I have said enough, I hope, to shew what an interestingly childlike, happily disposed, curious and contented race those few surviving Wends are. And they are so peaceful and loyal. Russian and Bohemian Pan-slavists have tried all their blandishments upon them, to rouse them up to an anti-German agitation. In 1866 the Czar, besides dispensing decorations, sent 63 cwts. of inflammatory literature among them. It was all to no purpose. Surely these quiet, harmless folk, fathers as they are of the North German race, might have been spared that uncalled-for nagging and worrying which has often been pointed against them from Berlin for purely political purposes! In the day of their power they were more tolerant of Germanism. They fought side by side with the Franks, fought even under Frankish chieftains. Germany owes them a debt, and should at least, as it may be hoped that she now will, let them die in peace. Death no doubt is bound to come. It cannot be averted. But it is a death which one may well view with regret. For with the Wends will die a faithfully preserved specimen of very ancient Slav life, quite unique in its way, as interesting a piece of history, archæology and folk-lore as ever was met with on the face of the globe.
One can scarcely help wondering that among all the books written about Voltaire and his varied experiences, there should be practically not one which treats of that brief but eventful period during which, in company with the "sublime Emilie," the great writer found himself the guest of hospitable King Stanislas—"le philosophe-roi chez le roi-philosophe." To Voltaire himself that was one of the most memorable episodes in his long and changeful life. It left on his mind memories which lasted till death. He showed this when, in 1757, looking about him for a peaceful haven of rest, he fixed his eyes once more, as if instinctively, upon Lunéville as a place in which to spend the evening of his days. Stanislas would have been only too thankful to receive him. Old and feeble, rapidly growing blind and helpless, and reduced by ill-health and the desertion of his Court to the poor resource of playing tric-trac—backgammon—in his lonely afternoons, with such uncourtly bourgeois as his messengers could pick up in the town, the fainéant Duke would have hailed Voltaire's presence, as he himself says, as a godsend. However, the philosophe was once more out of favour with Louis XV. Accordingly, the permission was withheld, and the royal father-in-law found himself denied the small solace which surely he might have looked for at the hand of his daughter's husband.
The biographical neglect of Voltaire's stay in Lorraine appears all the more surprising since in Lorraine, almost alone of Voltaire's favourite haunts, are there visible memorials left of his sojourn. Nowhere else is anything preserved that could recall Voltaire. In Lorraine dragoons and piou-pious now tramp where in his day courtiers sauntered, and nursemaids lounge where the first wits of the century made the air ring with their bon-mots. Still, the stone buildings, at any rate, of Lunéville and Commercy have been allowed to stand, and French destructiveness has spared some of the flower-beds that delighted Voltaire. In that pretty "Bosquet" of Lunéville you may walk where Voltaire trod, where he rallied Madame de Boufflers on her "Magdalen's tears," where Saint Lambert made sly appointments with Madame du Châtelet—and with not a few other ladies as well. In the Palace you may step into the upper room where Voltaire lived and wrote, and fought out his battles with the bigot Alliot. You may walk into "le petit appartement de la reine," on the ground-floor, which Stanislas good-naturedly gave up to Madame du Châtelet for her confinement—and her death. There it was that those impassioned scenes occurred of which every biographer of Voltaire speaks, and there that the Marchioness's ring was found to tell the mortifying tale of her unfaithfulness to her most devoted lover. You may walk through that side-door through which, dazed with grief, the stupefied philosopher stumbled; and sit on the low stone-step—one of a short flight facing the town—on which he dropped in helpless despair, "knocking his head against the pavement." In that hideously rococo church, tawdrily gay with gew-gaw ornament, you may stand by the black marble slab, still bare of any inscription, below which rest, rudely disturbed by the rough mobs-men of the first Revolution, the decayed bones of the sublime but faithless Emilie.
Barring his rather unnecessary grief over the threatened production of a travestied Semiramis, there were for Voltaire no happier two years than those which saw him, with one or two interruptions, King Stanislas' guest. And to Stanislas, eager as he was to attach the great writer to his bright little court, there could have been no more welcome rigour than that which, at his daughter's instance, drove the leading spirit of the age into temporary exile. Voltaire had paid his court a little too openly to the powerful favourite. After that cavagnole scandal at Fontainebleau, neither he nor Madame du Châtelet stood for the time in the best of odours at Court. Therefore, it probably required little persuasion on the part of the two royal princesses, prompted by their revengeful mother, to prevail upon Louis XV. in that one little square-rod of hallowed ground, over which the power of the mighty Circe did not extend, their nursery, to decree the banishment of the poet. Madame de Pompadour might have reversed the judgment had she been given the chance; but she was not given it, and, after all, Voltaire's exile did not make much difference to her. So the philosopher and Emilie were allowed to pursue their cold winter's journey, amid sundry break-downs and accidents, and prolonged involuntary star-gazing in a frosty night, to that pretty little oasis in ugly Champagne—a Lorrain enclave—in which stood the du Châtelets' castle.
