Voltaire in Love

by Nancy Mitford

  When the Court moved to Commercy, one of the King’s country houses, it became more difficult for the lovers to be together. Stanislas invited his special friends there but he had an unreasonable aversion to Saint-Lambert and never asked him. Every evening a supper-party was held in Mme de Boufflers’s room; Saint-Lambert was not of it. Commercy had no forgotten corners, nowhere to hide a mouse. How could they manage? Of course they did: Mme de Boufflers always got what she wanted. There was an orangery which communicated with her rooms and at its other end with the house of the village priest. M. le Curé, like everybody else, was under her charm. She arranged with him that Saint-Lambert should wait in his parlour until the King had gone to bed. When the coast was clear, Mme de Boufflers blew out a lighted candle in her window as a signal that Saint-Lambert could now go to her through the orangery.

  Alas! Mme de Boufflers was incapable of constancy. In 1747 Saint-Lambert went to the wars; when he returned he had been supplanted by a shadowy Vicomte d’Adhémar. Mme de Boufflers was finding it easier to conduct this liaison because King Stanislas rather liked d’Adhémar. Saint-Lambert suffered, and not in silence. Torrents of rhymed reproaches flowed from his pen, and his demeanour became more melancholy and romantic than ever.

  Mme de Boufflers and her King had most friends and all tastes in common with the exception of Père Menou and his spiritual exercises. She believed that Paradise was here on earth, while Stanislas was pious as only a Pole can be. The Father made him tremble with his strictures, delivered from the pulpit and in the confessional, on the sin, the mortal sin, of double adultery. Stanislas would come out of Church resolved to mend his ways. The Father had another hold over him. Like everybody with intellectual pretensions Stanislas felt obliged to compose French verses; Père Menou did for him what Jordan, and sometimes Voltaire, did for Frederick, he revised his work and put it into grammatical French. To please the Father, Stanislas built a Jesuit mission at Nancy, reserving a few exquisite rooms for himself. Here he would go, from time to time, for a retreat, while M. de La Galaizière and other adorers of the Marquise took advantage of his absence. The Father would then bring him into such a penitent frame of mind that Mme de Boufflers’s dismissal seemed certain. But the moment Stanislas saw her again, his resolution melted away and he became more amorous than ever. The Marquise was a jewel, not to be discarded lightly; she was beautiful, clever, and an excellent hostess, she set a brilliant tone at Lunéville, and besides all that, he loved her. In her company his fear of hell-fire seemed ridiculous, and the delights of this earth paramount. As soon as she saw that he was at her feet again, the Marquise would begin coaxing and wheedling him to send away the confessor. Well, and why not? So priest and mistress used all their respective weapons to get rid of each other, and the poor old King was tormented between the two of them. At last he had an inspiration: he would keep them both. Mme de Boufflers, easy going, all for a quiet life, asked nothing better, but the Father never gave up his design of dislodging her. It was gradually borne in upon him that things of the spirit alone were not likely to do so, and that his best chance would be another woman. So he began to look about for a suitable rival, not so easy to find, however. She must be cheerful and amusing, beautiful and not too young, a noble Lorrainer by birth or marriage so that she would be acceptable to the aristocrats who formed the little Court.

  Did it come to him in a flash one wakeful night? Of course, Mme du Châtelet. Why had he not thought of her long ago? Where was she now? At Cirey! Too good to be true. He suggested to King Stanislas that a visit from Voltaire and his celebrated friend might be very interesting. Stanislas was delighted at the idea and so was the Marquise. She had known Émilie all her life, and foresaw that she would liven up their little society. As for Voltaire, he would be an ornament to any Court. So Père Menou was hurried off to Cirey, with a royal command. Voltaire and Mme du Châtelet, no longer comfortable in their tête-à-tête, asked nothing better than a visit to Lunéville. It suited Voltaire very well to go and stay with the Queen’s father, a move which would scotch the rumours that he had been exiled by the Queen’s party at Versailles. So they abandoned the neighbours, cancelled the theatrical programme, borrowed M. du Châtelet’s horses, which he had sent back from the front to have a rest, and in less time than it takes to tell they were on the road again to Lunéville.

