CHAPTER III.
UNDER THE REGENCY.
When he was twenty-one a great change occurred with the death of the old king. It would be curious to speculate what Voltaire might have become had Louis died at eighty-seven instead of at seventy-seven. The gloom of the Court extended over the literature as well as over the mind and manners of France. It deepened as the king grew older and more devout: his confessor, Letellier, a morose and cruel bigot, urged him to fresh persecutions; it was the Jansenists (a sect into whose peculiar Calvinistic tenets, founded on distinctions which would hardly now appear rational or intelligible, it is not needful here to inquire) who were then the objects of the fury of the Jesuits, and the prisons were full of them. All literary works which appeared at this time had a tinge of devotion, and free-thinking would have been the most perilous of modes of thought. In these circumstances, Madame de Maintenon might have set Voltaire, as she had formerly set Racine, to compose Scriptural dramas for the religious improvement of the courtly audience; and had he complied, he would have been guilty of no more hypocrisy than many around him were practising daily. The spectacle of a gloomy and intolerant bigotry, enforced by a sanctimonious old king, by the widow of Scarron, and by the fanatics who had charge of what the pair believed to be their consciences, had brought religion itself into discredit, and infidelity was not only common but matter of boast in the highest Parisian society.
Unapproachable in profligacy and irreligion—facile princeps—was the Duke of Orleans, the king's nephew, and the destined Regent. Accordingly, when Louis vanished from the scene, such a change took place at Court as is only to be seen in a pantomime, when the gloomy cavern of some fell enchanter, with its dismal incantations and supernatural tenants, suddenly becomes a palace of glory, inhabited by gauze-clad nymphs, with harlequin and columbine figuring in the foreground. Vice, says Burke, loses half its evil by losing all its grossness. At the Court of the Regent it underwent no such diminution, and in this respect the change of rulers was much for the worse. The early part of Louis's reign had been by no means remarkable for morality, but it had always been distinguished by decorum. Perhaps the best and most enduring result of that reign was the amelioration in manners which it diffused far beyond the boundaries of France. The flowing courtesy, the refined address, the consideration for others, which Sterne, in the next century, found alike in peasant, shopkeeper, and noble, had their source in the splendid Court where the stately and gracious king was for so long the glass of fashion. The gilded youth of the time ceased to haunt taverns, ceased to brawl in the streets and fight duels, and vied with each other in deference to women. It was out of these conditions that sprang also the felicity and fineness of wit so characteristic of Voltaire, and which could hardly have been the product of a different age. The weapons were pointed in the old period with which he became the champion of the opinions of the new. But it is obviously an error to impute to Voltaire that he was the originator of unchristian opinion in France. What he did was to give expression to the thoughts which prevailed all round him—to say effectively what so many were wishing should be said. The systematic suppression of opinion, the senseless dogmatism, the persecutions, the evil example of the clergy, the sanctimoniousness of the Court, had combined to create those elements which broke out in a revolt against Christianity.
But although the new Court was licentious beyond example, the old machinery of despotism and fanaticism still remained in full force. The Bastille, the orders for consignment to it, the power and intolerance of the clergy, the Order of Jesuits—all were as they had been; and the press continued to be under the strictest and most oppressive supervision.
