Chapter XXIX: “natural Law,” the Visit of D’alembert, and the Affair of Byng

The “Poem on Natural Law” was an answer to Frederick the Great’s version of the stupendous question of Pilate--“What is truth?” The poem is in four short parts and an “easy and limpid versification.” In it, Voltaire calls it a “seeking for the law of God.” Condorcet says it is “the most splendid homage man ever paid to Divinity.” Desnoiresterres speaks of its “incontestable orthodoxy.” At once profound and simple--the simple expression of profound problems--“Natural Law” and “The Disaster of Lisbon” are almost the only works of the man who has been called the Prince of Scoffers which are completely reverent. They are pre-eminently _not_ the writings of an atheist, but of one who gropes for a God he knows to exist, though he knows neither how nor where.

But, not the less, the whole world, and all the Churches fell upon them both, tooth and nail. In 1759, “Natural Law” was publicly burnt by the hangman in Paris; and immediately after it appeared, the pious Genevans begged J. J. Rousseau to refute the horrible heterodoxy of “The Disaster of Lisbon.” In July, 1757, Marie Leczinska, going to mass, saw a copy of “Natural Law”--which was then commonly entitled “Natural Religion”--on a bookstall. On her return from church she took the pamphlet and tore it across, and told the astonished shop woman (“who had supposed, from its title, the work to be one of edification”) that if she sold such things her licence should be taken from her. It is true, there was a smile for Voltaire and all the world in such stories. There is a smile still in the fact that works far more freethinking than “Natural Law” and “Lisbon” are avowed now by persons who continue to call themselves not only Christians, but orthodox Catholic churchmen.

The January of 1756 passed quietly at Monrion, where Voltaire had arrived for the winter at the end of December. In spite of his opinions, Lausanne ministers, always more liberal-minded than the Genevans, came much to see him. He liked them not a little. “They are very amiable and well read,” he wrote. “It must be granted there is more wit and knowledge in that profession than in any other. It is true I do not listen to their sermons.” Other visitors were Lawyer de Brenles and his charming young wife. Voltaire, disappointed of his play-acting in Geneva, had greatly encouraged a scheme for building a theatre here in Lausanne. But the earthquake had made all men thoughtful. They mistrusted their love of the drama, and filled the churches instead.

That wave of austerity swept also over Paris and the Court. They were in the vanguard of this new mode of seriousness, as of every other. To quite propitiate an angry heaven Madame de Pompadour renounced her connection with the King. His private entrance to her apartments was closed; and in February Madame was created Maid of Honour (of honour!) to the Queen.

Voltaire had dedicated “Lisbon” to a certain courtier friend--the Duc de la Vallière--grandson of the hapless Louise de la Vallière, the mistress of Louis XIV. In return, possibly, for the compliment of that dedication the good-natured Duke consented to be the emissary of Madame de Pompadour, and to write from Court on March 1st to make a really most advantageous proposal to M. de Voltaire. We are all serious here now, you know! Can you not take advantage of our seriousness and versify some of the Psalms which I, the Duke, will at once have printed at the Louvre? The typical wit of the eighteenth century has no doubt lost something by the fact that Voltaire’s two letters in reply to this proposal are missing. He did not versify the Psalms. Condorcet says that he could not be a hypocrite even to be a cardinal. It seems, if not certainly, at least very likely, to be true that a red hat _was_ held out to him--in those fairest of white hands--as an inducement to fall in with the grave vogue of the Court and employ that matchless irony and that scathing wit for, instead of against, the established religion.

It was the chief duty of the mistresses of Louis XV. to keep him from being bored; and the Pompadour knew her business to perfection. What reason was there why Voltaire, who could do it so well, should not help her to “_égayer_ the King’s religion”--for a reward? That age had had worse cardinals than he would have been. It still remembered Iscariot Dubois, traitor, usurer, debauchee; and Mazarin, that synonym for lies.

Carlyle, who, by every instinct of his character and every racial trait, was necessarily out of sympathy with such a man as Voltaire, said of him, “that he has never yet in a single instance been convicted of wilfully perverting his belief; of uttering in all his controversies one deliberate falsehood.”

He was at least too honest a man to be a cardinal. A little later he did write “a free, too free imitation” of Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon. But he cannot be charged with pandering in these works to the popular creed. His Notes on his paraphrases are profane and coarse; and the paraphrases themselves miss all the dignity and beauty of the original. The only merit they have is that they truthfully express the unpalatable opinions their writer held--to his loss.

