Voltaire in Love (19 page)

Frederick wished the
Anti-Machiavel
to be published anonymously; he left the business side of the transaction to Voltaire. As soon as he had received all the sheets, Voltaire got in touch with Van Duren, a publisher at The Hague. He described the book to him as a refutation, chapter by chapter, of Machiavelli's
Prince,
written by one of the most important men in Europe.
The Prince
itself, either in French or Italian, must be incorporated in the book, which should be beautifully printed, with big margins. Van Duren can keep all the profits, but must send two dozen copies finely bound in morocco, to a German court to be specified later, and another two dozen, in calf, to Voltaire himself. He asks for an immediate, and very precise, reply. If Van Duren could know who the author of this work really is, he would see what a favour Voltaire is doing him. Should he not wish to take advantage of this piece of luck, Voltaire will put it in the way of somebody else.

On 31 May 1740, Frederick's Most All-Gracious Father, a beastly old man of fifty-two who had been quite senile for many months, was gathered to the primeval sons of Thor. Nobody outside Prussia knew that this had happened; the post was stopped at Berlin and the gates closed for several days, until Frederick felt himself securely in the saddle. Rarely had the accession to a third-class throne provoked so much interest. It seemed, to liberal-minded people everywhere, that kingship might at last become respectable. Algarotti and other visitors to Rheinsberg had broadcast descriptions of the Crown Prince, extolling his high principles, his love of philosophy and of the arts. Frederick's letters
to Voltaire had been copied out and circulated in the Paris salons; the contents of the
Anti-Machiavel
were also pretty well known. The sentiment which ran through the correspondence, the whole theme of the
Anti-Machiavel,
was the wickedness of those rulers who seek self-aggrandizement at the expense of other men's lives, the uselessness of territorial conquest, the importance of learning and above all of pleasure.

Unfortunately the Germans have a way of turning their rulers into war lords with a taste for popular philosophy. Voltaire must be given some credit for the fact that Frederick was so much the most enlightened of them all. He began his reign with many a liberal measure. He spoke of reducing the Prussian army to 45,000 men (but never did so). He disbanded his father's regiment of giants, so that Germany was filled with huge, weak nitwits, sadly lurching along the roads looking for work. The year 1740 was one of those when summer never comes to the north of Europe: the harvest failed completely. Frederick opened the state granaries and sold the corn at a reasonable price to his hungry subjects. He put a thousand destitute old women into well-warmed rooms and set them spinning. He abolished torture which was not used again in Prussia for nearly two hundred years, and did away with censorship; all through his reign his subjects were at liberty to write as they chose about him, though foreign rulers were protected. He brought the philosopher Wolff back from the exile to which the late King had condemned him, and he summoned 'sGravesande and Maupertuis to found a Berlin Academy. 'sGravesande refused, but Maupertuis could not resist the honour and publicity of such an appointment.

On 6 June Frederick wrote his first letter, as King, to Voltaire whom he would see, he hoped, this very year. It was a short, affectionate note and contained the prophetic sentence, ‘The whirlwind of events carries us away and we must let ourselves be carried.' ‘Love me always and always be sincere with your friend, Fédéric.' Voltaire's instant reaction was to send the
Anti-Machiavel
to Van Duren, saying he had better get on with it as quickly as possible. Then he wrote to Frederick, addressing the new monarch as ‘Votre Humanité'. He is overwhelmed by one word in H.M.'s
letter which gives him the hope of a blessed vision this very year. He would remind His Majesty that the Queen of Sheba, too, longs to see Solomon in his glory. (The husband, of course, would accompany her.) Frederick countered this by saying that two divinities at once would blind him with their dazzle and he would have to borrow the veil of Moses to protect him from the rays. Meanwhile he and the Marquise wrote to each other in terms of exquisite politeness, saying how greatly they wished to meet.

