Voltaire in Love (24 page)

The
divertissement
which he now planned, opera, ballet, fêtes within fêtes, and
tableaux vivants,
was to be called
La Princesse de Navarre
and its hero, the Duc de Foix, was to be modelled on Richelieu. The whole long summer Voltaire thought of nothing else at all. He hardly wrote any letters, most unusual for him, and none to Frederick. He constantly sent rough drafts of the
Princesse
to Richelieu, asking for his advice and approval, but was rather annoyed when he found that all Versailles was reading them. ‘Very few people can see the quality of the gold when it is still in a mine, covered with earth.' Also, though Richelieu is a great connoisseur, he writes like a cat, impossible to read his letters. Never mind, on with the work. Mme du Châtelet is watching over it and she is the severest of all critics, absolutely reliable in her judgements. Voltaire had never been so anxious to have a success. He hardly hoped to amuse the Dauphin and Dauphine, whose thoughts presumably would be elsewhere at this important juncture in their lives (anyhow they were unamusable) but he longed for the approbation of the King.

Voltaire's feeling for Louis XV was much more straightforward than his love-hatred for Frederick. It was simply that of a subject, anxious to please. There never could have been any question of his sitting on the end of the King of France's bed or assisting with him at homosexual orgies. Such goings-on were unknown at Versailles. The King, apart from the etiquette upon which he thought it right to insist, was a shy man who only felt at his ease with a few old friends. He hardly ever threw Voltaire a word. In spite of this and of the petty persecutions he endured from various officers of the crown, Voltaire often paid tribute to the charm of Louis XV and praised his character. In the
Éloge Funèbre,
written when he no longer had anything to hope or to fear from the King,
he warned posterity against listening to ‘those secret legends which are spread about a Prince in his lifetime out of spite, or a mere love of gossip, which a mistaken public believes to be true and which, in a few more years, are adopted by the historians who thus deceive themselves and the generations to come'. He could not have foreseen more clearly what would happen.

He laboured at his
Princesse de Navarre,
hoping to entertain the Monarch, taking more trouble than he ever had for the Comédie Française and the 4,000 educated Parisian playgoers. Émilie too was working hard. She had a new tutor, Père Jacquier, who was to wean her from the ideas of Leibnitz and put her back on the wholesome diet of Newton. In July 1744 President Hénault, the Queen's great friend and the lover since all time of Mme du Deffand, spent a day at Cirey on his way to the watering-place, Plombières. Voltaire and Émilie were delighted by his admiration of their house and perhaps even more by his undisguised amazement at the beauty and luxury in which they lived. He was quite unprepared for what he found. He wrote various accounts of his visit. To the Comte d'Argenson: ‘I have never seen anything like it. They are there, the two of them, alone, leading a most agreeable life. One makes verses, and the other, triangles. The architecture of the house is romantic and surprisingly magnificent. Voltaire has an apartment ending in a gallery which looks like that picture,
The School of Athens,
where there is a collection of all sorts of instruments for mathematics, physics, astronomy, and so on, and with all this there are old lacquer, looking-glasses, pictures, Dresden china – really I assure you one thinks one is dreaming. Voltaire read me his play and I liked it very much. He manages to be both comic and touching. He has taken all my advice and accepted all my corrections. But what do you think of Rameau's behaviour, turning into a literary critic and correcting Voltaire's verses? I've written to Richelieu about it.'

In his memoirs he wrote: ‘I found them alone with a Franciscan Father, a great geometrician and professor of philosophy at Rome. If one wanted to paint a delicious retreat, a peaceful refuge, a calm communion of souls, amenities, talents, reciprocity of admiration, the attraction of philosophy allied to the charm of poetry, one
would paint Cirey. A simple, elegant one-storied building contains cabinets full of instruments both mechanical and chemical, and Voltaire in his bed, beginning, continuing and finishing work of every description.' He wrote to Voltaire from Plombières saying that he was greatly edified by ‘your happiness together'.

