Voltaire in Love (7 page)

Falling in love inspired both of them to hard work. Émilie was learning English conversation from Voltaire; in three weeks she spoke fluently and thereafter they often talked together in English. She was also learning algebra from Maupertuis. Typical society woman, she had no compunction about eating up his time and picking his brains; she complained if he was not always at her disposal. Soon she wanted much more than lessons from him; she fell in love with him, too. Maupertuis was then about thirty-five, handsome, hard-hearted, attractive to women. He does not seem to have responded to Émilie's amorous advances very warmly, but we have only her letters, not his. ‘I shall be at home all day; come and see if you can teach me to elevate a nomos to a given force.' ‘I have no more work unless you set me a task; I desire one extremely.' ‘Come today at 6.00.' ‘It is not surprising that when one leaves you one should think of nothing but the pleasure of seeing you again.' ‘My life, at present, is very disorganized; I am dying; my soul needs you as my body needs repose.' ‘I love you as much as if you had been here this evening.'

Émilie was not only engaged in absorbing the lessons of two famous masters. She led an energetic social life, with her bosom friend the Duchesse de Saint-Pierre. They went together to the Opera, the Jardin du Roi (the Zoo), to various cafés, and to the meetings of the Académie des Sciences. At all these places Mme du Châtelet gave a rendezvous to Maupertuis. She also took him to see her mother, now a widow living at Creteil, near Paris. Émilie was always able to cram more into a single day than most women into a week; she was as strong as an ox and required very little sleep. If necessary she could work all night; indeed she liked to do so because then she knew she would be left in peace.

Unfortunately, except for two or three little notes, the entire correspondence between Voltaire and Mme du Châtelet has disappeared. They were both enormous letter writers: even when
living in the same house they wrote to each other. She was disconcertingly frank when she put pen to paper, saying all that came into her head. If we could see her letters to Voltaire at this time we should know more about her feeling for him. Those she wrote to Maupertuis make it hard for a twentieth-century reader to believe that she could have been engaged in an absorbing love affair with somebody else. But Émilie's view of human relationships had not been muddled by the romantic movement. Voltaire had much to give, but he was ill, more than usually just then. Maupertuis gave something else. Émilie took what she wanted from both of them.

Voltaire had many another reason for being jealous of Maupertuis, who shadowed his footsteps. They had been in England at the same time and Maupertuis had been made a Fellow of the Royal Society. He, too, was an enthusiastic disciple of Newton and no doubt understood his scientific teaching better than Voltaire did. He, too, was trying to convert the French from Descartes to Newton; he had already written several papers on the subject. He, too, was a favourite in society, though of bourgeois origins. Later on, when Voltaire went to Germany, there was Maupertuis, President of the Berlin Academy with a high-born Prussian wife. In the end the accumulated bile of some twenty years turned Voltaire against him and he literally killed the poor man with ridicule. But, in 1733, they were on friendly terms.

Voltaire, surrounded by workmen in his new lodging, was finishing his
Lettres philosophiques.
He was also rehearsing
Adélaïde du Guesclin;
writing an opera for Rameau; writing a piece against Pascal, which he truly predicted would annoy everybody (even though he was good enough to pass over Pascal's silly views on miracles); finding a lodging for Linant and sitting him down to write a tragedy on the subject of
Rameses.
He also showered poems on Émilie: ‘I write no verses now, except to her.' No wonder he said that the days were too short and that writers ought to be given a double ration of them.

His interest was centred in what he called his ‘
Lettres philosophiques, politiques, critiques, hérétiques, diaboliques
'; letters supposed to have been written to Thieriot while Voltaire was in England. Thieriot
himself was now there with Voltaire's authority to publish the
Lettres
in London and use the money which they earned. In August 1733 they appeared under the title of
Letters Concerning the English Nation
and were soon selling like hot cakes. Naturally enough, the English did not object to them. In Voltaire's own words, they were heretics who did not care a fig for the Pope and who were quite ready to acclaim the works of the devil himself. Besides, the
Lettres
were nothing if not flattering to their race and nation. Voltaire knew that in France they would make a greater scandal than anything he had ever written. He half dreaded their appearance and half longed for it; he had unwisely given the manuscript to a publisher at Rouen called Jore, whom he then bombarded with letters, begging him in no circumstances to allow anybody to see it. In July he told Jore that a police spy had been sent to Rouen by the
Garde des Sceaux
*
to find out what he could about the book. Jore must hide the manuscript and the copies already printed and above all not let a single copy out of his own hands. Public opinion must be prepared to receive the
Lettres,
the storm over
Le Temple du Goût
given time to subside, a suitable patron must be found, and above all a suitable moment chosen before they could appear in print. Voltaire repeated these arguments over and over again, to Jore himself and to Cideville, at Rouen, who was to impress them on the publisher. He also sent Jore quite a large sum of money so that he should not be out of pocket by the delay.

