket expenses for the
Anti-Machiavel,
he must also pay Thieriot for his news-letter and the books and pamphlets he had been sending Frederick, for four years now, from Paris. Voltaire was accompanied on his journey by one Dumolard, an orientalist, protégé of Thieriot, who was to take up the post of librarian to the King.

The second meeting of Voltaire and Frederick was not such an enchantment as the first. Frederick complained of Voltaire's bill on which he had put, as well as everything else, his accounts for the journey to Berlin. ‘As Court Jesters go, this one is expensive.' All through their long friendship Frederick accused him of being a miser. He must have known the symptoms, nobody was more miserly than he. But the correspondence between Voltaire and Moussinot shows Voltaire to have been generosity itself. He certainly disliked being cheated, particularly of small sums. But when he lost, as he sometimes did in the course of his speculations, many thousands of livres, he was always very philosophical about it. He never set up a Shylock wail. He saw no reason why Frederick should not pay what he owed. On this occasion Frederick made the ridiculous observation that as his purse was longer than that of Mme du Châtelet he had every chance of getting Voltaire away from her. Meanwhile, in spite of repeated promises, the King had still not given Thieriot one penny.

At the end of the visit Voltaire, whose rashness when he put pen to paper was inconceivable, sent a note to Maupertuis inviting him to come and sup with Valory and Beauvau. He wishes to embrace his philosopher before taking leave of ‘
la respectable, singulière
et aimable putain qui vient'.
Marcus Aurelius, on further acquaintance, had turned into a respectable prostitute.

These were afterthoughts: while they were together, the miser and the prostitute made merry. Voltaire's health had never been better; Frederick's malaria had been cured by the death of the Emperor. They wrote verses, some of a curious nature, calling each other
coquette,
and
maîtresse.
They gossiped, made music, and gambled in a purely masculine society. The vice which was so disgusting and ignoble when practised by Desfontaines, took on a classical, lyrical aspect when
tendre
Algarotti and
beau
Lugeac
‡
forgot themselves in Valory's drawing-room. Shades of a young, handsome, Venetian Socrates were evoked. Had not Voltaire always said that Frederick's court would be the modern Athens?

Frederick played the flute. He showed Voltaire his collection of pictures which included four little Watteaus declared by Voltaire to be copies. ‘Germany is full of sham pictures; the Princes there are easy to cheat and not at all averse from cheating when they get the opportunity.'

Nothing could have been more diverting than the Prussian Court; nothing more mysterious than the Prussian King's intentions. Funnily enough, he never spoke of them. Voltaire was no more successful in finding out what he was up to than Valory, Beauvau, Dickens, and all the other ambassadors. On 12 December 1740, however, Frederick gave a bal masqué and on the 13th he invaded Silesia. Voltaire had already left. After a visit of a fortnight he had suddenly torn himself away from his
coquette,
who begged in vain for three more days. ‘Tyrannical Émilie, violent in her jealousy', as Frederick rather smugly put it, had written threatening suicide.

This second journey to Frederick had thrown her into a state of despair. She told d'Argental that it was a cruel reward for her efforts on Voltaire's behalf in France, where she had paved the way for an honourable return, and even for membership of various Academies. He had announced his departure to her dryly, knowing that it would wound her. Very well, now she is ill and will soon
be in her grave, like poor Mme de Richelieu, though quicker than she and with fewer regrets. Voltaire may be sorry, in the end. The Prussian Court will lose its attractions and he may well be tormented by the remembrance of Émilie. She only hopes her friends will never reproach him for what he has done to her.

Angry and distracted, but not actually dying, Mme du Châtelet left Paris for Brussels where her presence was again needed for the lawsuit and where she hoped to meet the returning Voltaire. Since he had abandoned her to go to Frederick at the Castle of Moyland everything had gone wrong for her. In Paris they were saying that Koenig had written her book.
§
They were also saying, though it is to be hoped she did not know this, that her despair at the absence of Voltaire was accounted for by the fact that he did her work for her. This, of course, simply shows up the stupidity of those who believed it. Voltaire could no more have done her work than she could have written
Le Mondain.
Another humiliation: while she was at Fontainebleau, where she stayed, as she always did, with Richelieu, she had tried in vain to renew their old love affair. No doubt the Duke had other fish to fry. Waiting for Voltaire at Brussels she wrote to Richelieu (24 December 1740): ‘I have suffered the only two misfortunes which could really wound me to the heart; I have cause to complain of him for whom I have left everything and without whom the universe (if you were not part of it) would be nothing to me; and my best friends are suspecting me of unworthy behaviour. Your friendship is my only consolation, but you are 300 leagues away. My heart feels at home in your company, since you alone understand it. What seems to others a pitiable folly is a sentiment not foreign to your own nature, even though it may be unnatural. I do not know why I made you that confession at Fontainebleau. Do not ask me, for I cannot explain it. It was the truth, and I always like you to know the truth about me. I could not have stopped myself; I might feel sorry except that I know you so well, so well that I shall always tell you
openly, remorselessly, what my heart feels about you. This would be incomprehensible to anybody else and it has nothing to do with the frenzied passion which is killing me at present. Useless to say “all this is impossible” because I have an unanswerable reply, “it is so” – even if you don't happen to like it. I hear from Paris that my book is a success; I now wish its success to make itself felt.'

