Passionate Minds

by David Bodanis

  With that opening, Emilie could now turn directly to Bernoulli: “I hope, sir,” she wrote to him in Switzerland, “that you would like to stay with us, and for three years at least. (I flatter myself that you will find Paris agreeable enough to stay longer.)…You will have an attractive apartment in my new house…. I suspect that I could also arrange for you to be admitted to the Academy of Sciences.”

  Through it all, she and Voltaire were now out and about in society. They were the most sought-after couple in Paris: elegant, articulate, and—for most—still powerfully mysterious. The fact that she was still married gave an extra thrill. Emilie had left the city five years earlier barely known. Now almost everyone who counted had heard rumors that she was a woman who'd learned Latin, English, Italian, and a good bit of Dutch and Greek; translated Virgil, as well as English social critics; written commentaries on the Bible; done all the technical work for a shared exposition of Newton; performed original research on fire and light; accumulated one of Europe's leading research libraries; and made Cirey a research center for important thinkers. Most of all, she'd created a unique way of living, and become—despite having been excluded from all the official, males-only institutions—a respected correspondent with top researchers in England, Italy, and France. It was the most unconventional of lives, and despite all the problems, she and Voltaire relished it.

  In Paris those five years before, Newton and science generally had scarcely been discussed in popular circles. Now, though, helped by the flurry of letters and manuscripts sent out from Cirey, as well as the visitors Emilie had invited there, that had changed. As one observer put it: “All Paris resounds with Newton, all Paris stammers Newton, all Paris studies and learns Newton.” Everything she'd been promoting was beginning to take.

  Voltaire enjoyed the socializing too, after the years away in Cirey, though he sometimes pretended otherwise. “Paris,” he wrote, as if resignedly, to Madame Champbonin, who was hanging on his every word back in Cirey, “is an abyss, where one loses repose and the contemplation of one's soul…. I am dragged in spite of myself into the stream. I go, I come. I sup at one end of the town, to sup the next night at the other end…. There is not one instant to oneself.”

  Several of the main thinkers who would carry the next stage of the Enlightenment forward were already in Paris, albeit still just young men in their twenties, hovering on the edge of the salons. For them, Voltaire was a god. They all wanted the liberty that not depending on the whims of rich patrons would give them. And here was this most debonair man, fresh from his proudly independent life with Emilie at Cirey, showing them it could be done. Even more, the elaborate understanding of modern science he'd developed with Emilie made his insights irresistible.

  When discussion turned to the soul, for example, the visitors from Cirey might point out that Newton had shown that the universe was constructed in such a way that we could never know what the underlying nature of any object really was. All we could accurately do was describe its surface behavior.

  This was an astonishing thought, for it led to heresy of the most extreme sort. If we couldn't presume to understand the inner thoughts of others, for example, then we'd have no reason to torture them to ensure they shared our religious beliefs. The essence of the French state, however, was that the king and his officers were at one with the Church. If someone was suspected of running a Protestant religious service, that person was to be tortured and brutalized with the state's full support. Protestant vicars were hanged; individuals attending Protestant services had often been arrested, beaten, and—as we saw— sent to be slaves on Mediterranean galleys. There was no private realm into which the state couldn't delve.

  That's why the sensual pleasures at Cirey had been so important. They suggested a world in which surface pleasures could be valued as well as the individual choices behind them. It was the opposite of the official state position, which held that invisible sins were what should be valued, and that if sinners weren't led to redemption by the proper path, they were to be crushed.

  Although Voltaire could be self-centered and loved to take over conversations, the young men who were making their way in Paris were now watching him use these science-based insights to go beyond his usual mocking remarks about the old institutions that most Frenchmen had to live under. For Voltaire now wanted to be more than a critic.

  He wanted to change the world. The question was how. Voltaire had long since realized that he was getting out of his depth when it came to research in science. (He'd never admit it to Emilie, but their debates in Brussels had made those limits even clearer than before.) Yet he'd loved the style of thinking that science gave him.

