The Portable Voltaire (Portable Library)

by Francois Voltaire

  Hold fast, mademoiselle, by everything which delights you in them. The smallest affectation is a vice. The Italians, after Tasso and Ariosto, degenerated because they were always trying to be witty: and it is the same with the French. Observe how naturally Mme. de Sévigné and other ladies write: and compare their style with the confused phrases of our minor romances—I cite writers of your own sex because I am sure you can, and will, resemble them. There are passages of Mme. Deshoulières which are equaled by no writer of the present day. If you wish examples of male authors—look how simply and clearly Racine invariably expresses himself. Every reader of his works feels sure that he could himself say in prose what Racine has said in verse. Believe me, everything that is not equally clear, chaste; and simple is worth absolutely nothing.

  Your own reflections, mademoiselle, will tell you all this a hundred times better than I can say it. You will notice that our good writers—Fénelon, Bossuet, Racine, Despréaux-always use the right word. One gets oneself accustomed to talk well by constantly reading those who have written well: it becomes a habit to express our thoughts simply and nobly, without effort. It is not in the nature of a study: it is no trouble to read what is good, and to read that only: our own pleasure and taste are our only masters.

  Forgive this long disquisition; you must please attribute it to my obedience to your commands.

  I have the honor to be very respectfully yours.

  TO MME. DU DEFFAND

  Les Délices, April 12, 1760.

  I have not sent you, madam, any of those trifles with which you condescend to while away an idle moment. For more than six weeks I have broken with all humankind : I have buried myself in my own thoughts: then came the usual country employments, and then a fever. Taking all these things into consideration, you have had nothing, and most likely will have nothing, for some time.

  You need, however, only write and say to me, “I want to be amused, I am well, in full feather, and a good humor, and I should like some trifles sent along to me,” and you shall have a whole postbag—comic, scientific, historical, or poetic, just as pleases you best—on condition you throw it in the fire when read.

  You were so enthusiastic over Clarissa that I read it as a relaxation from my work when I was ill: the reading made me feverish. It is cruel for a man as impatient as I am to read nine whole volumes containing nothing at all, and serving no purpose whatever but to give a glimpse of Miss Clarissa’s love for a profligate like Love-lace. I said to myself: “Were all these people my friends and relatives, I could not take the least interest in them.” I see nothing in the author but a cleverish man who knows the invincible curiosity of the human species, and who holds out hopes of gratifying it volume after volume—in order to sell them. When at last I found Clarissa in a house of ill fame, I was greatly touched.

  Pierre Corneille’s Théodore (who wants to get into La Fillons from a Christian motive) does not approach Clarissa, either in its situations or in its pathos; but, save that part where the pretty English girl finds herself in that disreputable place, I confess that nothing in the novel gave me the least satisfaction, and I should be sorry to have to read it through again. The only good books, it seems to me, are those which can be reread without weariness.

  The only good books of that particular kind are those which set a picture constantly before the imagination, and soothe the ear by their harmony. People want music and painting, with a few little philosophical precepts thrown in now and again with a reasonable discretion. For this reason Horace, Virgil, and Ovid always please —save in the translations, which spoil them.

  After Clarissa I reread some chapters of Rabelais, such as the fight of brother Jean des Entommeures, and the meeting of the council of Pierochole: I know them almost by heart: but I reread them with the greatest pleasure, for they give a most vivid picture of life.

  Not that I compare Rabelais with Horace: but if Horace is the first writer of good epistles, Rabelais, at his best, is the first of buffoons. Two men of this kind in a nation are not needed: but one there must be. I am sorry I once decried him.

  But there are pleasures superior to all this sort of thing: those of seeing the grass grow in the fields, and the abundant harvest ripen. That is man’s true life: all the rest is vanity.