  20. Lunéville

  They were royally received. The Queen of Poland had died in 1746 and Mme du Châtelet was given her apartment on the ground floor, Voltaire was on the second floor, over the King, and his rooms communicated with Émilie’s by a secret staircase. Père Menou soon saw that he had made a mistake in bringing them to Lunéville. Mesdames du Châtelet and de Boufflers became inseparable, twin sisters, adoring friends. Émilie had not the shadow of a design on Stanislas. What had he to give her? In her eyes it was more glorious to be the mistress of Voltaire than of the greatest King on earth. Her rank and precedence were undisputed; she did not mind her lack of fortune; if she wanted anything it was love. The King of Poland would have been less like a new lover than an old husband and of such she already had two.

  The visit began with Voltaire falling seriously ill. Stanislas was all kindness and concern. Voltaire treated himself, as usual, with bed, starvation, and tisane, and was on his feet again in a few days. He then threw himself into the production of comedies, wrote verses for all the women of the Court, and kept the party in a cheerful stir. He broadcast enthusiastic letters describing the goodness of the King. How sweet is his so-called banishment, Lunéville is an enchanted palace, with a monarch who favours the poor exile in every way. Mérope has been given in Voltaire’s honour, he forgot himself and wept at his own tragedy. Mme du Châtelet has acted three times already in Houdart de la Mothe’s Issé. Nevertheless, reading between the lines of his letters, one sees that something was lacking. No doubt he missed Mme Denis, but that was not all. He missed the French Court and Louis XV.

  King Stanislas was well disposed towards the things of the mind. He loved Voltaire, was neither irritated nor embarrassed by him, never snubbed him, laid himself out to please. But, he was the ex-King of Poland, not the ruler of France. The courtiers were delightful, they were not snobs; they did not care (or not much) about precedence and birth; they never thought of sending Voltaire to Coventry. But they were provincials. There was freedom of speech but nobody to exchange it with. In short, Lunéville was not Versailles. Versailles may have had many silly and regrettable features but it was the hub of the universe, the palace of the most powerful King, the seat of the most important government in the world. The power and importance were in a decline but this was not, as yet, apparent. Society there was not confined to a handful of courtiers; nearly everybody of interest and influence came sooner or later. While frivolous young aristocrats were idling away their lives in green alleys and gilded temples, on the other side of the palace Marshals of France were clattering off to the front, Ministers and Ambassadors were arriving for audiences with the King. France was governed from Versailles. Lunéville was all make-believe, the society there was too frothy to be interesting. Mme de Boufflers, as she grew older, became a great reader and said that this was because she had to escape, somehow, from the eternal chattering which went on around her.

  Voltaire would have liked to escape, he longed to go back to Paris, but he was kept in Lorraine by Mme du Châtelet. She was in her element at Lunéville. Her undoubted snobbishness was gratified by the honours paid her there and the high precedence which her husband’s rank obtained for her. She had incessant gambling to keep her soul in a healthy state. She became the leading lady of a well-appointed theatre. She could show off her clothes and jewels to more effect than at Versailles. When she felt inclined to work she retired, self-importantly, to her apartment and nobody was allowed to disturb her. She did not realize that she was regarded as an amiable joke by the whole company, though Voltaire had a pretty shrewd idea of it. The anonymous author of a sort of gossip column circulating at Lunéville said t
hat she was a ‘madwoman who knows more about atoms than about her own family’. Voltaire remarked that this was nonsense. Why, she took any amount of trouble over her family, she had got excellent commands in the army for her husband and son and a splendid Italian duke for her daughter. What more could she do?

