HE
And I hope not. I can’t think of anything I should hate more than having to discuss philosophy with a saint.
SHE
Anyway that will do. What do you have for me tomorrow?
HE
A splendid paper. A really excellent paper—
END OF DAY TWELVE
DAY THIRTEEN
It snows even harder. SERVANTS are running in with logs for the stove. SHE stands beside it, reading a paper. HE comes in.
SHE
This. This . . . writing. Do you dare even call it a paper?
HE
What, Your Highness?
SHE
Your memorandum for today. ‘On the Morality of Princes’. How could you, you—
HE
I spent all night writing it. I was quite pleased with it.
SHE
I spent all morning reading it. I was completely outraged by it.
HE
Oh, Your Most Imperial Majesty! My intention was simply to be pleasing and persuasive.
SHE
No. Your intention was to insult, offend and humiliate me. And not just me. Every noble monarch on this earth.
HE
I really hadn’t noticed.
SHE
How dare you inform me monarchs lack every restraint that law, honour and simple decency impose on every other mortal?
HE
I thought that was the whole point of kingship.
SHE
Not at all. As you say, it’s our duty to act as a constraint on others. But we ourselves must act under the highest constraint of all. The law of God.
HE
Exactly, Your Imperial Highness. And that’s what I was trying to explain. My complaints about kingship were never addressed to you. They were sent to the divinities, to say how badly they performed their office.
SHE looks at him with the greatest suspicion.
SHE
You don’t even believe in the divinities—
HE
Yes I do. Whenever it suits me.
SHE
Listen. ‘Jove arises each morning and looks down through heaven’s trapdoor. “Oh dear,” he yawns, “plague in Asia. Warfare in Germany. Earthquake in Portugal. Disembowelling in Turkey, pox across France, knouting in Russia. Well, well.” Then back he goes to sleep. And this is what we call the work of divine providence in the world.’
HE
Rather good, isn’t it?
SHE
That teaches us, you inform me, that the gods are shifty, idle and useless. So letting monarchs rule by divine right means they rule without any proper constraint or control. That would be an argument for not having monarchs at all.
HE
Precisely.
SHE
How can you call that reason?
HE
I call it reason, justice, decent common sense.
COURTIERS murmur.
SHE
You may not say such things, Monsieur Didro. Neither in public nor in my private court.
HE
Madam, if you would be good enough to read just a little further, you will find I also say that, despite the indifference of the gods to human fate and fortune, no monarch can ever be really free to do whatever he or she wants—
SHE
Because, you say, they are also constrained by the fear of being assassinated by their own people, which makes them a little less vile than they would be otherwise.
HE
Quite so.
SHE
Mr Philosopher, if you insist on coming to my court and calling me a despot, you may find one of these days, when your head is chopped off, you’re right after all. Meanwhile I take it, like all my people, you depend on my gentleness, tolerance, and nobility—
HE looks extremely contrite.
HE
Once more I’m truly sorry, Your Highness.
SHE
Except you don’t mean a word of it, do you?
HE
What, my contrition? I assure you it’s very sincere. Or my performance of it is, most certainly.
SHE
You don’t truly mean to say I am a despot?
HE
Certainly not, madame, if you order me not to—
SHE
I require to know what you truly think.
HE
Then of course I think you are a despot. We none of us expect you to be otherwise. Why do you suppose we adore you so, incline the head, bow the knee? Why else do you merit universal homage? You’re our most honoured divinity. Our great Athena. Our northern Minerva. Our enlightened despot—
SHE
What I am, sir, is an imperial monarch with the world’s largest nation to master and sustain against my enemies.
HE
And I truly understand how hard it must be, to sit and discuss metaphysics with me in the afternoons, when only that very morning you have had to go and pillage and dismember Poland.
SHE looks at him.
SHE
Oh, is that it? You are disputing with me over Poland? You know Monsieur Voltaire entirely approves of it?
HE
Monsieur Voltaire never ceases to amaze me. I presume he’s decorated your rapings and pillage with the most enlightened of reasons? Of course. After all, he has no other reasons.
SHE
Here’s his letter, see. Go ahead, read it.
HE (reads)
‘My object, from which I shall never budge, is tolerance. That is the great religion I preach, and you are head of the great church in which I’m simply a humble friar. Your zeal to establish freedom of conscience in Poland is a great blessing humanity will surely acknowledge . . .’ Oh, my dear, good lord—
SHE
Don’t stop there . . . keep on—
HE (reads on)
‘And not only is the great Empress sublimely tolerant. She equally wishes her neighbours to be tolerant. For the first time, supreme power and force will have been exercised to establish a true freedom for the human conscience.’
SHE
There then. And don’t those words come from the greatest thinker in the world?
HE
If you tell me so.
SHE
Now, now, sir. Surely you wouldn’t compare yourself with Monsieur Voltaire?
HE
No, Your Highness. Not on the matter of Poland, anyway.