Stanislas did not allow the brilliant couple to remain long in their uncongenial retirement. He was anxious not to be forestalled by Prussian Frederick, who made wry faces enough on finding the preference over himself and his famous Sans-souci given to the prince bourgeois and his tabagie de Lunéville. Stanislas' great ambition was, to make his Court a favoured seat of learning and letters. In his own, rather too complimentary opinion, he was himself something of a littérateur. Voltaire laughed pretty freely—behind the king's back—at his uncouth and incorrect prose and at those long and limping verses de onze à quatorze pieds, which the world has long since forgotten, as well it might. There are some well-put thoughts to be found in the king's Réflexions sur divers sujets de morale—for instance: "l'esprit est bien peu de chose quand ce n'est que de l'esprit," to say nothing of his oft-quoted motto: "malo periculosam libertatem quam quietam servitutem." But, at best his writings, however carefully revised by Solignac—his answer to Rousseau, and his Oeuvres d'un Philosophe Bienfaisant—are but ephemeral trash. Really, Stanislas could not even speak or write French correctly. But though he was nothing of a writer, and not much more of a wit, he knew thoroughly how to appreciate talent and genius in others. And in a man occupying nominally royal rank, placed at the head of a brilliant Court, having a civil list corresponding in value to at least 6,000,000 francs in the present day, and a pension list of perfectly amazing length in his bestowal, such appreciation must mean something.
To understand the life of the little world into which, in 1748, Voltaire entered, we ought to remember what at that time Lorraine and its Court were. Stanislas had not been put upon his ephemeral throne without a definite object. To lodge the French king's penniless father-in-law, who no doubt had to be maintained somewhere, in the Palace of Lunéville, instead of that of Meudon or of Blois, and to allow him to amuse himself with playing at being king, was one thing. But very much more was required of him. In 1737 France had, after toying for several centuries, with greedy eyes and hungry tongue, with the precious morsel of Lorraine, at length firmly and finally closed her jaws upon it. It was a bitter fate for the duchy, in which France was detested; and the hardship was felt by every one of its sons from the powerful "grands chevaux" down to the humblest peasant. Of what French government meant, the Lorrains had had more than one taste. They were sipping at the bitter cup at that very time; they were having it raised daily to their lips, while that ablest of French administrators, De la Galaizière—a veritable French Bismarck, hard-headed, hard-hearted, inexorably firm, and pitilessly exacting—was loading them with corvées, with vingtièmes, with the burden of conscription for the French army, plaguing them with high-handed judgments and oppressive penalties, all of which ran directly counter to the constitution which the nominal sovereign, Stanislas, had sworn to observe. It was Galaizière who was king, not Stanislas, the ornamental figure-head; and under his stern rule all Lorraine cried out.
Even courtly Saint Lambert, who, as a moneyless member of the petite noblesse, with his mouth wide open for French favours, represented in truth the least popular element in Lorrain Society, felt impelled by his Muse to record his protest in verse:
J'ai vu le magistrat qui régit la province
L'esclave de la Cour, et l'ennemi du prince,
Commander la corvée à de tristes cantons,
Où Cérès et la faim commandoient les moissons.
On avoit consumé les grains de l'autre année;
Et je crois voir encore la veuve infortunée,
Le débile orphelin, le vieillard épuisé,
Se trainer, en pleurant, au travail imposé.
Si quelques malheureux, languissants, hors d'haleine,
Cherchent un gazon frais, le bord de la fontaine,
Un piqueur inhumain les ramène aux travaux,
Ou leur vend à prix d'or un moment de repos.
But there was no help for it. Kind-hearted Stanislas was caused many a wretched hour by the incongruity of his position, which led his "subjects" to appeal to him against the oppression of "his chancellor," as he patronizingly called him who was in truth his master. He had begged Louis to appoint a more humane and merciful man, but his prayer had proved of no avail.
Still, there was something which Stanislas could do. Affable, genial, kind, free-handed to a fault, the stranger puppet-king—the originally distrusted "Polonais"—might, in spite of all harsh government administered in his name, by tact and liberality gain the personal affections of his nominal subjects, and so in the character of a Lorrain Prince discharge better than any one else that odious task of un-Lorraining the Lorrains. All things considered, he earned his civil list.
