The Age of Voltaire

by Will Durant

  Amid his literary labors Voltaire fretted over his insecurity at Frederick’s court. One day in August, 1751, La Mettrie, the jolly materialist who often read to the King, reported to Voltaire their host’s remark: “I need him [Voltaire] another year at most [as polisher of the royal French]; one squeezes the orange, and throws away the peel.”106 Some have doubted the authenticity of the remark; it was not like Frederick to be so confidential, and it was not impossible for La Mettrie to wish Voltaire off the scene. “I have done all that I could not to believe La Mettrie,” Voltaire wrote to Mme. Denis on September 2; “but still, I don’t know.” And to her on October 29: “I keep dreaming about that orange peel… . He who was falling from a bell tower and, finding himself at ease in the air, said, ’Good, provided this lasts,’ resembles me quite.”107

  There was another Frenchman in Germany who entered into the comedy. Of two Frenchmen in the same court, said Frederick, one must perish.108 Maupertuis, head of the Berlin Academy, was next in honor to Voltaire alone among the guests at Sanssouci; each was irked by that proximity; and perhaps Voltaire had not forgotten that Mme. du Châtelet had been fond of Maupertuis. In April, 1751, Voltaire gave a dinner party; Maupertuis was invited and came. “Your book Sur le Bonheur has given me great pleasure,” said Voltaire, “a few obscurities excepted, of which we will talk together some evening.” “Obscurities? There may be such for you, monsieur,” scowled Maupertuis. Voltaire laid a hand on the scientist’s shoulder. “Monsieur le Président,” he said, “I esteem you; you are brave, you want war. We will have it, but meanwhile let us eat the King’s roast meat.”109 “Maupertuis,” he wrote to d’Argental (May 4), “is not of very engaging ways. He takes my dimensions harshly with his quadrant; it is said that there enters something of envy into his data.… A somewhat surly gentleman, not too sociable.” And on July 24, 1752, to niece Denis: “Maupertuis has discreetly set the rumor going that I found the King’s Works very bad; that I said to someone, on verses of the King coming in, ’Will he never tire, then, of sending me his dirty linen to wash?’”110 It is not certain that Maupertuis had conveyed this rumor to Frederick; Voltaire thought it certain, and resolved on war.

  One of Maupertuis’ contributions to science was the “principle of least action”—that all effects in the world of motion tend to be achieved by the least force sufficient for the result. Samuel Koenig, who owed his membership in the Berlin Academy to Maupertuis, came upon what purported to be a copy of an unpublished letter of Leibniz, in which this principle seemed to be anticipated. He wrote an article about his discovery, but before publishing it he submitted it to Maupertuis, offering to suppress it if the president objected. Maupertuis, perhaps after too hurried a perusal, consented to the publication. Koenig had the article printed in the March, 1751, issue of the Leipzig Acta eruditorum. It caused a stir. Maupertuis asked Koenig to submit Leibniz’ letter to the Academy; Koenig replied that he had seen only a copy of it among the papers of his friend Henzi, who had been hanged in 1749; he had made a copy of this copy, and now sent it to Maupertuis, who again demanded the original. Koenig confessed that this could not now be found, since Henzi’s papers had been scattered after his death. Maupertuis submitted the matter to the Academy (October 7, 1751); the secretary sent to Koenig a peremptory order to produce the original. He could not. On April 13, 1752, the Academy pronounced the supposed letter of Leibniz a forgery. Maupertuis did not attend this session, being ill with consumptive spitting of blood.111 Koenig sent in his resignation from the Academy, and issued an Appeal to the Public (September, 1752).

  Koenig had once spent two years at Cirey as the guest of Voltaire and Mme. du Châtelet. Voltaire decided to strike a blow for his former friend at a present enemy. In the quarterly review Bibliothèque raisonnée for September 18 there appeared a “Réponse d’un académicien de Berlin à un académicien de Paris,” restating the case for Koenig, and concluding that

  the Sieur Maupertuis has been convicted, in the face of Scientific Europe, not only of plagiarism and blunder, but of having abused his place to suppress free discussion, and to persecute an honest man… . Several members of our Academy have protested against so crying a procedure, and would leave the Academy, were it not for fear of displeasing the King.112

  The article was unsigned, but Frederick knew Voltaire’s feline touch. Instead of hurling a royal thunderbolt, he wrote a reply in which the “Réponse” was described as “malicious, cowardly, and infamous,” and its author was branded “a shameless impostor,” an “ugly brigand,” a “concocter of stupid libels.”113 This too was anonymous, but the title page bore the Prussian arms with the eagle, the scepter, and the crown.