In May, Voltaire paid a brief visit to Berne. On June 12th, Collini left his service. He had been with him four years. Bright-witted, quick-tempered, too fond of pleasure, and “loving women,” said Madame Denis, “like a fool,” Collini had never been a satisfactory servant. It is only a very noble character which can remain unspoilt by spoiling. Voltaire certainly did not understand the Napoleonic principle of government--to be feared before you are loved. He had apologised to Collini. He had forgiven him a hundred times; nay more, when it was the servant who was in the wrong it was the master who had won him back to good temper by a thousand injudicious indulgences. Voltaire was lax enough on the subject himself, heaven knows; but now his foolish secretary must needs conduct himself in a love affair in a manner which offended even this easy-going master. Then, Collini speaks ill of us behind our backs! That seemed one of the worst failings in the world to a man who understood the art of friendship so completely as Voltaire. And then--then--the foolish secretary--called away suddenly to get a carriage for Madame de Fontaine, who was just going to arrive at Délices from Paris--leaves open on his desk a letter in which he had laughed at Madame Denis; and Madame Denis’s maid, coming in, reads the letter and carries it to her mistress. Voltaire had been infinitely loyal to Madame du Châtelet. He was not less so to this chattering _bourgeoise_ of a niece. He gave the secretary his _congé_ the next day--sadly, but firmly at last--as a decision that admitted of no appeal. Collini must go! Collini implies in his Memoirs that a kind of flirtation between himself and Madame Denis was one of the causes of his dismissal. Madame Denis was certainly foolish enough. It is also on his testimony that when his master said good-bye to him, he talked with him for more than an hour and asked if he had enough money for his journey to Paris--“and to last some time.” As he spoke Voltaire went to his desk and took from it a _rouleau_ of louis, saying “Take that: one never knows what may happen.” And Collini adds, “with tears in my eyes I left the Délices.” Three years later, Voltaire procured a post for him at the Court of the Elector Palatine, which Collini is believed to have kept till his death. Written long after their parting are many friendly letters from the master to the servant.

Collini had his significance and his uses. From his “Séjour auprès de Voltaire,” wherein he tries to make Voltaire appear as faulty and himself as faultless as he can, the master still comes out better than the servant. There is no more reliable testimony to character than that wrung out of an unfriendly witness. On one point at least the ill-tempered young Italian has cleared his master’s reputation for ever. “Stinginess never had a place in his house I have never known a man whose servants could rob him with greater ease. I repeat it, he was miser of nothing but his time.”

Collini’s place was at once filled by Wagnière, a Genevan boy, now sixteen years old, who had been in Voltaire’s service since 1754. As if he had nothing else to do in the world Voltaire taught him Latin and trained him in his duties himself.

Collini’s departure for Paris seems to have suggested to his master that he too would like to pay a visit to the capital--just a very flying visit to see about some business. So he wrote off to one d’Argenson, to ask him to get the requisite permission from the other d’Argenson, the Secretary of State. But in spite of that old school friendship, the minister was not at all too friendly just now to this presumptuous exile. The permission was refused: and Voltaire revenged himself by an epigram. He had a richer revenge, if he had wanted it in the January of the next year, 1757, when the Secretary was banished to please her Mightiness the Pompadour. But he did not want it. The spiteful epigram relieved his feelings and his temper. And it will be remembered of an earlier Voltaire, that from the moment an enemy became unfortunate, this inconsistent person could not help regarding him as a friend.

In August, J. J. Rousseau wrote, as the Genevan ministers had asked him, to remonstrate with Voltaire on that unorthodox “Disaster of Lisbon.” Jean Jacques permitted himself to admire the grace and beauty of M. de Voltaire’s poem, while continuing to find the optimism of Mr. Pope much more consolatory, and deducing from the earthquake a splendid argument for his darling theory of the advantages of savage over civilised life. Do you not see, my dear M. de Voltaire, that if people did not build themselves houses seven stories high and huddle together in great towns, earthquakes really would not be nearly so disastrous?

The letter was scarcely one which called for a serious reply. But it was instinct with all the glow and passion of that matchless style which made men forget to examine the common-sense of the ideas it clothed; and it fitted in admirably with the fashionable optimism which was naturally popular with the well-to-do and the powerful. The world _did_ take it gravely. And in September M. de Voltaire sent a reply of airy badinage.

“Madame de Fontaine has been in danger of her life, and I have been ill too; so I am waiting till I am better and my niece cured, to dare to think as you do.”