SHE
I believe you’re jealous. I’m sure you’d have called me tolerant first, if you’d had the wit to think of it.
HE laughs to himself.
SHE
What? Come along, tell me?
HE
Sometimes I amuse myself by imagining you on the throne of France. What an empire you’d make of it! And in what a brief period of time!
SHE
I should. I should be a Sun Queen.
HE
What a truly terrible empire. I’ve no doubt you’d make everyone eat potatoes—
SHE
Better than lettuce. Better than starving.
HE
We would rebel and send you to rule over England. They live on potatoes there. You know what they call you in England? ‘The Philosophical Tyrant.’
SHE
So you are calling me a despot—
HE
Why not, if that’s what you are?
SHE (angry)
Mr Philosopher, if you had an empire to run, and I only hope for your own sake you never suffer that fate, you’d do everything just as I have.
HE
I should not.
SHE
I am what I am, and I’m extremely good at it. You should have seen Russia before I ascended. A ruinous dump of a place. And look at it now.
HE
What a wonderful difference a sudden attack of the haemorrhoids can make.
Silence in the court. SHE rises.
SHE
Go away from here. Right now.
HE rise
s to leave.
SHE
Come back. And what would you do then? Free the serfs, I suppose? Enoble the merchants? Create a parliament of the ranks? Remove the power of the patriarchs? Give a franchise to the people? Take away the knout?
HE
Why not implement your own Great Instruction? Surely it would be your quickest way to Posterity.
SHE
There, sir. That shows us the difference between the philosophical tyrant and the tyrannical philosopher. It would be my way to Posterity, oh yes. But not in the way you mean. It would be my quickest route to disaster, the quick way to lose my head. You’re a playwright. What do our finest plays, our noblest operas tell us? The dramas of Corneille, the operas of Handel, Rameau? The greatest tragedies befall those royal heroes who seek to do most good for their people. Coriolanus, Rienze, Godunov. Because your splendid common people turn out to be a mob—
HE
Your people love you greatly, you told me. What would you have to fear?
SHE laughs, and even the COURTIERS are amused.
SHE
Don’t you know in Russia the serfs hate the kulaks, the kulaks hate the landowners, the landowners hate the provincial governors, the governors hate the nobles? The nobles hate the generals, the generals hate the bureaucrats. There are thirteen levels in the table of ranks, and each rank hates all the other twelve. The church hates the army. The army hates the navy. The infantry hates the cavalry. Every regiment hates every other. Everyone spies on everyone else, including me. And each person in all Russia hates the bitter fate that binds them in duty to their loving mother-tzarina—
HE
They have only to use their reason.
SHE
Their reason! I’m the only reason there is in this whole society. Otherwise every single person longs to rob or replace or slaughter every other. I’m all that exists between the hangman’s knout and a river of blood.
HE
Yes. I can imagine it’s so.
SHE
Thank you. So if, as you claim, you really are wise and just, you should appreciate the value of a despot. If you knew the nature of human beings and their gift for hatred, envy and wickedness, you’d know that a society without someone like me is far worse than this—
HE
Yes, Your Highness. I confess I didn’t truly consider the difficulties of power, or the grandeur of which it’s capable. Indeed I forgot for a moment why I adore you. Why I travelled all these leagues to see and worship you—
SHE
So now you confess I’m tolerant?
HE
You prove it with every kindness you show me.
SHE
Enlightened? Philosophical?
HE
An adornment to human thought.
SHE
Good, sir. Now, may I suggest you go and rewrite your paper, now we’ve discussed it carefully, and show me again tomorrow. Good day now, Mr Librarian . . .
END OF DAY THIRTEEN
DAY SIXTEEN
HE enters, in his black suit, looking tentative and uneasy. SHE is sitting on the sofa. SHE looks at him, smiles. A large box of golden trinkets is beside her.
SHE
Ah, there you are, my good friend. Come over here. Look, what do you see? Presents . . .
HE looks into the box. It appears to be full of watches.
HE
What, you mean . . . for me, Your Majesty?
SHE
Yes, sir. You have been late for these meetings far too often, my dear philosopher. That’s for you.
SHE reaches into the box and draws out a very beautiful gold pocket watch on a chain. HE looks at it. HE looks at her. HE’s touched.
HE
Dear lady. Are you really sure?
SHE
Of course. You’re pleased?
HE
How could I be more so? A golden hunter, Your Majesty. A watch for the pocket. To hang from a golden chain on my leaden chest. And with your own portrait, always there on the face . . .
SHE
So you accept it?
HE swings the watch against his chest.
HE
Of course. No gift could give me greater pleasure. After all, what more displays the spirit of our age, the cunning intricacy of our universe, than a watch. With this one small ticking machine we can see our place and way in the world. We see the world’s not a seamless entity, but a mysterious clockwork motion that spins us in space and time—
SHE
You do consider God to be the great watchmaker then?