French writers have very needlessly contended over the motives which led Father Menoux, of all men, the King's Jesuit confessor, to urge Stanislas to invite the great philosophe to his Court. Although repeatedly assailed on the score of its inherent improbability, Voltaire's own version is doubtless the most plausible. One of the leading characteristics of the Lorrain Court, as Voltaire knew it, was the sharp division prevailing between French and Lorrains, Jesuits and philosophes. By all his antecedents—by his rigidly Romanist education, by the principles carefully instilled into him, first by his parents, later by his wife—Stanislas was predisposed to take sides staunchly with the Jesuits. A more devout Catholic was not to be found. The king made all his household attend mass, appointed a special almoner for his gardes-du-corps, and directed the kitchen-folk to select a monastery for the scene of their daily devotions. In respect of offerings, the Church bled him freely, and found him a willing victim. More especially during the lifetime of his wife, that homely, very religious Catherine Opalinska whose bourgeois manners gave such great offence to the courtiers of Versailles, the Jesuit faction had it all their own way.
But when Voltaire came to the Court, Catherine had been nearly a year in her grave. King Stanislas' immediate entourage, it is true, was still wholly Jesuit—the French governor, Galaizière; the King's intendant, Alliot; his father-confessor, Menoux; his useful secretary, de Solignac; Bathincourt, Thiange, and Madame de Grafigny's "Panpan," De Vaux. But otherwise a decided change had come over the scene. The lady head of the Court now was the peculiarly attractive Marquise de Boufflers, a declared philosophe, and, in virtue of her birth, the powerful leader of the Lorrain faction. She was a Beauvau, the daughter of that lovely Princesse de Craon who had ruled the heart of the late Duke Leopold. Her husband (who had not stood seriously in the way of her amours) was dead; and she was therefore quite free to give herself up to her liaison with Stanislas, who had formally installed her in some of the best apartments in the palace, in a suite adjoining his own, and handed over to her the management of the Court. She must have been a remarkably fascinating woman. We find Voltaire, in his courtly way, writing of her:
Vos yeux sont beaux, mais votre âme est plus belle,
Vous êtes simple et naturelle,
Et sans prétendre à rien, vous triomphez de tous.
Si vous eussiez vécu du temps de Gabrielle,
Je ne sais ce qu'on eût dit de vous,
Mais l'on n'aurait point parlé d'elle.
She is described as possessing a fine girlish figure, a peculiarly clear and delicate complexion, exceptionally beautiful hair, and neat hands (which made de Tressan enamoured of her "comme un fou") and, moreover, a charming lightness and grace of movement and manner—endowments of nature which scarcely needed a fine discriminating taste and more than average intellectual powers to render effective. She sang, played, painted pastel, and possessed an inexhaustible fund of tact and self-command. Whenever she happened to be absent from the Court, de Tressan writes to Devaux, "Je me meurs, je péris d'ennui. On ne joue point, la société est décousue." Her nickname at Court was "La Dame de Volupté," which, as is shown by the following lines, composed by herself for her epitaph, she accepted good-humouredly:—
Ci gît, dans une paix profonde,
Cette Dame de Volupté,
Qui, pour plus grande sûreté,
Fit son paradis dans ce monde.
To the priests her relations with Stanislas constituted a serious stumbling-block, and many a lecture had the king to listen to from his confessor, Menoux. He accepted it submissively, and even performed the penances which on the score of Madame de Boufflers the Jesuit decreed. But discard her he would not, on any consideration. Just as little, on the other hand, would he discard the Jesuit, however good-humouredly he might listen to Madame de Boufflers' rather violent abuse of him.
Menoux was now trembling for his authority. Madame de Boufflers' influence appeared to him to be growing too formidable. They were curious relations which subsisted between Voltaire and the priest. With de Tressan and other Academicians Menoux was at open and embittered feud. Voltaire was more of a statesman. To their faces the two opponents invariably professed the sincerest friendship and the warmest admiration. Even many years after we find Voltaire, when writing to Menoux, declaring to him his unaltered love and attachment, while at the same time paying the Abbé delicate compliments on the score of his esprit: "Je voudrais que vous m'aimassiez, car je vous aime." Behind their backs they called each other names. Menoux was by no means a mere hierophantic prig or sacerdotal oaf. Voltaire calls him "le plus intrigant et le plus hardi prêtre que j'ai jamais connu," and adds that he had "milked" Stanislas to the extent of a full million. D'Almbert describes him as the type of a Court divine—"habitué au meilleur monde," without any "rigidité claustrale"—"homme d'infiniment d'esprit, fin, délicat, intelligent, subtile, ayant heureusement cultivé les lettres et en conservant les grâces et la fraicheur sans la moindre trace de pédanterie." Between him and Boufflers there was continual warfare—above-ground and below-ground, by open hostilities and by schemes and intrigues. It was with a view to checkmating Boufflers, so Voltaire relates, that Menoux first suggested an invitation to Voltaire and Madame du Châtelet to come to the Court. Madame du Châtelet was to become the favourite's rival. To this theory French writers object that, as du Châtelet was some years older than Boufflers, not nearly as good-looking, certainly not dévote, and another man's property already, the scheme was absurd. In the result Menoux certainly showed himself to have made a mistake; but that was owing to a circumstance which neither he nor any one else could have foreseen. Otherwise the scheme cannot be pronounced bad. To literary-minded Stanislas, at his time of life, the intellectual graces of du Châtelet might well balance the greater personal attractions of Boufflers. Besides, Menoux did not look for an actual ally so much as for a rival to the favourite. Even to lessen her absolute authority would be quite enough for his purpose. He travelled all the way to Cirey to sound the two, and, finding them willing, pressed their invitation upon Stanislas.