  Forgive me, madam, for speaking to you of a pleasure enjoyed through the eyes: you only know the pleasures of the soul. The way you bear your affliction is wholly admirable: you enjoy, anyhow, all the advantages of society. It is true that that often comes to mean merely giving one’s opinion on the news of the day; which, in the long run, seems to me exceedingly insipid. Only our tastes and passions make this world supportable. You replace the passions by philosophy, a poor substitute: while I replace them with the tender and respectful attachment I have always felt for you.

  TO M. DAMILAVILLE

  Ferney, March 1, 1765.

  My dear friend, I have devoured the new Memoir of M. de Beaumont on the innocence of the Calas; I have admired and wept over it, but it told me nothing I did not know; I have long been convinced, and it was I who was lucky enough to furnish the first proofs.

  You would like to know how this European protest against the judicial murder of the unhappy Calas, broken on the wheel at Toulouse, managed to reach a little unknown comer of the world, between the Alps and the Jura, a hundred miles from the scene of the fearful. event.

  Nothing more clearly reveals the existence of that imperceptible chain which links all the events of this miserable world.

  At the end of March, 1762, a traveler, who had coma through Languedoc and arrived in my little retreat two miles from Geneva, told me of the sacrifice of Calas, and assured me that he was innocent. I answered him that the crime was not a probable one, but that it was still more improbable that Calas’ judges should, without any motive, break an innocent man on the wheeL

  I heard the next day that one of the children of this unfortunate man had taken refuge in Switzerland, fairly near my cottage. His flight made me presume the guilt of the family. However, I reflected that the father had been condemned to death for having, by himself, assassinated his son on account of his religion, and that, at the time of his death, this father was sixty-nine years old. I never remember to have read of any old man being possessed by so horrible a fanaticism. I have always. observed that this mania is usually confined to young people, with weak, heated, and unstable imaginations, inflamed by superstition. The fanatics of the Cevennes were madmen from twenty to thirty years of age, trained to prophesy since childhood. Almost all the convulsionists I had seen in any large numbers in Paris were young girls and boys. Among the monks the old are less carried away and less liable to the fury of the zealot than those just out of their novitiate. The notorious assassins, goaded by religious frenzy, have all been young people, as have all those who have pretended to be possessed—no one ever saw an old man exorcised. This reasoning made me doubt a crime, which was, moreover, unnatural. I was ignorant of its circumstances.

  I had young Calas to my house. I expected to find him a religious enthusiast, such as his country has some* times produced. I found a simple and ingenuous youth, with a gentle and very interesting countenance, who, as he talked to me, made vain efforts to restrain his tears. He told me that he was at Nîmes, apprenticed to a manufacturer, when he heard that his whole family was about to be condemned to death at Toulouse, and that almost all Languedoc believed them guilty. He added that, to escape so fearful a disgrace, he had come to Switzerland to hide himself.

  I asked him if his father and mother were of a violent character. He told me that they had never beaten any one of their children, and that never were parents more tender and indulgent.

  I confess that no more was needed to give me a strong presumption in favor of the innocence of the family. I gathered fresh information from two merchants of Geneva, of proven honesty, who had lodged at the Calas’ house in Toulouse. They confirmed me in my opinion. Far from believing the Calas family to be fanatics and parricides,
I thought I saw that it was the fanatics who had accused and ruined them. I had long known of what party spirit and calumny are capable.

  But what was my astonishment when, having written to Languedoc on the subject of this extraordinary story, Catholics and Protestants answered that there was no doubt as to the crime of the Calas! I was not disheartened. I took the liberty of writing to those in authority in the province, to the governors of neighboring provinces, and to ministers of state: all unanimously advised me not to mix myself up in such a horrible affair: everybody blamed me: and I persisted: this is what I did.

  Calas’ widow (from whom, to fill to the brim her cup of misery and insult, her daughters had been forcibly removed) had retired into solitude, where she lived on the bread of tears, and awaited death. I did not enquire if she was, or was not, attached to the Protestant religion, but only if she believed in a God who rewarded virtue and punished crime. I asked her if she would sign a solemn declaration, as before God, that her husband died innocent: she did not hesitate. She had to be persuaded to leave her retirement and to undertake the journey to Paris.