Now that Frederick was himself a ruling Prince he found that there were certain things in the
Anti-Machiavel
which would better have been left unsaid. This had been foreseen by Voltaire, whose flair for knowing what people would do must have made the fortune of a fortune-teller. He had been jostling Van Duren to rush the book into print ever since the death of the old King. In July Frederick, as Voltaire had expected, told him that he must get hold of it at all costs and prevent its publication. After some high words with Émilie, who thought this journey quite unnecessary, Voltaire dashed off to The Hague to see what could be done. He regarded publishers as his natural enemies and was always glad of an excuse to cross swords with a member of the hated profession. ‘All publishers are fools or knaves; they misunderstand their own interests as much as they cling to them.' In Van Duren he found a worthy antagonist; he came to grips with him at once. ‘I had to do with a Dutchman who abused both the freedom of his country and his own right to persecute authors.' In other words, the publisher, realizing that he had got a gold-mine, refused to part with it at any price. Voltaire asked for the proofs, saying he wished to correct them. Van Duren said very well, but he must do so in the office, surrounded by members of the firm. Voltaire agreed. He carefully corrected a few pages, and having thus gained Van Duren's confidence, went back the next day to finish the work. This time he was left alone in the room. He scribbled rubbish over so much of the text that he thought he had quite got the better of Van Duren. He went gleefully back to Brussels. But he had underestimated his opponent. Van Duren engaged a literary hack to rewrite the mutilated passages and then published the book. No result could have been more annoying to an author. Frederick was obliged, in
self-defence, to allow Voltaire to publish the original edition, but with Voltaire's own cuts and corrections, which Frederick disliked. He no longer recognized the
Anti-Machiavel
as his own work. He intended to recast it himself and have it printed in Berlin. However, this particular Prince was soon too busy following the maxims of Machiavelli to bother much more about his own refutation of them.

Voltaire could now think of nothing but his meeting with Frederick. The Prussian King was on the move, inspecting his dominions, and rumours about his future prospects filled the gazettes. His father had never allowed him to make the Grand Tour, which was considered to be part of a German Prince's education and included Rome, Holland, Brussels, and Paris. It was thought that he now intended to do so. Voltaire and Émilie were determined that if he went to Brussels and Paris he should stay with them; they began to make preparations for receiving him. Voltaire wrote to the Abbé Moussinot instructing him to get the Hôtel Lambert ready without delay. Mme du Châtelet had left some of her possessions, notably a bed without a mattress, in the house of her midwife. Moussinot and the midwife were to go and buy whatever else was needed. (Oh happy age, when everything made by man was beautiful, when the furnishing of an Hôtel Lambert could as safely be left to a clergyman and a district-nurse as, nowadays, to a Ramsay or a Jansen!)

In Brussels there was a nasty scene between Émilie and Princess Thurn and Taxis. The Princess announced that the King would be staying with her; not at all, said Émilie, the King belonged to Voltaire and would certainly not be allowed to stay anywhere but with him. Excitement mounted. Frederick, accompanied by Maupertuis, Algarotti, and Kaiserling, was on his way to Brussels. Voltaire and Émilie were to meet him at Antwerp and he would then go and stay for a few days, strictly incognito, in the rue de la Grosse Tour. But, when he was only 150 miles from Brussels, he suddenly fell ill. He sent for Voltaire to go to him at once but said that greatly to his sorrow, deeply to his disappointment, he was too unwell to receive a woman. Mme du Châtelet was very much offended, but agreed to lend him Voltaire for a few days. As
nothing could have stopped him, she was obliged to put a good face on his departure. Of course she thought the King's illness was a ruse to get Voltaire to himself, but it was quite genuine. He told his friend Jordan that at his first sight of Voltaire his mind was as unstrung as his body was feeble.

Voltaire posted off under a harvest moon, and in two days (11 September 1740) he arrived at the derelict Castle of Moyland, near Cleves. Here he found his King, here his eyes finally beheld, across a huge, dark, empty room, a little fellow, wrapped in a blue duffle dressing-gown, shivering and shaking with the four-day ague. Voltaire, like all chronic invalids, was perfect in a sickroom; he broke the ice by sitting on the King's bed and taking his pulse. He prescribed the Jesuits' remedy (quinine) saying that the King of Sweden had been cured of the ague by it, and though the minds and souls of the two Monarchs had nothing in common, their bodies probably worked in the same way. Frederick declared that if the sight of Voltaire did not cure him he might as well seek absolution. Accordingly he rose from his bed, dressed, and dined with his friends. For three days they all enjoyed each other's society to the full, talking of this and that, the immortality of the soul, fate, free-will, and the men-women of Plato. It was no doubt more amusing for Voltaire than if the du Châtelets had been there. He read out his new play
Mahomet
which delighted them all. He helped Frederick to write a manifesto to the Bishop of Liège, against whom the King had certain claims. Voltaire was so over-excited that he forgot his pacifist principles and cheered when he heard that 2,000 soldiers would carry it to the Bishop. He had brought Mme du Châtelet's new book for Frederick, who lavished compliments on it to Voltaire though he told other friends that it was sad stuff and anyhow written by Koenig, embellished with a few of Voltaire's brilliant remarks. But, oh what a lucky woman, to possess him! Why, anybody with a good memory could write a classic simply by making notes while he talked.