  Voltaire’s pride was piqued. He could never let an enemy have the last word, and perhaps he had made up his mind to break with the King. “I have no scepter,” he wrote to Mme. Denis (October 18, 1752), “but I have a pen.” He took full advantage of the fact that Maupertuis had just published (Dresden, 1752) a series of Lettres in which it was suggested that a hole be bored into the earth, if possible to the center, in order to study its composition; that one of the Pyramids of Egypt be blown up, to discover the secrets of their purpose and design; that a city be built where only Latin would be spoken, so that students might go there for a year or two and learn that language as they had learned their own; that a doctor be paid only after curing the patient; that an adequate dose of opium might enable a man to foresee the future; and that proper care of the body might enable us to prolong life indefinitely.114 Voltaire seized upon these Lettres as easy game, carefully ignoring any item of good sense in them and any hints of humor, and tossed the rest joyously upon the horns of his wit. So, in November, 1752, he composed his famous Diatribe of Dr. Akakia, Physician and Ordinary to the Pope.

  Diatribe then meant a dissertation; akakia is Greek for “guileless simplicity.” The supposed physician began in apparent innocence by doubting that so great a man as the president of the Berlin Academy had written so absurd a book. After all, “nothing is more common in the present age than for young and ignorant authors to usher into the world, under well-known names, works unworthy of the supposed writers.” These Lettres must be such an imposture; it was impossible that the learned president should have written such nonsense. Dr. Akakia protested especially against paying physicians only for cures—a proposal that might have struck a sympathetic chord in Voltaire’s aching breast, but: “Does a client deprive a lawyer of his just fee because he has lost his cause? A physician promises his assistance, not a cure. He does all that lies in his power, and is paid accordingly.” How would a member of the Academy like it if a certain number of ducats were to be subtracted from his annual salary for every error he has made, for every absurdity that he has uttered, during the year? And the doctor proceeded to detail what Voltaire considered to be errors or absurdities in Maupertuis’ works.115

  It was not so brilliant a satire as commonly supposed; much of it is repetitious, and some of the fault-finding is trivial and ungenerous; we conceal our venom more politely in these days. But Voltaire was so pleased with his performance that he could not resist the added delight of seeing it in print. He sent a manuscript of it to a printer in The Hague. Meanwhile he showed another manuscript to the King. Frederick, who privately agreed that Maupertuis was sometimes insufferably conceited, enjoyed the skit (or so we are told), but forbade Voltaire to publish it; obviously, the dignity and prestige of the Berlin Academy were involved. Voltaire allowed him to keep the manuscript, but the satire was nevertheless published in Holland. Soon thirty thousand copies were flying about Paris, Brussels, The Hague, Berlin. One reached Frederick. He expressed his anger in such terms that Voltaire fled to a private lodging in the capital. On December 24, 1752, he saw from his window the public burning of the Diatribe by the official executioner of the state. On January 1, 1753, he remitted to Frederick his gold key as a chamberlain, and his Cross of Merit.

  Now he was really ill. Erysipelas burned his brow, dysentery tortured his bowe
ls, fever consumed him. He took to his bed on February 2 and stayed there for two weeks, having, said a visitor, “all the appearance of a skeleton.”116 Frederick, relenting, sent his own physician to attend the poet. When he improved, Voltaire wrote to the King asking permission to visit Plombiéres, whose waters might heal his erysipelas. Frederick bade his secretary reply (March 16) “that he can leave this service whenever he wishes; that he has no need to employ the pretext of the waters of Plombiéres; but that he will have the goodness, before setting out, to return to me … the volume of poems that I confided to him.”117 On the eighteenth the King invited Voltaire to reoccupy his old apartment in Sanssouci. Voltaire came, remained eight days, and apparently made his peace with the King—but kept the royal poems. On March 26 he bade Frederick au revoir, both pretending that the separation was to be temporary. “Take care of your health above all,” said the King, “and don’t forget that I expect to see you again after the waters… . Bon voyage!”118 They never saw each other again.

