HIS OLD AGE.
CHAPTER XX.
LAST VISIT TO FREDERICK.
Bereft of the companion by whose side he had traversed the plateaus of middle age, Voltaire now found himself facing alone those downward slopes of life which always grow more rapid of descent till they disappear over the verge of the world. Far from finding any flattering illusions in the prospect before him, he was prone to exaggerate his feebleness and to anticipate the approaches of age. But though he felt the loss of the Marquise so severely, he was too elastic of nature, had too many sources of interest, and possibly too little depth of heart, to be permanently unsettled by the blow. "I know no more powerful remedy," he has said, "against the ills of the soul, than the strong and serious application of the intellect to other objects." Accordingly, being persuaded by his old friends Richelieu and D'Argental, who, after his arrival in Paris, paid him daily visits in his sorrow, to seek this mode of distraction, he busied himself with completing his two tragedies, "Orestes" and "Rome Saved," for the stage, and with superintending the rehearsals at a small private theatre, taking parts himself, after a while, as had always been his custom. It was at this time (February 1750) that he began his acquaintance with the celebrated actor, Le Kain. Voltaire saw him taking a part in a new comedy, and desired that the actor should visit him next day. Le Kain describes the poet's eyes as "sparkling with fire, imagination, and genius. In addressing him I was penetrated with respect, enthusiasm, admiration, and fear. I was experiencing all these sensations at once, when M. de Voltaire had the goodness to put an end to my embarrassment by opening his arms and 'thanking God for having created a being who had so moved and melted him by reciting such very bad verses.'" Voltaire, after advising him against the stage as a profession, offered him 10,000 francs (£400) with which to start in trade as a jeweller, his father's business. Before discussing the question, Le Kain begged to be allowed to declaim to him from Piron's play of "Gustave." "'Give me nothing of Piron's,' cried he, in a thundering and terrible voice; 'I am not fond of bad verses: repeat something from Racine,'" which he did, drawing from Voltaire enthusiastic expressions of delight. For six months the poet supported the actor and gave him his first notions of his art; and, as Le Kain records many years later, "now he calls me his great actor, his Garrick, his favourite son—these are titles which I owe only to his goodness; but that which I adopt in the bottom of my heart is, 'a pupil penetrated with respect and gratitude.'" He goes on to sketch his great friend's character:—
"M. de Voltaire has always been constant to his friends. His character is impetuous, his heart good and compassionate. He is modest in the highest degree on the subject of the praises which have been lavished on him by kings, people of letters, and the whole nation. Profound and just in his judgments on the works of others, full of amenity, of politeness, and of grace in his intercourse with the world—inflexible towards those who have offended him,—there you have his character drawn from nature."
But whatever his achievements or his fame, he never attained to so much favour at Versailles as would have secured him from persecution. He found it impossible to propitiate the laced suit and perruque which called themselves Louis XV., and which resemble nothing so much as Feathertop, who was put together, clothed, and inspired with a kind of vitality, by the old witch in Hawthorne's tale; or what may have been the original of Feathertop, in the "Dunciad:"—
"A brain of feathers, and a heart of lead;
And empty words he gave, and sounding strain,
But senseless, lifeless! idol void and vain!"
Voltaire's post of Historiographer-Royal gave him admission to Court, but he could not join the privileged few who passed beyond the antechamber, and perhaps never, in all his famed existence, could boast of being present when his sovereign changed his shirt. In despotic monarchies, access to the king's person, even if it be only to powder his wig, is a matter of, high importance; for the dexterous use of a moment of good-humour or caprice in the source of all honour and prosperity, a pretty speech, or an apt flattery, or that mysterious and debasing quality, a talent for intrigue, may be the making of a courtier. What now lent a double sharpness to disappointment was Voltaire's consciousness that he had stooped to flatter this semblance of a king. Even his friend Madame de Pompadour was estranged by the enmity of the men of letters who could gain her ear; and his old schoolfellow D'Argenson,[1] now Minister, had refused, what Voltaire thought he ought to have offered, admission to the Academies of Science and Belles Lettres.