  It is then apparent that, if there are great crimes on the earth, there are as many virtues; and that, if superstition produces horrible sufferings, philosophy redresses them.

  A lady, whose generosity is as noble as her birth, and who was staying at Geneva to have her daughters inoculated, was the first to succor this unhappy family. French people living in this country seconded her: the traveling English distinguished themselves: there was a beneficent rivalry between the two nations as to which should give the more to virtue so cruelly oppressed.

  As to the sequel, who knows it better than you? Who has served innocence with a zeal as faithful and courageous ? Who has more generously encouraged the voice of those orators whom all France and Europe paused to hear? The days when Cicero justified, before an assembly of legislators, Amerinus accused of parricide, are with us again. A few people, calling themselves pious, have raised their voices against the Calas: but, for the first time since fanaticism was established, the wise have silenced them.

  What great victories reason is winning among us! But would you believe, my dear friend, that the family of the Calas, so efficiently succored and avenged, was not the only one that religion accused of parricide—was not the only one sacrificed to the furies of religious persecution ? There is a case yet more pitiable, because, while experiencing the same horrors, it has not had the same consolations: it has not found Mariettes, Beaumonts, and Loiseau.

  There appears to be a horrible mania, indigenous to Languedoc, originally sown there by the inquisitors ia the train of Simon de Montfort, which, ever since then, from time to time hoists its flag.

  A native of Castres, named Sirven, had three daughters. As the religion of the family is the so-called reformed religion, the youngest of the daughters was torn from the arms of her mother. She was put into a convent, where they beat her to help her to learn her catechism: she went mad: and threw herself into a well at a place not far from her parents’ house. The bigots thereupon made up their minds that her father, mother, and sisters had drowned the child. The Catholics of the province are absolutely convinced that one of the chief points of the Protestant religion is that the fathers and mothers are bound to hang, strangle, or drown any of their children whom they suspect of any leaning toward the Catholic faith. Precisely at the moment when the Calas were in irons, this fresh scaffold was uplifted.

  The story of the drowned girl reached Toulouse at once. Everyone declared it to be a fresh instance of murderous parents. The public fury grew daily: Calas was broken on the wheel: Sirven, his wife, and his daughter were accused. Sirven, terrified, had just time to flee with his delicate family. They went on foot, with no creature to help them, across precipitous mountains, deep in snow. One of the daughters gave birth to an infant among the glaciers: and, herself dying, bore her dying child in her arms: they finally took the road to Switzerland.

  The same fate which brought the children of the Calas to me, decided that the Sirvens should also appeal to me. Picture to yourself, my friend, four sheep accused by the butchers of having devoured a lamb: for that is what I saw. I despair of describing to you so much innocence and so much sorrow. What ought I to have done? and what would you have done in my place? Could I rest satisfied with cursing human nature? I took the liberty of writing to the first president of Languedoc, a wise and good man: but he was not at Toulouse. I got one of my friends to present a petition to the vice-chancellor. During this time, near Castres, the father, mother, and two daughters were executed in effigy: their property confiscated and dissipated—to the last sou.

  Here was an entire family—honest, innocent, virtuous—left to disgrace and beggary among strangers: some, doubtless, pitied them: but it is hard to be an object of pity to one’s gravel I was finally informed that remission of their sentence was a possibility. At first, I believed that it was the judges from whom that pardon must be obtained. You will easily understand that the family would sooner have begged their bread from door to door, or have died of want, than ask a pardon which admitted a crime too horrible to be pardonable. But how could justice be obtained? how could they go back to prison in a country where half the inhabitants still said that Calas’ murder was just? Would there be a second appeal to Council? would anyone try to rouse again the public sympathy which, it might well be, the misfortunes of the Calas had exhausted, and which would weary of refuting such accusations, of reinstating the condemned, and of confounding their judges?