  So ended this historic friendship, but the ridiculous enmities went on. Voltaire, with secretary and baggage, rolled on in his own coach to safety in Saxon Leipzig. There, pleading weakness, he tarried three weeks, adding to the Diatribe. On April 6 he received a letter from Maupertuis:

  The gazettes say you are detained sick at Leipzig; private information assures me that you are stopping there only to have new libels printed… . I have never done anything against you, never written anything, never said anything. I have ever found it unworthy of me to reply one word to the impertinences which you have hitherto spread abroad … But if it is true that your intention is to attack me again, and to attack me by personalities, … I declare to you that … my health is sufficiently good to find you wherever you may be, and to wreak upon you vengeance the most complete.119

  Voltaire nevertheless printed the embellished Diatribe, and with it Maupertuis’ letter. The pamphlet, now swollen to fifty pages, became the gossip of palaces and courts in Germany and France. Wilhelmine wrote from Bayreuth to Frederick (April 24, 1753) confessing that she had not been able to keep from laughing over the piece. Maupertuis did not carry out his threat, nor did he, as some supposed, die of unimplemented rage and grief; he survived Dr. Akakia by six years, and died at Basel in 1759 of tuberculosis.

  On April 19 Voltaire moved on to Gotha. There he put up at the public inn, but the Duke and Duchess of Saxe-Gotha soon persuaded him to come and stay in their palace. As the little court went in for culture, the Duchess gathered notables and literati, and Voltaire read to them from his works, even from the rollicking La Pucelle. Then on to Frankfurt-am-Main, where Nemesis overtook him.

  Seeing that Voltaire continued the war against Maupertuis, Frederick wondered whether the irresponsible poet might give to the world the poems that Frederick had composed, and of which a privately printed copy was still in Voltaire’s possession—poems some risqué, some ridiculing Christianity, some speaking with more wit than respect of living sovereigns, and therefore liable to alienate useful powers. He sent to Freytag, Prussian resident at Frankfurt, orders to detain Voltaire until the impish skeleton should surrender the royal poems and various decorations given him by the King during the honeymoon. Frankfurt was a “free city,” but so dependent upon Frederick’s good will that it did not dare interfere with these orders; moreover, Voltaire was still technically in the service of, and on a leave of absence from, the Prussian King. On June 1 Freytag went to the Golden Lion, where Voltaire had arrived the night before, and politely asked for the insignia and the poetry. Voltaire allowed the resident to examine his luggage and take the royal decorations; but as for the royal poems, they were probably in a box that had been forwarded to Hamburg. Freytag ordered him kept under watch until the box could be brought from Hamburg. On June 9 the fuming philosopher was consoled by the arrival of Mme. Denis, who helped him express his rage. She was appalled by his emaciation. “I knew that man [Frederick] would be the death of you!” On June 18 the box arrived; the volume of poetry was found and surrendered; but on the same day a new directive from Potsdam ordered Freytag to maintain the status quo till further orders came. Voltaire, his patience quite at an end, tried to escape; on June 20, leaving his baggage with his niece, he and his secretary secretly fled from Frankfurt.

  Before they could reach the limits of the municipal jurisdiction they were overtaken by Freytag, who brought them to the city and lodged them as prisoners in the Goat Inn, for (according to Freytag) “the landlord of the Golden Lion was unwilling to have Voltaire any longer in his house, on account of his incredible parsimony.”120 All of Voltaire’s money was now taken from him by his captors; also his watch, some jewels that he wore, and his snuffbox—which was soon restored to him on his plea that it was indispensable to his life. On June 21 a letter arrived from Frederick ordering Voltaire’s release, but Freytag thought that strict duty required him to send the King notice that Voltaire had tried to escape; should he still be allowed to go? On July 5 Frederick answered yes; after thirty-five days of detention Voltaire was freed. On July 7 he left Frankfurt for Mainz. Mme. Denis returned to Paris, hoping to secure permission for Voltaire to enter France.