Voltaire was ill all that winter, in bed off and on for months. He had not recovered from the intestinal troubles caused by the parodies of his
Temple;
he was worried about the
Lettres philosophiques; Adélaïde du Guesclin
came on in January and failed; there is no proof that Émilie was much of a comfort to him at this time, and the Abbé Linant, who was living with him, was thoroughly on his nerves. The wretched little fellow went to bed every evening at seven only to rise again after midday; he was eating his head off and constantly demanded more pocket-money. Voltaire got him a pass for the Comédie Française so that he could study the art of writing plays; he would go off there, dressed and powdered like
the son of a prince, and gossip for hours with the actors and actresses at the Café Procope, opposite the theatre. Yet he made no headway at all with
Rameses.
Voltaire, to whom time was so precious, hated above everything to see it wasted.

*
Keeper of the Seals; but often, as in this case, possessing also the powers and pecuniary rewards of the Chancellor.

The love affair, after its flourishing start, really seemed in danger of being submerged by the various distractions which beset the lovers. However, in April 1734, Voltaire rose from his sick-bed, which at one moment had looked like becoming his death-bed, and the two of them went jaunting off to a country wedding in Burgundy. The Duc de Richelieu was marrying Mlle de Guise. The bride was a relation of the Marquis du Châtelet; the bridegroom an old love of the Marquise and the marriage was made by Voltaire. The bride's father, the Prince de Guise, was one of his debtors. As soon as Voltaire had any spare cash he hastened to invest it, and a favourite security was loans to noblemen; he used to say that he was never let down by ‘
les grands',
and that even if they were not punctual about paying the interest they always did so in the end. Guise was a proper scoundrel; both he and his wife, who had died in 1732, were so well known for the irregularity of their conduct as to be almost
déclassés,
if such a thing were possible in that irregular century. These immoral people had produced a virtuous daughter with intellectual tastes and Voltaire had conceived the idea of marrying her to his friend Richelieu. He undertook all the negotiations, which were not easy. Richelieu was of mediocre origins, his dukedom having come from merit and not from ancient lineage; to make matters worse he was not even a Du Plessis (a noble but obscure county family) like the Cardinal himself, but a Vignerot, descended from the Cardinal's sister. He minded; all his life it tormented him to feel that he was not as other dukes. He very much wanted this marriage
which would improve his coat of arms. The family of Lorraine, however, to which Guise belonged and who considered themselves almost royal, refused to think of such an alliance. At last Voltaire, knowing that the Prince was in financial difficulties, made the magic suggestion that Richelieu should take the lady without a dowry. Guise allowed himself to be persuaded, the more readily because his daughter, to everybody's astonishment, declared herself well suited by the Duke. He seemed the last man in the world who would attract her, but like many another she had fallen in love with him.

Richelieu was one of the charmers of his age. Almost illiterate, though he knew a little astronomy, he was sharp and funny. He made both the Regent and Louis XV laugh so much that they forgave him everything; and there was a good deal to forgive, including treachery. He loved to invent mischievous anecdotes. It was he who put it about that Mme de Grignan hated her mother Mme de Sévigné; he also said he knew for a fact that Bossuet had secretly married a niece of Bussy-Rabutin, a story that was eagerly taken up by the Protestants. He swaggered through life like some hero of
opéra bouffe,
talking in a French equivalent of a cockney accent, which had been fashionable among the bloods of the Regency, killing his enemies in duels, and carrying off fair ladies under their husband's noses. More than one royal princess had been in love with him. No woman of fashion felt that she was in the swim unless she had been his mistress, even if only for a few days. He was a dashing and successful, though unscientific, soldier; not for him the drudgery of reading maps, organizing supplies, or planning campaigns. Above all things he adored battles and afterwards he loved to pillage, rape, and loot with his soldiers. Unfaithful in most of his other dealings, he was a faithful friend to Voltaire from the days of Louis-le-Grand; their friendship survived everything, even the huge sums of money which Voltaire lent him. ‘A great betrayer of women but essential for men.' Voltaire's advice to the couple not to love each other too much, since that is the surest way of loving for ever, was intended no doubt for the bride. If Richelieu, however, were capable of loving one woman, rather than the whole female sex,
that woman was his own dowdy wife. He went to a great deal of trouble to conceal his amorous escapades from her; and she was happy with him.