The President was wholeheartedly on Voltaire's side against Rameau who was, as usual, being extremely awkward. Richelieu, too, wrote to him sharply. They thought he should be reminded that Voltaire was not just any librettist. Voltaire himself took the whole thing light-heartedly. Rameau wanted him to expand four verses into eight and shorten eight verses into four. Oh well, Rameau is a genius and has the right to be a little mad. In spite of his madness and tiresomeness, Voltaire made over to him all the royalties on their joint work. At last his anxiety to finish in time and his efforts to please everybody made Voltaire ill. Émilie became seriously worried about him; he had a high fever, which always frightened her, especially in the country; he could neither sleep nor eat. She said that he was not to be sent any more suggestions, until he arrived in Paris for the rehearsals.

They left Cirey sooner than they had meant to, for various reasons. The farm animals had a disease (foot and mouth?). They thought they would like to be in Paris for the rejoicings at Louis XV's recovery from his illness at Metz. Voltaire wanted to see Richelieu before he went to Spain to fetch the Infanta. He must be made to have a few words with Rameau who was beginning to trade on his genius a little too much; if he went on being so difficult the
divertissement
might never take place at all. So by the end of August 1744 they were back in the Faubourg Saint-Honoré. For the next year they divided their time between Paris and Champs, the country house of the Duc de LaVallière. He and his wife were friends of both Voltaire and Mme du Châtelet; he was an extremely civilized person, one of the great bibliophiles of the eighteenth century. Champs is just outside Paris in Seine-et-Marne. The two philosophers kept bedrooms there and came and went whenever they liked.

The thanksgiving festivities for the King's recovery lasted several days. Paris was in a state of delirium and the traffic became
disorganized. Voltaire and Mme du Châtelet went to an open-air concert in the Place Dauphine and on their way home their carriage was held up by a gigantic traffic-block in the rue Saint-Honoré. The street was impassable, 2,000 carriages were said to have been immobilized, while to make matters worse the Duc d'Orléans and his retinue of coaches complete with outriders, guards, and pages were trying to get through to the Palais-Royal. Émilie's coachman had never been in Paris before. At last Voltaire and Émilie decided to brave the crowd which surged, drunk and disorderly, round them and walk to President Hénault's house, 219 rue Saint-Honoré. (It still exists.) Émilie was covered with diamonds and screaming like a peacock, but nobody molested her and they arrived safely. The President was away; they made themselves at home, sent out for a roast chicken, and drank the health of their absent host. Voltaire wrote and told him all this, adding that they had been lucky to find this friendly shelter so near, because nobody could move until 3 a.m. Émilie's house in the Faubourg Saint-Honoré was only a few hundred yards away, but it would have been impossible for them to have walked home even had there been no crowd; people of quality never set foot in the streets, they were much too dirty. The first person to build a pavement on which it was possible to walk was the Duc d'Antin, outside his own house. This street is known as the Chaussée d'Antin.

Émilie had seen at once that Frederick was likely to become a dangerous rival but she never saw a greater danger, nearer home. Mme Denis, the widow-woman, now came to live in Paris where she set up house in the rue Pavée (a street hardly changed to this day). A cheerful, ugly little thing aged thirty-two, she established a salon for Voltaire's bourgeois friends. When Mme du Châtelet went out gambling, or to suppers where he was not invited, Voltaire would go to his niece for a good laugh with her and the various men who frequented her house. Very soon he found that he was not too old to make love after all and that she had given him back ‘
l' âge des amours'.
His love was most passionate and a deadly secret. None of his contemporaries knew of it, not even Voltaire's manservant, and we only do from his letters, recently come to light. When his thoughts became very much inflamed, not to say pornographic, he would often express them in Italian. ‘
Mia Cara,'
he calls her, ‘
ma chère Italienne.' ‘
A few moments in your company and I forget all my past sorrows.' ‘I shall never be happy until I can live with you. I cover your adorable body with kisses.'
(J'embrasse votre gentil cul et toute votre adorable personne.) ‘
My soul is yours for ever.' ‘Mme Duch dines today with the Duchesse de Modène and I with my dearest Muse whom I love more than life itself

It must be borne in mind that an affair with a niece is not regarded as incestuous in a Latin country. To this day Frenchmen of the very best society marry their nieces with a Papal dispensation; at least one of Voltaire's friends, Paris-Montmartel, had done so. If the affair was deplorable it was because of Mme Denis's own
character. She was to become an odious figure, eaten up with the love of money. But when she was young her faults were not so apparent. She was extremely attractive to men. Cideville wanted to marry her: Voltaire was enslaved by her. ‘You will always be my mistress.' ‘I should like to live at your feet and die in your arms.'