While he experienced these mortifications in his own country, his friend the King of Prussia had persistently pressed on him the most flattering tokens of appreciation, in the offers by which he tried to persuade the poet to take up his abode at the Court of Berlin, These Voltaire had hitherto steadfastly declined, pleading his obligations to Madame du Châtelet. That tie was now dissolved, and Frederick not only repeated his invitation, but reinforced it with the promise of a pension of £850 a-year, the gold key of chamberlain, an Order of Merit, and apartments in the palace close to his Majesty's own. Voltaire no longer hesitated, but went to demand the king's permission to quit France, Louis is said to have graciously responded that he was welcome to go when he pleased, and turned the royal back upon him. Madame de Pompadour took a cold leave of him, and desired him to present her compliments to the King of Prussia. The message being duly delivered, Frederick replied, "I don't know her," and passed to something else—which did not, however, prevent the discreet poet from writing some of his little classical verses to the Marquise, in which he "had the honour, on the part of Achilles, to return thanks to Venus."
He is considered to be unrivalled in these gay little pieces of verse, of many of which Madame de Pompadour is the subject, containing compliments by implication, and depending for success on grace and felicity of expression. To say the truth, he occasionally seems to the present writer to be not at his happiest in giving point to these; while compliance with the taste of his times, which was in favour of extensive dealings with the heathen mythology, renders his allusions, relating as they frequently do to goddesses, Fates, Loves, &c., a little trite at the present day. The following "Madrigals" to the three sisters of Frederick the Great are, in the original, excellent specimens of the grace and adroitness which were often needed to excuse his audacity:—
"To the Princess Ulrique.
"Often, amid delusions vain,
A little spark of truth will gleam;
Last night, exalted in a dream,
I did to royal rank attain,
And loved you, Princess—more, my love I spoke:
The gods took not all from me when I woke,
Only my crown did not remain."
"To the Princesses Ulrique and Amélie.
"If Paris were recalled to life
To say which owns the brightest eyes,
He would in half divide the prize,
And so preserve the world from strife."
"To the Princesses Ulrique, Amélie, and Wilhelmine."
"Fair Ulrique! charming Amélie! forgive!
I thought to love you only, and to live
From other sovereignty free:
Now, with adoring eyes, I see
That sister on whose steps must Love attend.
Sure it can ne'er the Graces Three offend
To love all three!"
He arrived at Berlin in July 1750. There now commenced the singular relations between the two most notable men of their time, which seemed to be, at first, so full of pleasure and advantage for both. Voltaire's reception was such as might well pour balm over the wounded feelings of a sensitive poet. He was invested with his cross and key, and lived in the most complete and friendly intimacy with the king. Frederick had always been ambitious of the fame of an author, and had several works, poetical and other, at this time in the press. To the correction of these Voltaire gave an occasional hour; the rest of his time was passed either in privacy and occupied with his own pursuits, or in playing his part in such companies, entertainments, and conversations as were entirely to his mind. No wonder he should say, "I find a port after thirty years of storms." On the other hand, the French Court began to talk with resentment of his having left it. His friend the Duke of Richelieu wrote to say so, adding remonstrances of his own:—
"You have done me the honour," replies Voltaire, "to inform me that the king and Madame de Pompadour, who never bestowed a glance on me when I was in France, have been shocked that I should quit the country. But how should I be treated if I were to return? Madame de Pompadour seemed, at the last, entirely estranged from me. Shall I renounce the favour and familiarity of one of the greatest kings on earth, of a man who will go down to posterity, to go and intrigue at a toilet for a word which I shall not obtain? to solicit Monsieur d'Argenson in my old age for permission to pass an occasional hour at the assemblies of the Academies of Science and of Inscriptions?"