At Brussels she waited a whole month for Voltaire. He was having a dreadful winter journey through ‘detestable Westphalia' and other German states whose inhabitants were more like beasts than men, so that a traveller whose arrangements went wrong was in for a rough if not a dangerous time. At last, early in the New Year, 1741, he arrived safely and there was a touching reunion. He had a little inflammation of the eyes, and in a letter to Frederick he blamed Émilie for this, saying that on her account he had lost his eyesight, his happiness, and his King. But he told all his other correspondents that Mme du Châtelet had never seemed so far above monarchs.

But Émilie was not in luck that year. No sooner had Voltaire returned to her arms than he announced that he was now too old (forty-six) to make love! ‘The heart does not age, but this immortal is condemned to live in a ruin.'

Mme du Châtelet said she defied the King of Prussia to hate her more than she hated him.

*
The correct quotation is:
Quia viderunt oculi mei salutare tuum.
(St Luke, II.)

†
This sixteenth-century house, which then seemed to be on its last legs, survived until it was burnt down in 1948. It had become a royal palace and the present Queen of the Netherlands was married from its walls.

‡
The Marquis de Lugeac, a secretary at the French embassy, later married Mlle de Baschi, niece of Mme de Pompadour.

§
It is pleasant to know that in his
Leibnitz in France
(Oxford University Press, 1955), Mr W. H. Barber never suggests for a moment that
Institutions de physique
might have been written by Koenig. He treats Mme du Châtelet as a philosopher in her own right.

After all these agitations the two philosophers settled down together again. It is probable that their relationship, never dependent on ordinary, physical love, had not changed very much in spite of Voltaire's depressing declaration. There had always been gossip about Émilie's gallantries; she was soon said to be having an affair with her son's new tutor.

Voltaire told his nephew's little boy: ‘My child, to get on with men, one must have the women on one's side, and to get on with women one must know what they are. Mark my words all women are faithless and unchaste.' ‘All women?' cried Émilie. ‘What are you saying, Monsieur?' ‘Never misinform a child, it is not right to do so.'

They stayed in Brussels for the next few months. Mme du Châtelet was easier in her mind now about Frederick who, busy ‘protecting' Silesia, no longer required the presence of her companion. She said that there could be no greater contradiction to the principles of the
Anti-Machiavel
than this invasion, but that Frederick was welcome to all the provinces he wanted so long as he did not take away what made the charm of her existence.

On 10 April 1741, Voltaire put on his
Mahomet
at Lille, where Mme Denis was now living, and where she had a salon for the officers of the garrison and the local intellectuals. Half-way through the first performance, Voltaire received the news of Frederick's victory at Mollwitz. He stopped the play and made an announcement to the wildly cheering audience. The Lillois were anti-Austrian
to a man. Nobody knew then that Frederick had lost his nerve and run away when the battle seemed to be going badly (snatched by Morgante into fairyland, says Carlyle indulgently) and had not reappeared on the field until he heard that it had been won. Later in life Voltaire was to say that the only living creature to whom Frederick had ever felt gratitude was the horse that bore him from Mollwitz.

Maupertuis had become involved in the battle while on his way to join Frederick and was said to have been killed. Presently they heard that he had not been killed at all, but had fallen into the hands of Silesian peasants. Émilie shuddered at this thought, for the Silesians did barbarous things to the followers of their Protector whenever they got a chance. However, Maupertuis turned up, naked but unhurt, at Austrian headquarters. As he had seen their army by then, and was so good at arithmetic, the Austrians thought it better not to let him go back to Prussia for a while. They gave him some clothes and fifty louis and sent him off to Vienna where people were delighted to entertain him. Maria-Theresa asked how it felt to see two Princes fighting for such a small portion of that earth which he had measured? ‘It is not for me to be more philosophic than Kings,' he replied diplomatically. Maria-Theresa's husband, discovering that Maupertuis had lost, among other possessions, his Graham watch, took out his own which was also by Graham and gave it to him. Mme du Châtelet wrote to congratulate him on being alive and begged him to go and see a cousin of her own at that Court.