  Very soon after the arrival of Voltaire and Mme du Châtelet at Lunéville, Père Menou’s magic began to work. As magic often does, however, it took a slightly different course from that intended by the magician. Émilie fell in love, and with a lover of Mme de Boufflers, but not with King Stanislas. Saint-Lambert, seeing his mistress in full fling with M. d’Adhémar, had continued to suffer. When Mme du Châtelet arrived at Lunéville, handsome, eager to please, and high-spirited, he bethought him of that powerful love philtre, a dose of jealousy. He made ostentatious advances to Émilie; it was no trouble to him to do so, he found her attractive. Mme de Boufflers, who laughed at everything, laughed, but Mme du Châtelet did not. In a ferment of desire and sensibility she fell into Saint-Lambert’s arms and announced her intention of spending the rest of her life with him. With him, Voltaire, and M. du Châtelet of course; Saint-Lambert was to be an addition not a substitute. Mme de Boufflers, still laughing, gave Émilie the key of the hidden room with a bed in it and Saint-Lambert was disconcerted to find that his parlour flirtation had become a full-dress love-affair.

  Mme du Châtelet, excessive in everything, now behaved with an ardour embarrassing to contemplate. She was forty-three (ten years older than Saint-Lambert), one of the most learned women ever produced by our civilization, engaged on a task (the translation of Newton) for which many scientists would find themselves inadequate; she had two grown-up children; the greatest writer of the day was at her beck and call. But her letters to her new lover read like those of a clever, hysterical schoolgirl. They begin with little notes on lace-edged paper which Émilie would slip into Mme de Bouffler’s harp for the loved one to find during the evening party. As time goes on they get longer, sadder, and more sentimental, no jokes, no gossip, nothing but self-pity, love, and plans for the future. They are very dull.

  Almost at once, Saint-Lambert fell ill in the little secret room. He had fever and his body was covered with a rash. Mme du Châtelet, who was quite used to illness, though she had never known a day of it herself, drowned him with tea, tisane, and Seidlitz water, plied him with roast chickens and partridges, and made him open his window from time to time. She crept downstairs when everybody else had gone to bed in order to watch him as he slept. He got better, and soon Émilie was rewarded for her attentions: ‘I hope I did not agitate you too much last night.’ Pan-pan acted as go-between and the lovers spent their time writing and exchanging letters. Saint-Lambert wrote: ‘It is very sweet to wake up and read your charming letters and to know the happiness of loving and being loved by you. I feel that I shall never be able to do without your letters which are the joy of my life. You have never been more tender, more lovable, and more adored.’

  With one of Émilie’s nature, so whole-hearted and possessive, no affair could keep a light touch for long, and as soon as Saint-Lambert was better she began to make scenes. He has treated her so coldly today, as if hardly giving her a thought, has never spoken of expedients for seeing more of her, has not even mentioned the subject. Why does he never look at her? Does he only care to be with her in company, does he not long to spend all his time with her? That is the test of love, every minute apart should be an agony. Why does he never go to her room where they can be alone together? The eggs she has cooked for him have grown cold with waiting, but she has not. Now she seems to have spoilt everything and made him cross. He must forgive and forget what she said last night and only remember the happy day they had. She is sorry now, she sees that she has been unfair, she only wishes she had taken more advantage of the time they have spent together to be happy in his love. She is too easily upset and she knows it. As we read these endless scribblings we wonder how the highly-strung Voltaire could ever have put up with her.

  Saint-Lambert behaved rather well. Having aroused this unwanted passion, he did nothing unkind to try and check it, he waited for it to die down again. Émilie knew that she was more in love than he, but she was quite used to that. She only asked permission to go on loving and this Saint-Lambert graciously accorded. He even put off a journey to Italy when she implored him to do so.

  As for Voltaire, he saw with satisfaction that Émilie was enjoying herself but perhaps did not realize that she was plunged in such a menacing joy. She, of course, with her mixture of logic and selfishness, never thought for a moment that she was behaving badly to him. He no longer made love to her and therefore could not expect her to be faithful. Besides, in spite of the burning, volcanic quality of her love for Saint-Lambert, her soul was not involved. She could never have written to him, as Voltaire wrote to Mme Denis, ‘Sensual pleasure passes and vanishes in the twinkling of an eye, but the friendship between us, the mutual confidence, the delights of the heart, the enchantment of the soul, these things do not perish and can never be destroyed. I shall love you until I die.’ Émilie’s betrayal of Voltaire was spectacular; his of her was fundamental.