And though Voltaire was still willing, even desirous, to return on fitting conditions, and begged Richelieu to use his good offices to that end, yet he evidently regarded complete expatriation as the alternative. So this remarkable alliance went on, of a king who, though not yet at the height of his fame as a general, had made himself a name among the great masters of war, and who governed his kingdom without ministers, and the illustrious foreigner whose conquests in other fields were still more eminent and assured. In this period Voltaire finished his 'Age of Louis XIV.,' corrected his "Maid," added to his "Essay on the Morals of Nations," and wrote the poem (similar in form and spirit to his "Discourse on Man" ) on the "Law of Nature." His plays were acted at Court, the highest personages taking parts along with the author; he was treated with the most friendly consideration by the princesses; and he might sup every night with the king, who really laid aside his royalty at these moments, liked to surround himself with men of intellect, and encouraged the freest conversation. "When the king," says Voltaire, "has governed all the morning, and governed single-handed, he is a philosopher for the rest of the day, and his suppers really are what the suppers of Paris are believed to be—they are always delicious, but reason always rules there: one thinks boldly there—one is free."
"I had set out," he says elsewhere, "to pay my court to the King of Prussia, thinking to see Italy afterwards, and then to return to have my 'Age of Louis XIV.' printed in Holland. I arrive at Potsdam; the great blue eyes of the king, and his sweet smile and his siren voice, his five victories, his extreme taste for retirement and for letters—in fine, kindness enough to turn one's head, delightful conversation, perfect liberty, forgetfulness of royalty in our intercourse—all this carried me away."
It is even recorded that, in the carnival-time, Voltaire held a levée, as an established royal favourite, when all the great officials paid their respects to him. But it unluckily happened that at this time Voltaire's propensities for financial speculation got the better of his judgment. The exchequer bills of Saxony, at a considerable discount at home, were, by special proviso, payable to Prussian subjects in gold. The opportunity which a Prussian subject would therefore enjoy of buying the bills at a discount, and then obtaining full value, had occurred to others, but had been rendered of small avail by stringent regulations and penalties. Nevertheless it was upon such a doubtful enterprise that Voltaire now entered, with the respectable assistance of a Jew money-lender and general dealer, with whom he had had some transactions, such as hiring jewels in which to play his part of Cicero. This associate was despatched to Dresden, really to buy the paper, but ostensibly to speculate in furs and jewellery, and was furnished by Voltaire with drafts on Paris, to a considerable amount, leaving as security, with his employer, jewels valued at his own estimate. It occurred to the wily Hebrew, incapable even of that limited degree of honour which the proverb enjoins, that he might employ Voltaire's money in another way to much better advantage, and that the nature of their relations would secure him from the consequences. Acting upon this inspiration, he proceeded to apply the proceeds of Voltaire's bills to purposes of private trade. The wrath of the defrauded and excitable philosopher may be imagined. It took, at first, the form of nearly throttling the Jew, and then of bringing an action against him, in which, seeking to meet an unscrupulous enemy with his own weapons, Voltaire descended to steps not consistent with the dignity of a great light of letters and a royal chamberlain; and though he, after a fashion, gained his cause, yet scandal speedily made both Berlin and Paris resound with the liveliest variations on this providential theme.
Of all this Frederick was kept duly apprised, and did not fail to rate his chamberlain pretty severely on the occasion. But his own standard of honour had not hitherto appeared to be of a character so lofty as to render Voltaire's offence unpardonable, and the charm of the culprit's conversation soon restored him to favour. Among Frederick's papers was found a description of Voltaire in the royal handwriting, and supposed at first to be also of the royal composition, though it was considered, later, as a transcript:—
"I esteem in you," it says, "the finest genius that the ages have produced. I admire your verse, I love your prose, above all the little detached pieces in your Literary Miscellanies. Never had any author before you a tact so fine, nor a taste so true and delicate, as yours. In conversation you are charming; you can at once instruct and amuse. You are the most seductive creature that I know, capable of making everybody love you when you wish. You have so many graces of intellect that you can at the same time offend, and deserve the indulgence of everybody. In fact, you would be perfect if you were not man."