  Are not these two tragic events, my friend, so rapidly following each other, proofs of the inevitable decrees of fate, to which our miserable species is subject? A terrible truth, so much insisted on in Homer and Sophocles : but a useful truth, since it teaches us to be resigned and to learn how to suffer.

  Shall I add that, while the incredible calamities of the Calas and the Sirvens wrung my heart, a man, whose profession you will guess from what he said, reproached me for taking so much interest in two families who were strangers to me? “Why do you mix yourself up in such things?” he asked; “let the dead bury their dead.” I answered him, “If I found an Israelite in the desert—an Israelite covered in blood; suffer me to pour a little wine and oil into his wounds: you are the Levite, leave me to play the Samaritan.”

  It is true that, as a reward for my trouble, I have been treated quite as a Samaritan: a defamatory libel appeared under the titles of A Pastoral Instruction and A Charge: but it may well be forgotten—a Jesuit wrote it. The wretch did not know then that I was myself giving shelter to a Jesuit! Could I prove more conclusively that we should regard our enemies as our brethren?

  Your passions are humanity, a love of truth, and a hatred of calumny. Our friendship is founded on the similarity of our characters. I have spent my life in seeking and publishing the truth which I love. Who else among modem historians has defended the memory of a great prince against the abominable inventions of a writer, whoever he may be, who might well be called the traducer of kings, ministers, and military commanders, and who now has not a single reader?

  I have only done in the fearful cases of the Calas and the Sirvens what all men do: I have followed my bent. A philosopher’s is not to pity the unhappy—it is to be of use to them.

  I know how furiously fanaticism attacks philosophy, whose two daughters, Truth and Tolerance, fanaticism would fain destroy as it destroyed the Calas: while philosophy only wishes to render innocuous the offspring of fanaticism, Falsehood and Persecution.

  Those who do not reason try to bring into discredit those who do: they have confused the philosopher with the sophist: and have greatly deceived themselves. The true philosopher can be aroused against the calumny which so often attacks himself: he can overwhelm with everlasting contempt the vile mercenary who twice a month outrages sense, good taste, and morality: he can even expose to ridicule, in passing, those who insult literature in the sanctuary where they should have honored it: but he knows nothing of cabal
s, underhand dealings, or petty revenge. Like the sage of Montbar, like the sage of Voré, he knows how to make the land fruitful and those who dwell on it happier. The real philosopher clears uncultivated ground, adds to the number of plows and, so, to the number of inhabitants: employs and enriches the poor: encourages marriages and finds a home for the orphan: does not grumble at necessary taxes, and puts the agriculturist in a condition to pay them promptly. He expects nothing from others, and does them all the good he can. He has a horror of hypocrisy, but he pities the superstitious: and, finally, he knows how to be a friend.

  I perceive that I am painting your portrait: the resemblance would be perfect, were you so fortunate as to live in the country.

  TO LORD CHESTERFIELD

  Ferney, September 24, 1771.

  Lord Huntington tells me that, of the five senses common to us all, you have only lost one, and that you have a good digestion: that is well worth a pair of ears.

  I, rather than you, should be the person to decide whether it is worse to be deaf or blind or to have a weak digestion. I can judge these three conditions from personal experience: only for a long time I have not dared to come to decisions on trifles, much less on subjects so important. I confine myself to the belief that, if you get the sun in the fine house you have built yourself, you will have very bearable moments. That is all that we can hope for at our ages, and, in fact, at any age. Cicero wrote a beautiful treatise on old age, but facts did not confirm his theories, and his last years were very miserable. You have lived longer and more happily than he did. You have not had to deal with perpetual dictators or triumvirs. Your lot has been, and is still, one of the most desirable in this great lottery, where the prizes are so rare, and the biggest one—lasting happiness—has never yet been gained by anybody.