  In May 1748 the party at Lunéville broke up for a while, for Stanislas to pay one of his periodical visits to his daughter the Queen. The two philosophers were to go to Paris, taking in Cirey on the way, for the rehearsals of Sémiramis. Saint-Lambert rejoined his regiment at Nancy and Mme du Châtelet managed to spend a few happy days with him there while Mme de Boufflers kept Voltaire amused and unsuspicious at Lunéville. After this Émilie was more in love, and Saint-Lambert less. As soon as she and Voltaire had arrived at Cirey she began to be tormented by the thought of Mme de Boufflers, rather at a loose end at Lunéville (M. de Boufflers and La Galaizière having gone to Versailles with the King) and Saint-Lambert, also with nothing much to do, nearby at Nancy. She knew too well that Mme de Boufflers had but to say the word and Saint-Lambert would be her slave again. She could not settle down to her work, as she had planned, she could only pour out endless letters. ‘This is too long,’ she sometimes says. (Yes indeed, too long and much too plaintive.) She thinks of Saint-Lambert at Lunéville, hardly giving her a thought. The fact is he has no capacity for love, so what will he do with a heart like hers, now that it belongs to him? He must come to Cirey, otherwise she cannot believe all the things he told her at Nancy. In the end he did go, for twenty-four hours, and killed her suspicions for the time being. At Paris she felt calmer, because Mme de Boufflers had joined King Stanislas at Trianon. Louis XV always lent him this little palace for his visits to the Queen. However they were only there another week, and it seemed rather a horrid coincidence that, as soon as Mme de Boufflers arrived back at Lunéville, Saint-Lambert rejoined the garrison there. His letters became very short and the writing (Mme du Châtelet noticed) very large, as though he wanted to fill the pages in a hurry. He did address her as ‘Ma chère Maîtresse’, which was a little comfort.

  ‘Je vous adore, je vous adore.’ All the same, Émilie’s out-pourings to the loved one were not particularly tactful. She is having a watch made for him with a secret spring to contain her portrait. Should it be exactly like the one she had given to Voltaire or would he prefer something different? She sees from his reply that he really has no feelings, Voltaire’s watch will do, but that he wants her, in the miniature, to wear the head-dress of Issé. Very well, so it shall be. She hopes he will not be angry, she is sending him an enormous bottle of nut-oil, excellent for thinning hair. He must anoint his head like a Pharisee. Abbé de Bernis is writing a poem on the Seasons, how dreadful, the very subject Saint-Lambert himself has chosen. Babet la Bouquetière must have heard of it from somebody at Lunéville. Now Mme du Châtelet has sent for Babet, who has read her the poem; it is very dull and very much like Saint-Lambert’s. No need to answer so disagreeably and tell her to mind her own business; surely it must be perfectly obvious that she thought to do for the best; nobody would listen to a long poem by Bernis for th
e fun of the thing. Now in her turn she has to scold Saint-Lambert. It seems he has been making trouble between her and Mme de Boufflers, and this does not suit Mme du Châtelet at all. For one thing Mme de Boufflers is a much better friend than he is a lover – however, that is not the point. It is most important for M. du Châtelet to be given an official position at Lunéville and his wife is counting on Mme de Boufflers to arrange this. If he were passed over again, as he has already been once, by King Stanislas, he and Mme du Châtelet could not possibly stay on at Lunéville. They would have to leave Lorraine for ever, and go and live at Cirey. As Saint-Lambert’s love is not of the quality to survive short meetings and long absences he must see the absolutely vital necessity of M. du Châtelet’s appointment. She really must beg him to be careful to keep Mme de Boufflers on their side.