We know that in England at that time patrons might make or mar an author, and men even of established character thought it well to propitiate them. But in France the avenues to literary fame were still more difficult of access. "There are," says Voltaire in a letter of advice to a young aspirant, to whom he is evidently imparting his own experience, "a great number of small social circles in Paris where some woman always presides, who in the decline of her beauty reveals the dawn of her intellect. One or two men of letters are the prime ministers of this little kingdom. If you neglect to be in the ranks of the courtiers you are in those of the enemy, and you will be crushed." Something of the kind happened to Voltaire. Among the country houses at which he often visited was that of the Duke of Maine, at Sceaux, near M. Arouet's country house of Chatenay. The Duke was the eldest legitimised son of Louis XIV. by Madame de Montespan, and important enough therefore, as a possible successor to the throne, to be a rival of the Duke of Orleans; his wife was active and ambitious, and hence Sceaux became a focus of intrigue, and the Duchess's friends objects of suspicion to the Government. From her party issued many satirical attacks upon the Regent, and it was natural that some of these should be attributed to Voltaire; among others, one that has survived on account of the vogue it had, known as "Things that I have seen," in which the writer enumerates some of the chief evils of the late reign: "I have seen a thousand prisons full of brave citizens and faithful subjects; I have seen the people groaning in slavery, the soldiers famishing," &c., &c.—"and yet I am not twenty." Voltaire always strenuously denied all knowledge of the composition, the most unfortunate passage in which was that where D'Argenson, the Minister of Police, was called "an enemy of the human race." He was placed under observation by the official thus unpleasantly designated; and when, a few months later, some squibs against not only the Regent, but his daughter, the Duchess of Berry, came out, he was exiled from Paris, being allowed the indulgence of choosing his place of abode. The Duke of Sully's chateau, on the Loire, had been the home of Henry IV.'s famous minister, and was full of recollections of both him and his master, and this was the seat to which he was welcomed. Voltaire's interest in Henry, which had such important results, was greatly heightened by another visit he paid in this year (1717) to M. de Caumartin, a high public functionary, at his chateau. This old gentleman possessed a most remarkable memory, stored with traditions of the French Court which went back to the times of the League, his forefathers for several generations having held important public offices, and his great-grandfather having been in the personal service of Henry. "Voltaire was carried away" (says his Autobiography) "by all that M. de Caumartin, very deeply versed in history, told him of Henri Quatre, of whom that venerable gentleman was an idolator; and he began the 'Henriade' through pure enthusiasm, and almost without thinking what he was about."
During his stay in the country he endeavoured to soften the Regent by addressing a poetical epistle to him, in which flattery was not spared. It began thus:—
"O Prince, beloved of gods! who art to-day
A father to thy king, thy people's stay;
Thou who the weight of State upbear'st alone,
For our fair land’s repose give up thine own"—
and ends by an appeal for pity on his "oppressed youth."
After a time Voltaire, with or without permission, returned to Paris, where D'Argenson's spies found fresh matter for report against him, and this time he was committed to the Bastille. He has left a versified account of his entrapment and lodgment in the fortress. The official who arrests him thus addresses him:—
"My son, the court your merit knows,
Your every phrase with genius glows,
Your scraps of verse, your love-songs gay;
And, as all work deserves its pay,
The king, my son, with grateful heart,
Will make your recompense his part;
And so you'll be, without expense,
Lodged in a royal residence."
In reply to his remonstrances, the escort take him by the hand and conduct him to his prison, dark and with walls ten feet thick, where he is put under triple bolts.
"The clock strikes noon: a tray is brought,
With humble, frugal cheer 'tis fraught:
Said they who bore it, when my air
Showed no great relish for the fare,
'Your diet is for health, not pleasure;
Pray eat in peace—you've ample leisure.'
See thus my fate distressful sealed—
Behold me cooped up, embastilled,
Sleep, food, and drink distasteful made;
By all, e'en by my love, betrayed."
Nor was this light way of viewing his misfortune assumed in retrospect only. Never did captive bear a better heart. All the joys of existence cut off, he employed himself, though denied pen and paper, in planning and partly composing the "Henriade," and in finishing his first tragedy, trusting the lines partly to his memory, partly to markings made somehow in a copy of Homer which he was allowed to have. After nearly eleven months imprisonment, he was permitted to return to Chatenay. It is said that a nobleman of the Court conducted him to an interview with the Regent. While Voltaire awaited the audience in the ante-chamber, a great storm broke over Paris. "Things could not go on worse," he said aloud, looking at the sky, "if there was a Regency up there." His conductor, introducing him to the Regent, said, repeating the remark which the irrepressible youth had then made, "I bring you a young man whom your Highness has just released from the Bastille, and whom you should send back again." The Regent laughed good-humouredly, and promised, if he behaved well, to provide for him. "I thank your Highness for taking charge of my board," returned Voltaire; "but I beseech you not to trouble yourself any more about my lodging." The prejudice against him softened before long: not only was he allowed to return to Paris, but his tragedy was acted before the Court, and the Duchess of Berry had so far forgiven "the wicked mummy" as to be present with her father at the first representation; while the Regent gave him a thousand crowns, and also a small pension.