During the autumn and winter of 1744 Voltaire had two preoccupations, Mme Denis and the
Princesse de Navarre.
He fussed over this play, writing and rewriting it, asking everybody's advice on little details, in such a torment of creation as even he had hardly ever known. If he livens up this scene, will the next one fall a trifle flat? How would d'Argental cope with it? What does Cideville think? Richelieu wants more ballets, but will they not stifle interest in the plot? He could have saved himself all this wear and tear; interest in his plot was stillborn.

On 23 February 1745, the spectacle which had eaten up a whole year of Voltaire's life, causing him a severe nervous breakdown, was performed in front of the newly-married Dauphin and Dauphine, the King and Queen, the Court and a little group of Voltaire's own special friends, including, of course, Mme Denis. This audience was so beautiful that it quite outshone the actors, there was no comparison between the two sides of the curtain. It was like a swarm of golden bees, glittering round the King and buzzing so loud that verses and music could hardly be heard. Voltaire said afterwards that the play had been a firework which went off leaving no trace behind it, but the few members of the audience who paid him the compliment of attending to his script did not see it as a firework at all. They complained that it was exceedingly long and dull. The Dauphine said the jokes were flat, but she was well known to hate jokes: in spite of a French father and an Italian mother she was impregnated with Spanish gravity. Louis XV, however, who had been happily chatting away throughout the performance, pronounced himself more than satisfied. Voltaire wanted no other reward. He boasted to all his friends, even to the austere Vauvenargues who, himself an aristocrat, was not likely to have been impressed, that he now practically lived at Versailles. He excused himself, when he remembered to do so, for this sudden change of front about a Court which he used to regard as the very
pit of corruption, explaining that only by royal favour could he be sheltered from the Mirepoix faction and get on with his work in peace. He was ashamed of becoming the King's clown at the age of fifty-one, he said. He was, at the Court, like an atheist in a church. But in truth he was fascinated by Versailles and only when out of reach did the grapes turn sour for him again.

That spring was one of the periods when all went well with Voltaire. He was appointed official historian and gentleman-in-ordinary to the King, with 2,000 livres a year and an apartment at Versailles. This apartment was really one smelly, shabby room over the public privies and the Prince de Condé's kitchen. However it provided what is known as ‘a good address'. Most probably he lodged, as usual, with Richelieu. The Comédie Française revived his
L'Enfant prodigue, Mérope, Zaïre, Œdipe,
and
Alzire.
Best of all the King now acquired a new mistress. Mme de Châteauroux had died suddenly at the age of twenty-seven, just after his own recovery. He mourned her for a few months and fell in love again. Fascinating Mme d'Étiolles, soon to be Mme de Pompadour, had been brought up in the world of high finance so well known to Voltaire. ‘I saw her born.' He was delighted that the King's choice should have fallen on her. Mme de Pompadour was a woman of taste and learning and the writers of the day hoped that through her influence they would henceforth receive more equitable treatment. For the same reason, her rise to power was distressing to the Bishop of Mirepoix, who had done everything he could to prevent it. The mitred ass was soon to receive an even greater blow.

Various events in the families of Mme du Châtelet and Voltaire must be recorded. Her plump little daughter, who used to be brought from her convent to act at Cirey, reached the age of sixteen and was brought from it again to marry an old Neapolitan Duke of Montenero, with a flat chest and a huge nose. He carried her off to live at Capodimonte and she was never more seen by Mme du Châtelet who took less interest in her than in the puppies of Dear Love, her black dog. Voltaire, more of a human being than most of his contemporaries in such matters, disapproved of the bridegroom and corresponded by fits and starts with the bride.

The du Châtelets' lawsuit was finally settled; they won it, and yet in some miraculous way managed to remain on good terms with their opponent, the Marquis de Hoensbrock, who wrote and thanked Voltaire for the part he had played. Du Châtelet also wrote, saying that he and his family had many reasons to be grateful to Voltaire and that he absolutely relied on him never to leave Mme du Châtelet. In the summer of 1745 Mme du Châtelet moved from the Faubourg Saint-Honoré to a house in the rue Traversière (now rue Molière) where Voltaire occupied the whole of the first floor.