So the suppers went on as before, Voltaire was again in the ascendant, scandal was reduced to speak of him in whispers—only, along with his Court-favour, sprang up and flourished the envy which it excited among his fellow-courtiers, especially his countrymen.
A Doctor La Mettrie, one of these French adventurers, imparted to Voltaire, as a piece of news likely to gratify him, that Frederick had said, "I still want Voltaire for another year—one sucks the orange before throwing away the skin;" and about the same time, this or another kind friend told his Majesty that General Manstein having taken his Memoirs to Voltaire for revision, received for reply, "The king sends me his dirty linen to wash, so yours must wait;" and also, that the poet, seeing on his table a packet of the royal verses, brought for correction, had petulantly exclaimed, "This man is both Cæsar and the Abbé Cotin" (a poetaster satirised by Boileau).
Here were at any rate some promising elements of distrust and suspicion. Voltaire took La Mettrie's communication much to heart, and dwelt upon it in his correspondence. He made it, with his doubts and reflections thereupon, the subject of a long letter to his niece, and referred to it more than once afterwards. "I am always thinking of the orange-skin. I try not to believe it, but I fear I am like those betrayed husbands who force themselves to believe that their wives are very faithful. The poor people perceive something at the bottom of their hearts which warns them of their disaster." In December, La Mettrie, who was a young and robust man, died suddenly from eating, at the close of a good dinner, a pie supposed to be of pheasant, but in reality composed, by way of a neat practical joke, of eagle with the wholesome addition of pork hashed with ginger. La Mettrie gallantly finished this too-seductive dish, and died the next day; and Voltaire, after recording the catastrophe (which does not seem to have caused him very lively regret), observes, "I should have liked to put to La Mettrie, in the article of death, fresh inquiries about the orange-skin. That fine soul, on the point of quitting the world, would not have dared to lie. There is great reason to suppose that he spoke the truth."
There were other things, hard to bear, about which he could have no consolatory doubts, that tended to lessen the charm of his intercourse with the king. It was well known that Frederick was fond of indulging one of the ugliest and most impolitic propensities which can afflict a monarch, or, indeed, anybody—namely, that of saying things with the intention to wound. This is a propensity which despotism especially tends to develop, as may be seen in many a petty household tyrant, endowed, for mysterious ends, with the terrible combination of a bad temper and a sharp tongue, whose defenceless wife (or husband), children, and dependants suffer hourly laceration from carefully-concocted sarcasms. The allusion to Frederick in a part of Voltaire's panegyric on Louis XIV. cannot be mistaken: "Louis was so far from saying disagreeable things, which are deadly arrows in the hands of a prince, that he did not even permit himself the most innocent and agreeable railleries; while there are certain personages who every day indulge in such as are most cruel and lamentable." Voltaire long continued to retain the smart of these. Years after he had left Germany, he used to allude, in his letters, to Frederick as "Luc"—a name that for a long time puzzled commentators. One of his secretaries cleared up the mystery. It seems that when Voltaire was living near Geneva, he had a large monkey who used to attack and bite friends and enemies. This pet one day gave his master three wounds in the leg, which obliged him for some time to use crutches. He had named the creature Luc; and in conversation with intimate friends, or in letters to them, among others to M. d'Alembert, he also designated the King of Prussia by the name of Luc,—"because," said he, "Frederick is like my monkey, who bites those who caress him."