  What if he used that, and examined politics with the crisp, unbiased approach of Newton? It would mean peering at the French or British monarchs as if getting a fresh view of them through a telescope. Those monarchs, for example, were used to saying that they deserved our deference because their authority descended from the distant past— in the case of the French monarchy, from Charlemagne himself. But Voltaire asked why that should matter.

  The satellites of Saturn, he had learned in detail from Emilie, spin as they do merely because they follow the rules of gravity that every other object in the solar system follows. There will have been many quirks in their past—the details of how they were formed—but that has no bearing on the rules about how they operate now. That was the approach Voltaire could use: ignore what the king's ancestors had once done and instead ask the important question of whether the king today is efficient and fair enough to justify our deference.

  This was yet another fundamental step in the Enlightenment. (It is, for example, the core argument in the Declaration of Independence.) Voltaire had already written increasingly powerful hints of this, in his verse and prose and theater. Now, excited by the acclaim in Paris, he was ready to go even further.

  The question was how to ensure that a state's rulers actually took these best, efficient actions. For the British colonies in North America it might be possible to imagine that ordinary people should indirectly decide this by being given a say in how their government was administered. But even there, and despite so many independent farmers and a certain tradition of self-governing Protestant sects, it was still considered unreasonable to let all adults vote equally. In France, where education and class differences were even stronger, pure democracy was clearly out as a solution.

  The obvious alternative, of giving the nobles in France more power, was also not going to work. They'd just use it selfishly. The Parlement of Paris would be no better, for it was composed of reactionary lawyers and officials like Voltaire's late father, who were as selfish as the old-style nobles, yet even more envenomed by being looked down on by the established nobles. It would have been ideal if Voltaire could influence the centers of power at Versailles, but he had no sway over the court officials and mistresses who currently controlled access to the king.

  Instead, Voltaire decided on young Crown Prince Frederick, in Prussia, as the ideal vessel to carry out his will.

  The young man was clearly insecure—as seen even in the way he constantly asked Voltaire to correct the embarrassing poems he tried writing in French. Such insecurity would make him easily manipulated. And as soon as Frederick's already elderly father died, the young man would inherit a powerful kingdom. Voltaire would use him to carry into the wider world the reforms he and Emilie had discussed for so long back at isolated Cirey.

  17

  Frederick

  FLANDERS AND PRUSSIA, 1740–1741

  In June 1740 Frederick's father did finally die, which meant that the young, timid Frederick was now king, and Voltaire could begin his plan. He arranged with the top official in the French foreign ministry to be allowed to leave Louis XV's kingdom and garner what information he could about Prussia's future intentions. That ostensible spy mission—combined with an attempt to influence the diplomatic alliances Frederick chose—was what would convince the French government to let him leave. On a
deeper level, though, he wanted to get close enough to the new king to be able to influence his policy for domestic reform as well.

  He began by writing to Frederick, trying to console the youngster at the shock of losing his father:

  “Your Royal Highness, there is one thing I would dare to take the liberty of asking,” Voltaire wrote paternally. “It is whether the late king, before he died, knew and loved all the merit of my adorable prince.”

  Emilie still had her doubts. She wasn't sure if Voltaire's plans would work, and knew how much she'd miss him if he was away for weeks or perhaps months. Yet she also could tell how much Voltaire wanted to go on this mission—and he could be immensely persuasive when he wanted. She'd not wanted him to go to Prussia back in 1737, and he understood that. Frederick hadn't even been on the throne then: his brutal father was. But that had changed. And, Voltaire now asked, couldn't a son be different from his father?

  It was an artful argument. Emilie couldn't tell him this was out of the question, for she knew how much he had hated his own father, the narrow-minded notary, and how he had tried to create a life as different from his father's as possible. And anyway—as Voltaire was quick to point out, when he saw her resistance wilting—Frederick was in fact showing signs of carrying out everything he'd promised in his letters and other writings so far.