The note was a little trifling, certainly; but Rousseau wrote to Tronchin that he was charmed with it. As for Voltaire, the very idea of that further scathing rollicking answer that was to come had not yet even occurred to him. He had as little time as desire to quarrel with anybody at the present moment. Besides all his new duties as a landed proprietor, a tragedy, history, verses, correspondence, he was engrossed with d’Alembert as a visitor and the “Encyclopædia” as a hobby.

The story of the foundling who, thirty-nine years earlier, had been discovered on the steps of a Parisian church, is hardly less familiar to our own century than it was to the eighteenth. Brought up by a compassionate poor woman, a glazier’s wife, it was not until he had become the great d’Alembert, the first geometrician and philosopher of the day, that the false mother who had borne and abandoned him--Madame de Tencin, the old acquaintance of Voltaire--would fain have avowed a child so creditable. But that child had not a characteristic in common with her. He denied her. He had no mother but the glazier’s wife. In her home he grew up to be one of the wisest and gentlest of great men. In her home he learnt the blessings of peace and privacy, of work and obscurity. “Simple, sober, and proud,” too well acquainted with Poverty to be afraid of her, he always shunned a society which could give him nothing and might rob him of the time to work out the work of his life. Above that glazier’s shop, after long throes and travail of delightful pain, he brought forth in 1750 the first-born son of his genius, the Preliminary Discourse of the great “Encyclopædia.” In 1756 he became a member of the French Academy. In 1772 he was made its perpetual secretary. His long passion for that most ardent and unhappy woman, Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, was for eleven years of his later life at once its consolation and its despair. As a writer his style has all the clumsiness of the _savant_ who has so much to say that he has no time to take care how he says it, and all the coldness of the mathematician. But it was only his writing that was cold.

For all his “stately irony,” for all his recluse student ways and frugal life, d’Alembert inspired his century not so much with admiration as with love. Once, when Voltaire was asked to write something in an album, he saw in it the name of d’Alembert. Beneath, he wrote his own--_Hic fuit Dalemberti amicus_.

D’Alembert arrived at Délices some time about August 10, 1756. He stayed five weeks. It must have been a delightful visit. Voltaire had that rare combination of qualities as a host--he knew both how to amuse his guest and how to leave him to amuse himself. It was during this stay that at a dinner party at Délices, at which Dr. Tronchin and others were present, the company began telling robber stories. Each anecdote was more thrilling than the last. Then Voltaire looked up--“Once, Gentlemen, there was a Farmer-General ...” and he relapsed into silence, with the honours of the evening. That ancient story still has point. How much more it must have had when it was new--in 1756!

The five weeks passed only too quickly. Summer was on that beautiful country. Madame de Fontaine was also staying at Délices. She was now a widow of about forty, rather tall and good-looking, and with a taste for painting--the subjects not too decorous, for choice. Madame was not exactly decorous herself. When she arrived at Délices she had brought with her the Marquis de Florian, her lover. Uncle Voltaire accepted that intimacy with perfect nonchalance and amiability. On the present occasion Madame de Fontaine was useful to keep Madame Denis company, and so leave Voltaire and d’Alembert to themselves.

They had much to do and to say. From 1746 they had been correspondents; but the “Encyclopædia” was a link which had bound them closer far. Founded on the “English Encyclopædia” of Chambers, which had been translated into French about 1743, the “immense and immortal work” of Diderot and d’Alembert wholly eclipsed its prototype. It was, is, and will be, not _an_ “Encyclopædia” but _the_ “Encyclopædia.” It includes, indeed, neither history nor biography: the vast discoveries of modern times make men smile to-day at its science; and its hardy philosophy seems timid to our bolder age.

But it was not the less the Guide to the Revolution, the first great public invitation to all men to drink of that knowledge which enfranchises the soul. To it Grimm, Rousseau, Holbach, Marmontel, and Condorcet were contributors. There was not an enlightened man in France who did not recognise it as the primer of a new language--the handbook to a better country. The authorities burnt it. Voltaire loved it. It suggested to him his own Philosophical or, as he called it, “pocket Dictionary.” To the “pocket Dictionary” could be relegated what was too bold even for the Encyclopædia. It has been seen that in Prussia he wrote articles for it, and reams of letters about it. It was not his own. He called himself “the boy in your great shop”; and his contributions to it “pebbles to stick into the corners of the immortal edifice you are raising.” But he loved it as if it had been his own, and as he loved the d’Alembert who had created it.

That summer visit at Délices was the cause of the most famous and fought-over article the “Encyclopædia” contains. Geneva delighted in d’Alembert. Besides being gentle, modest, and accomplished, it also knew him to be hostile to the Church of Rome; and naturally concluded that hostility to Rome meant friendliness to Calvin. The ministers flocked to Délices, and gave parties themselves for their host and his guest. The guest was quite as charmed with them as they were with him. They were so free from superstition, so learned, tolerant, and open to reason! It was equally pleasant and surprising to find a religion--and the ministers of a religion--nearly as agnostic as the philosophers themselves.