  The news of his arrest had spread, and now, wherever he went, he was feted and acclaimed, for Frederick was not popular except with Wilhelmine, and Voltaire was still, with all his deviltry, the greatest living poet, dramatist, and historian. After three weeks in Mainz he moved on, with the suite of a prince, to Mannheim and Strasbourg (August 15 to October 2), where he feasted his soul with the thought that he was on French soil. Then on to Colmar (October 2), where Wilhelmine, en route to Montpellier, visited and comforted him “with bounties.” His strength revived enough to inspire some gallant letters to Mme. Denis, who had complained of a swelling in her thighs:

  Eh, mon Dieu, my dear child, what are your legs and mine trying to say? If they were together they would be well [elles se porteraient bien]… . Your thighs were not made to suffer. These lovely thighs so soon to be kissed are now shamefully treated [Queste belle cossie tantot bacciate sono oggi indignamente trattate].121

  In a humbler mood he wrote to Mme. de Pompadour invoking her influence with Louis XV to allow him to return to Paris. But meanwhile a pirate printer in The Hague published a garbled Abrégé de l’histoire générale, an abridgment of Voltaire’s unfinished Essai sur l’histoire générale, or Essai sur les moeurs; it contained some sharp animadversions on Christianity; it sold rapidly in Paris; Louis XV informed Pompadour, “I do not wish Voltaire to come to Paris.”122 The Jesuits in Colmar called for his expulsion from that city. He tried to appease his ecclesiastical enemies by taking the Sacrament at Easter; the sole result was that his friends joined with the Jesuits in calling him a hypocrite. “Behold Voltaire, who knows not where to lay his head,” commented Montesquieu, and he added, “Le bon esprit is worth more than le bel esprit.”123

  The homeless philosopher desperately thought of leaving Europe and settling in Philadelphia; he admired the spirit of Penn and the work of Franklin, who had just united lightning and electricity; “if the sea did not make me unsupportably sick, it is among the Quakers of Pennsylvania that I would finish the remainder of my life.”124 On June 8, 1754, he left Colmar, and found asylum in the Benedictine Abbey of Senones in Lorraine. There the learned Dom Augustin Calmet was abbot and the library had twelve thousand volumes; for three weeks, amid the monks, Voltaire found peace. On July 2 he moved on to Plombiéres, and at last drank its waters. Mme. Denis joined him there, and henceforth remained the mistress at least of his household. He resumed his wandering, went back to Colmar, found it uncomfortable, passed on to Dijon for a night, then to Lyons for a month (November 11 to December 10). For a week he was the guest of his old friend and debtor the Due de Richelieu; then, perhaps fearing to compromise him, he moved to the Palais-Royal Hotel. He attended the Academy of Lyons, and received all its honors. Some of his plays were produced in the local theater, and his spirit was heartened by the applause. He thought of
settling in Lyons, but Archbishop Tencin objected,125 and Voltaire departed. He knew that at any moment he might be arrested if he remained in France.

  Late in 1754, or early in 1755, he crossed over the Jura Mountains into Switzerland.

  * * *

  I. Italics added.

  II. The subsequent references are to the English translation, here warmly recommended, by Richard Aldington: The Letters of Voltaire and Frederick the Great (New York, 1927).

  CHAPTER XIV

  Switzerland and Voltaire

  1715–58

  I. LES DÉLICES

  ON the Lyons road, just outside the gates of Geneva but within its jurisdiction, Voltaire at last found a place where he could lie down in security and peace, a spacious villa called St.-Jean, with terraced gardens descending to the Rhone. As the laws of the republic forbade the sale of land to any but Swiss Protestants, he provided the 87,000 francs that bought the property (February, 1755) through the agency of Labat de Grandcour and Jean Robert Tronchin.I With all the enthusiasm of a city dweller he bought chickens and a cow, sowed a vegetable garden, and planted trees; it had taken him sixty years to learn that “il faut cultiver notre jardin.” Now, he thought, he could forget Frederick, Louis XV, the Parlement of Paris, the bishops, the Jesuits; only his colic and his headaches remained. He was so pleased with his new home that he named it Les Délices (delights).II “I am so happy,” he wrote to Thieriot, “that I am ashamed.”1