  His father had recruited regiments of giants, selected from across Europe, and had wasted a great deal of tax money keeping them equipped. Frederick had already disbanded those regiments. He had banned torture from any civilian courts in his kingdom; he had declared freedom of religion (at least to Christians); he was in the process of ending all censorship.

  There was a final argument for going. Emilie had argued in Brussels that God could order the universe to produce the best possible arrangement. Well, would it be fair to stop Voltaire from trying to help that along? Prussia was small, but its army was powerful. Frederick himself had explained that he had nothing to do with that crude army—when he'd been imprisoned after trying to escape his father's cruel kingdom, at the age of eighteen, its soldiers had taunted him as he tried to practice the flute and read French literature in his cell. Voltaire was convinced there were hotheads within the Prussian military who would try to take advantage of this untried boy—unless he got firm, worldly, wise advice fast.

  Early in November 1740, Voltaire left The Hague for Prussia. Crossing northern Europe in winter wasn't easy. When Voltaire's carriage broke down, the first peasant he tried to hail for help thought he merely wanted to share a drink; the next one fearfully ran away. Voltaire, one male traveling companion, and the driver were alone by a broken carriage on a rutted winter road in Westphalia. It was cold, and dusk came very early. Voltaire wasn't dressed for the weather: he had on his velvet trousers and thin silk slippers.

  To a man who'd dreamed of being a spy on secret missions that would preserve the peace of Europe—and guarantee himself the appreciation of the French court—this was sheer heaven. He was confident now, proud at how well he could handle any problem. He managed to get himself a horse and rode through the cold to the nearest town. The sentry asked his name. “I am Don Quixote!” Voltaire proudly called out. The sentry had no idea what he was saying but duly let this Frenchman pass. Voltaire continued all the way across frozen Westphalia, and finally, after more than a week, he made it to the king's idyllic lakeside retreat at Rheinsberg.

  Frederick was in ecstasy. He had a number of handsome young men around him, and even a few émigré French scholars—and now there was his hero, Voltaire. Frederick stayed up as late as he could, playing the flute, trying to talk about all the ideas he'd had in philosophy and literature and science. When he showed Voltaire several small Watteaus he'd purchased, the mood was warm enough that Voltaire could be honest and explain that they were cheap copies (“Germany is full of fakes, the princes being easy to cheat”).

  As the days went on, Voltaire tried to guide Frederick's strategic choices and pick up all the diplomatic gossip he could. He also found himself talking about Emilie perhaps more than he'd intended, for many of the handsome young men at the Court were there neither for their diplomatic skills nor for their scholarly abilities. In writings that were to be kept strictly private, Frederick jotted down his dreams. “I admire [Voltaire's] eyes, so clear and piercing…. I would kiss his eloquent lips, 100 times.” Voltaire was willing to do a lot for his country, but Frederick was gay, and Voltaire was not. With a certain amount of deft footwork, he intended to remain that way.

  Frederick was willing to accept that and would excuse Voltaire as the hour grew late, whereupon—again in the new king's private recounting—he and the other young men “lost money at cards, danced till we fell; whispered in each other's ears, and when that shifted to love, began other delicious moves.” But once those interludes were over, the young king would return to whatever room Voltaire was in, easily sitting at the end of his bed—or he'd call Voltaire into his room—and there they'd go back to talking about life and literature and about the damnable problems of aggressive military leaders as well.

  In this sharing mood—in this continuous house party—who could resist bragging about his new life and putting down his old one? Voltaire made dangerously mocking quips while he was there, and when he was back in Brussels and Amsterdam, in interludes between other visits, he continued to make them, in highly confidential writings prepared for Frederick's eyes only. He wrote about Emilie that life with her was “like living in a chapel; I have to return to her rules—it's an obligation, and I'm loyal to it… But staying with her, have I lost all my happiness, and life with my King?…I hate her lawsuit.” He called her “that woman”; he complained that he had to sigh like a fool when he was in her presence.