The next thing to do when I get back to Paris is to write an article on Geneva and compliment the children of Calvin on their freedom of thought! There is no doubt that d’Alembert talked over that proposed article with his host. Nor is there any doubt that Voltaire knew perfectly well that such compliments would set all the Calvinists in Geneva by the ears and create a fracas which would ring through Europe; nor that he anticipated that fight with the richest enjoyment, and secretly and gleefully rubbed his hands together at the prospect of it.

And as you _are_ going to write the article, my dear d’Alembert, can you not put in just a few lines to say that the only thing the Genevans really need to make them entirely delightful is to permit theatrical representations among them--not for enjoyment, of course, but just to “improve their taste” and give them “tact and feeling”?

The amiable d’Alembert naturally agreed to oblige his host on so small a matter.

In September he packed up his boxes and went back to Paris with the article on Geneva much in his mind; and those casual observations on play-acting, not to be forgotten.

He was missed at Délices. Madame de Fontaine was ill there in the autumn. Her uncle’s cook was too good for both her and her sister, who were always calling in Tronchin to cure them of “a little indigestion.” And of course Voltaire (though certainly not from the same cause) was ill himself. “We have been on the point, my dear universal philosopher,” he wrote to d’Alembert on October 9th, “of knowing, Madame de Fontaine and I, what becomes of the soul when separated from its partner. We hope to remain in ignorance some time longer.”

On December 9th Voltaire received a visit from an old friend, George Keith, Earl Marischal of Scotland.

He did not come as the emissary of Frederick; or to recall, though no doubt he did recall, to Voltaire those early golden days of the Prussian visit when they had sat together at the most famous supper-table in the world. He introduced many of his countrymen to the “old owl of Délices.” But that was not the reason either of his visit. He came to plead the cause of Admiral Byng.

Richelieu had just taken Minorca from the English. The fleet sent by England to its relief retired under Byng, before the French. Paris went mad with delight as only Paris can, and sang the exploits of Richelieu in one of those national songs whose glow and vigour keep them fresh for ever:

Plein d’une noble audace
Richelieu presse, attaque la place----

Voltaire was nearly as enthusiastic as Paris. He had prophesied such splendid things of his hero! And it would have been very damping to his ardour to have had his prophecies and hero-worship proved wrong. Then, too, England had been so confident of victory; and so dreadfully rude and aggressive in her confidence. Such pride deserved a fall; and great was the fall of it. To be beaten on the sea by the French seemed to Britain like being struck across the face by the open hand of insult. She forgot that love of fair play which she has some right to call her national instinct. She did what, with all her faults, she very seldom does--she hit a man when he was down, and wreaked upon him, in the bitterness of her disappointment, the anger she should have kept for the blundering ministry who had commanded him impossibilities. Byng was arraigned on a charge of treason and cowardice. But he had a friend--and the friend remembered Voltaire. True, Voltaire was a Frenchman, and the closest intimate of Richelieu. But Keith knew that he was first of all a humanitarian; and that he had a passion for justice and a rage against tyranny which made him love his enemies if they were oppressed, and hate even his friends if they were oppressors. On December 20th, Voltaire wrote to Richelieu telling Byng’s story. Richelieu replied in an open letter which generously vindicated the character of his foe. Had Byng continued the fight, the English fleet must have been totally destroyed. A clever sailor and a brave man, his misfortunes were from the Hand of God--and the valour of the French.

Voltaire sent that letter to Byng with a letter of his own. He had known the Admiral as a young man, when he was in England; but he judged it better not now to mention that they were acquainted, lest his interference might be attributed to personal partiality. The sequel is very well known. The miserable ministry wanted a scapegoat. Though Byng was recommended to mercy by the court which tried him, he was shot on March 14, 1757, meeting his death with the courage with which his foes declared he had met them.

He left grateful messages to Richelieu and to Voltaire; and to Voltaire a copy of his defence.

The author of “Candide” added later to that famous satire a few stinging and immortal lines on this _cause célèbre_. “In this country it is good to put an admiral to death now and then, _to encourage the others_.”

Voltaire’s part in the affair of Byng is not only of importance as being of interest to English people. It began a new era in his life.

The scoffer, the jester, the uprooter had found nobler work for his hands at last. The defender of Byng became the avenger of La Barre, of Sirven, of Montbailli, and of Calas.