The wedding took place at the Château of Montjeu, the Prince de Guise's country seat. Two cousins of the bride, the Princes de Lixin and de Pons, refused to attend it, professing themselves disgusted by the misalliance. Otherwise everything went off well and the Richelieus were duly put to bed by the assembled company. Voltaire, who was delighted to have been a prime mover in the business, wrote to various friends: ‘So I have come 240 miles to see a man in bed with a woman', as if it had all been rather tiresome. Three days later the bridegroom went back to the army which, commanded by the Duke of Berwick, was besieging Philippsburg in Germany.

The wedding guests stayed on to keep Mme de Richelieu company and all was merry as a wedding bell when a startling piece of news arrived from Paris. The
Lettres philosophiques,
including the
Pensées sur Pascal,
most dangerous of all the letters, were being sold there under the counter. Voltaire's name was on the title page, but even had it not been he could hardly have denied having written the book which had been out for months in England. He now flew into a state of acute alarm, seized his pen, and wrote to everybody he knew who could possibly help him. He told Cideville and Mme du Deffand that when he first wrote the letters he had decided to make his home in England, but that he found he missed his friends too much. Now, of course, he had a new reason for not wishing to live abroad.

He had been betrayed, he said to Cideville, by ‘your protégé, Jore'. (Cideville was always being scolded for having produced Linant. He never answered back, or pointed out that Voltaire was old enough to choose his own publishers and friends.) Probably Jore was to blame, but it is impossible to know the truth of the matter for certain. Voltaire had moved in a maze of double-dealings and lies over these letters ever since they first appeared in England. He had not written them to see them moulder indefinitely in a Rouen warehouse, and may well have taken the opportunity of his absence from Paris to have them put on the market. This was
pointed out by Jore in no uncertain terms. However, the evidence is on the side of Voltaire, who seems to have done all he could to stop Jore from publishing, given the silly indiscretion of letting him have the manuscript in the first place. Jore stood to make enormous sums with the book, of which 1,500 copies at ten livres apiece had been sold in a few days. Furthermore, such illicit publishing was in the tradition of his family; his father had had several Bastilles during the reign of Louis XIV. It must have been worth their while, in terms of cash.

The party at Montjeu waited breathlessly for the post from Paris. The news got worse and worse. Jore was in the Bastille, Voltaire's house had been searched, and there was a
lettre de cachet
out against him. As the authorities had no real desire to imprison this eminent man, they allowed him to be warned in time to get away from Montjeu, which he did with all possible speed. Two days after his departure the
lettre de cachet,
ordering him to report at once to the prison-fortress of Auxonne, was delivered to Mme du Châtelet. But the bird had flown. T have a mortal aversion to gaol.'

Mme du Châtelet's letters now breathe despair, and no wonder. She had been envisaging a long, peaceful life with her lover, and now their happiness seemed to be destroyed for ever. She was afraid he would be caught and put in a dungeon which, delicate as he was, might easily kill him, or where he might languish for years. At best he would have to live in exile where she would not be able to follow him. For a while she felt sure he had been arrested on leaving Montjeu; the lack of news added to her misery. She wrote to Richelieu: ‘What is the use of being young? I wish I were fifty, living in some country place with my unfortunate friend, Mme de Richelieu and you. Alas! We spend our lives making plans to be happy and we never succeed!' Her great consolation was her friendship with Mme de Richelieu, whom she truly loved. She implanted Newton's ideas in the mind of the young woman so thoroughly that a few months later Mme de Richelieu confounded a Cartesian Jesuit, to the admiration of some English tourists who were present. The fact that she was hardly grown up, and a Duchess, added to the interest they felt in this performance. Voltaire said
of her that she really did seem to understand the rudiments of philosophy.