  It was satisfying to have the Prussian king's eager attention this way, and Voltaire liked to please—besides, it would help his secret plot to obtain the new king's favor—so he went on in yet other letters to mock Louis XV's chief counselor, Cardinal Fleury (“that played-out old man”) and to praise Frederick's acumen, even lauding him for outwitting France's own diplomatic sratagems. Frederick had it all in writing, but Voltaire was convinced that didn't matter, that everything he shared was safe.

  But it was a trap. On the northwestern edges of the ancient Austro-Hungarian empire, not far from the Prussian heartland, was the rich, beckoning province of Silesia. A new, untested empress was on the Austrian throne, and although Prussia had formally guaranteed her rights of succession, Frederick was going to change that now. He knew that if he killed enough of the young Austrian empress's garrison troops quickly enough, and then invaded, the entire land could be his. While Voltaire had been watching the handsome drunken youngsters at the court beside the lake—and while Frederick had been joining with them at night—he'd also been getting up extremely early each morning, sending detailed instructions to his regiments and commanders. Their obedience was total, for the image he'd presented of being an uncertain, tremulous youngster was only for foreign consumption. To his troops, he was a monster.

  When one soldier had tried to desert from an elite regiment, he'd been arrested and beaten. Then the soldier's ears were torn off. Then he was beaten some more. Then his nose was pulled off. “Troops must be more terrified of their superiors than of the enemy,” Frederick coolly wrote, and did everything he could to make it so. The most minor disciplinary faults led to furious beatings.

  Nothing that Frederick had presented to Voltaire was true. Just a few days after Voltaire started on his way back to Brussels, Frederick's massed troops stormed into Silesia. The army had been taught to march in a hideous fashion, with each soldier's forward leg kicking so high that the thigh was parallel to the ground, and the foot was stretched out flat. To keep their balance the soldiers had to swing their other arm sharply across the body and stretch their jaw forward in a way that pulled their face into a taut grimace. This was Prussia's distinctive Paradeschritt— what appalled outsiders termed the “goose step.” It was the opposite
of every lesson Voltaire had wished to give. Yet Frederick had created a true Newtonian machine, free of those illogical historical accretions that courtly politics had hitherto entailed.

  Frederick was a superb strategist, which is why he'd engaged in this long plot to destroy Voltaire's relationship with Emilie and get Voltaire so mistrusted at the French court that he would be forced to accept refuge in Prussia. It would give a cover of respectability to his chilling military attacks. The teasing, male-bonding remarks that he'd lured Voltaire to put into writing were merely the final stage in the trap. Keyserlingk was a trusted emissary. Frederick started using him and others to leak Voltaire's words where they would do the most damage: making Voltaire hated at the French court, and—since Frederick had long recognized how important Emilie was in holding Voltaire in France—getting him rejected by Emilie herself.

  Voltaire spent weeks getting back from his second trip. There were snowstorms across central Germany, and when he tried finishing by a sea route, the North Sea was wild: his boat was sent slipping sideways, repeatedly smashing into the onrushing waves. He arrived in Brussels exhausted and freezing; he had an infection in one of his eyes, making it hard to see.

  Emilie was less than pleased, and let him know she had seen the leaked letters as much as anyone. Over the years she had spent untold hours lobbying through her family's aristocratic connections to get Versailles officials to allow him to travel freely, to protect him from arrest, and to have the censorship officials leave him alone. Even on his latest trips she'd kept up work on the Palais Lambert. Yet how had she been treated in return? “I've been cruelly repaid,” she let him know. But Voltaire was just as furious. Did she know how irritating it had been to be followed by her pleading letters when he was trying to run an important diplomatic mission? And actually, did she have any idea how bored he was by her inane court case or her ridiculous science? She certainly wouldn't know what it felt like to have written a masterpiece—his History of Louis XIV— and have it suppressed.