HE
No, I consider man to be the great watchmaker. What supreme intelligence! With what cunning we comprehend how time spins in the cosmos, how space twists in time. What is the universe compared with our modellings of it. Where was it made?
SHE
This little watch? Switzerland, sir. Geneva.
HE
The Swiss, a people of great craft and independence. Some say they make the best watches in the world—
SHE
Or very near Geneva. These watches were sent from Ferney by my dear Voltaire. You know he’s set up a colony of craftsmen?
HE
I heard. Eighty watchmakers all tick-tocking away in his workshops. Such a thoughtful gift.
SHE
Not exactly a gift. He sent me a crate of five hundred of them.
HE
Five hundred? Soon Russia will have more time than it knows what to do with.
SHE
I praised his devotion to craft and enterprise. In return I got this large crate of watches. And a bill for fifty thousand pounds.
HE
I’d heard Swiss time often comes expensive. Permit me to observe that with what he’s charged you for five hundred watches you never asked for you could have built a battleship. Or bought half a dozen Rubens from the next impoverished English milord.
SHE
I sometimes think you’re growing a little jealous of our great Monsieur Voltaire.
HE
Not at all. So what does he advise you to do with these knick-knacks he’s sent you? Apart from honouring your darling Denis, of course?
SHE
He thinks they’d make excellent gifts for distinguished foreign visitors. And he tells me I could easily sell them for twice the price he’s charging me—
HE
If you take his other advice and invade Turkey, you could sell his watches to the Turks.
SHE
I’ve heard he’s already doing that himself. I hope he’s charging them a good deal more than he is me.
HE
Indeed, it would be only fair. Still, now when your two armies go into battle, they should both arrive at more or less the same hour of day. But I’m sure the money’s well spent—
SHE
Of course it’s well spent. I owe a great deal to Monsieur Voltaire. When many in Europe were calling me an assassin, he established my reputation with the world.
HE
Not alone, of course.
SHE
I admit it. There was yourself, and others too—
HE
And this is why I’m here then, is it, Your Highness? To establish your reputation with the world?
SHE
Like anyone else, I merely wish to be understood by everyone. And how better to do it than have some wise men understand me?
HE
Wise men who are foolish enough to believe whatever you choose to tell them? Who dismiss invasion as a trifle, hanging as an incident, and write eulogies like hacks?
SHE looks at him.
SHE
Now I know you are jealous, sir.
HE
Do you? Jealous of whom, then?
SHE
Of Monsieur Voltaire. Because he loves me to distraction, and doesn’t care who knows it. Because your mind’s so dull and your passions so thin you wouldn’t even know how to come near to him. Because every word of praise that comes from him
means more to me than ten words of yours. Because his generosity and kindness are so much freer and franker than yours—
HE looks at her in surprise.
HE
You’re wrong. I’m not jealous of Voltaire.
SHE
Well, he’s certainly jealous of you.
HE
Is he really? The great Voltaire jealous of me?
SHE
Of course. He’s at Ferney, you’re in my chamber. You’re younger than he is. More amusing.
HE
How would you know all this?
SHE takes out a letter from her bosom.
SHE
Here is his letter, today. Listen. ‘I hear with regret that your Diderot fell ill at the Dutch frontier. But I reassure myself he must now be at your feet, and you will know you have more than one French devotee. If there are some who will always vote for Mustapha the Turk, I venture to say there are many more who worship only Saint Catherine. Indeed our small church is becoming quite universal . . .’ But this is just flattery—
HE
Yes. Go on.
SHE
‘I imagine you daily, conquering the new sultan. Yet still, burdened with the responsibility of war against a vast empire, and ruling your own vaster empire . . . seeing everything, doing everything . . . somehow you find time to converse with Diderot, as if you had nothing else in the world to do.’
HE
What style the man has. How very wonderfully put.
SHE
Indeed. ‘I long to converse with him myself,’ he says, ‘merely so I can learn all I can of Your Glorious Majesty. In fact majesty is hardly the word I mean. I would rather say “Your Glorious Superiority”, which lifts you above all thinking beings.’ Excuse me, then more and more flattery. But I think you see how delightfully he writes to me.
HE reaches a hand out for the letter. SHE smiles, moves away from him.
HE
But do go on, Your Glorious Superiority. What else does the wise man have to say about me? Anything?
SHE
Oh, yes. ‘I ask you, intercede with Diderot for me. Surely he could make a small detour of fifty versts and prolong my bitter existence by coming here to tell me all he has seen and heard in Sankt Peterburg? Or, if he will not attend me here on the shores of Lake Geneva, I only beg I might come and be buried near you, on the shores of your own Lake Ladoga. As you know, I love you to folly, yet I fear I’m in disgrace in your court. Your Majesty has abandoned me, for Diderot, Grimm, some other favourite. This would be understandable if Your Highness were a French coquette. But can a great empress be so fickle? Truly I shall never love another empress as long as I live . . .’
To the Hermitage Page 32