As for Voltaire himself, his emotions on this occasion could only be expressed in platitudes. The King was such a charmer that, whoever he was, he would be an ornament to any society. A second
Cideville in fact (Piron used to call Frederick ‘
le Thieriot du Nord').
Voltaire had to keep reminding himself that the man who came and chatted with him, perching on the end of his bed, was the master of 100,000 soldiers. What a miracle that this son of a crowned ogre, brought up among animals, should have such a great love of French civilization. On this occasion there was no disillusionment and Frederick was more than ever determined to get Voltaire away from his Émilie. When the time came for the King to return to Berlin he prevailed upon Voltaire to go to The Hague on Anti-Machiavellian business, instead of immediately rejoining her in Brussels.

At The Hague Voltaire was grandly if uncomfortably lodged in La Vieille Cour, a palace belonging to Frederick, which served as Prussian embassy. It was 200 years old and Voltaire described its crumbling magnificence in a poem – rotting floor-boards, leaking roof, gilded rooms minus doors and windows, attics full of rusty armour. There were books but they were read only by rats and the thickest cobwebs in Europe veiled them from a profane eye.
†
Voltaire was not displeased with the address, and wrote to all his humbler friends in Paris: A la Haye, au palais du roi de Prusse. The first round of the fight between Frederick and Émilie went to the King.

Mme du Châtelet, however, was by no means defenceless. She now had the clever idea of patching up Voltaire's quarrel with the French authorities and getting him invited to his own Court. She knew that, if ever he found himself welcome there, no German in the world would be able to entice him away. So she left Brussels and went off bag, baggage, and husband to join the Court at Fontainebleau, where she began a campaign on Voltaire's behalf. One kind protectress was lost to them: the Duchess de Richelieu had died, after a long illness following a difficult pregnancy, on 2 August. The Duke was extremely sad. ‘Are you satisfied with your confessor?' he asked her. ‘Yes, since he has not forbidden me to love you.' She said her only wish
was to die in her husband's arms; she did so. Voltaire, Maupertuis, and many others regretted her deeply. She was one of the few women who really liked Mme du Châtelet.

But Émilie never lacked powerful men-friends, and never minded bothering people. By a cunning move she made Frederick instruct his ambassador to speak up for Voltaire; Frederick knew that this was playing the enemy's game, but could not very well do otherwise. She brought a letter from Voltaire for Cardinal Fleury with a handsome copy of the
Anti-Machiavel.
Voltaire reminded His Eminence of old times at Villars. He said he had just left the author of this book and would be visiting him again soon. Had the Cardinal any message for him? Voltaire, who always liked to see himself in some new role, thought he might become an unofficial envoy between the French and the Prussian Courts. Frederick had taken a great dislike to the Marquis de Valory, the new French Ambassador at Berlin. Valory had a bumptious manner and was fond of laying down the law; he talked to Frederick in the tones of an experienced soldier to a young man who had never been at the front and Frederick complained to Voltaire: ‘I am always afraid that he will mistake me for a fortification and launch an attack on me.' Voltaire, too, had reasons to be displeased with the Ambassador, whom he did not know but who had spread a rumour that he lived in Brussels because he had been exiled from Paris. In the end both men became very fond of ‘my fat Valory' as Frederick called him (perhaps they were both seduced by the Ambassador's excellent cook with whom Voltaire used to say he was in love). But at present he was ‘not a man one could ask to dinner'. So Voltaire planted the idea of a different sort of mission in the mind of Cardinal Fleury and the Cardinal was thinking it over when events in Europe began to move.