Into the atmosphere of Court-favour and agreeable supper-parties, already charged with this dangerous matter, an element which proved explosive was introduced in the course of 1752. The President of the Berlin Academy was a Frenchman, the well-known Maupertuis, who had not only felt, but made apparent, much jealousy of the superior Court-favour of the later-arrived Voltaire, and whose character—rather that of a wiseacre than of a sage—offered to his satirical foe but too-tempting opportunities for reprisal. Maupertuis had put forth some scientific theories claiming to be valuable and original, which one of his academicians proclaimed to be neither. The President and the Academy, indignant at such a revolt against authority, expelled the member. Voltaire, believing, as all the world came to believe, that the rebellious academician was in the right, published, anonymously, a letter to prove that the treatment he had received was unjust. Frederick, both as king and disciplinarian, was disposed to stand by his President; and was so indignant at the side taken by Voltaire, whose style at once betrayed him, that he, in his turn, wrote (anonymously) a letter "from an Academician of Berlin to an Academician of Paris," in which some very rude things were said of his chamberlain. However, with full consciousness of this anonymous warfare, they went on supping together, till a good understanding was so far restored that Voltaire read to the king a satire which he had prepared against Maupertuis, called the "Diatribe of Doctor Akakia," wherein some of the President's favourite theories were laid hold of and run to their extreme conclusions, which lay far in the regions of absurdity. Though he greatly enjoyed the joke, Frederick laid on its author the strictest injunctions to let it go no further. Nevertheless, like so many of his productions, it was issued from a foreign press, and set everybody, in Berlin as elsewhere, laughing at the unfortunate President. The king was, naturally, very indignant. Voltaire, as usual, was ready to disclaim all knowledge of the publication, but was not believed, and endured the mortification of seeing his Diatribe burnt by the hangman. Thereupon he packed up the symbols of his favour, and returned them to the king with a verse in which he compared himself to a lover returning the portrait of his mistress. Much negotiation ensued; the king in some degree relented; and finally, Voltaire, after another brief period of apparent favour, left Berlin in May 1753, as if on a short leave of absence on account of bad health, to drink the waters of Plombières, taking with him his Order, his gold key, and a volume of the king's poetry.
So far then, the object had been attained of withdrawing from the Prussian Court, if finally, yet without discredit, or obvious dismissal. But the real end of Voltaire's connection with the king was to be of a less pacific character. Arrived in Saxony, he could not forbear the opportunity of taking a parting shot or two at his foe the President—who, in a rage, sent him a threatening letter, drawing from Voltaire a satirical reply which once more made poor Maupertuis the laughing-stock of Europe. Hereupon the king, considering that the chamberlain had now forfeited all title to consideration, sent instructions to an official at Frankfort to stop Voltaire when on his passage to France, and to cause him to deliver up the cross, the key, and the book of verses. The poet, on arriving, was much astonished at this new demand. There was a great deal of ignoble protestation and squabbling with officials, for personal dignity was never Voltaire's strong point. On the other hand, the stupid literalness with which the German agents executed their orders entailed many unnecessary annoyances and indignities, such as must have been most grievous to one of Voltaire's excitable nature, on both him and his niece, Madame Denis, who had crossed the Rhine to meet him. At last, bereft of cross, key, and book, but with a new stock of grievances, he made his final exit from Germany in July 1753. Being by no means the man to sit patiently under an injury, he relieved his feelings by composing what he called 'Memoirs of the Life of M. de Voltaire,' in which all the king's faults and foibles, real or imaginary, as well as his literary pretensions, were most unsparingly ridiculed. For some years this composition remained in manuscript, imparted no doubt to a favoured few; but at length, amid loud disclaimers of privity or consent on the part of the author, it found its way into print. With so much to forgive on both sides, it is more than probable that real friendship never again subsisted between them: but their alliance was of a kind that flourishes best outside the sphere of personal intimacy; and it is to the credit of both these illustrious men that in a few years they renewed an amicable correspondence, and maintained it, with mutual courtesies and good offices, till Voltaire's death, when Frederick had a solemn service performed for him in the Catholic Cathedral of Berlin, and himself composed, though in the midst of a campaign, his old servant's eulogy.
- ↑ There were two D'Argensons, schoolfellows of Voltaire—the elder, the Marquis, was always friendly to him; the younger was the Minister.