Stanislas was, as Menoux had foreseen, only too eager to accept the suggestion. He had had more than one taste of the pleasures of playing the Mæcenas. Montesquieu had been at his Court, working there at his Esprit des Lois, and Madame de Grafigny, Helvétius, Hénault, Maupertuis; and the shy and retiring, but gifted Devaux was a fixture. However, Stanislas wanted more. The only disappointment to Menoux was that he found the invitation planned by himself actually issued by his rival, Madame de Boufflers. It was, of course, accepted; and the beginning of 1748 saw Voltaire and Madame du Châtelet safely arrived at Commercy.
The Lorrain Court, always bright and gay, was at that time perhaps at its very brightest. Stanislas, being permitted to play at being king, and given ample pecuniary resources for doing so, played the game in good earnest, with a due appreciation of showy externals, and with a singularly happy grace. He had at his command an apparatus which any real king might have envied. Here was Commercy, raised by Durand for the rich and tasteful Prince de Vaudémont, the friend of our William III. and of the elder Pretender, a blaze of magnificence, with gardens around it, and sheets of water, and cascades, which cast Versailles into the shade. His principal residence, however, one of the masterpieces designed by Boffrand, was the Palace of Lunéville. On seeing it Louis XV., surprised at its grandeur, exclaimed, "Mais, mon père, vous êtes mieux logé que moi." That was the
salon magnifique,
Moitié Turc et moitié Chinois,
Où le goût moderne et l'antique,
Sans se nuire, ont uni leurs lois,
of which Voltaire writes—very incongruous, but decidedly splendid and comfortable. Stanislas had added the delightful "Bosquet," laid out for him by Gervais—overloading it, it is true, with kiosks and pavilions, renaissance architecture and renaissance statuary, a hermitage, and eventually with de Tressan's "Chartreuse." Like all persons of "taste" in his day, Stanislas loved gimcrackery; he had utilized François Richard's inventive genius for embellishing his principal residence with a unique contrivance, admired by all Europe—an artificial rock with clockwork machinery setting about eighty figures in motion. You may see a picture of it still in the Nancy Museum. It must have been very ingenious and very ugly. First, there was a miller's wife opening her casement-window to answer some supposed caller; then two cronies appear on the scene, engaging in a morning chat. A shepherd playing on his musette leads his flock, tinkling with bells, across the rock. Two wethers engage in a real contest; a clockwork dog jumps up, barking, and separates them. There was a forge, with hammers beating and sparks flying. An insatiable tippler knocks at the closed door of the tavern, and is answered by the hostess with a pailful of water emptied upon his head from a window above. In the distance a pious hermit is seen telling his beads. And in the background is discovered, standing on a balcony, to crown the whole, the Queen, Catherine Opalinska, complacently looking down upon the scene, while two sentries pace solemnly up and down, occasionally presenting arms. Such were the toys of royalty in those days. Besides these two palaces Stanislas had others—Chanteheux, well in view from Lunéville, built in the Polish style: "rien de plus superbe, rien de plus irrégulier"; Einville, flat and level, disparaged by the duc de Luynes, but nevertheless grand, and possessing a "salon" famed for its magnificence throughout Europe; and lastly the historic Malgrange, close to Nancy, the "Sans souci" of Henri le Bon, in which Catherine of Bourbon had met the Roman doctors of divinity, despatched to convert her, in learned disputation, and sent them away discomfited, to the no little annoyance of her brother, Henri IV. Beyond this, Héré was at work beautifying Nancy in the Louis-Quinze style, with statuary and balustrades, gorgeous gateways, and magnificent arches; and he was building that handsome palace, which now serves as the Commanding General's quarters, in which, in 1814, when the Emperor of Austria, the last real Lorrain Duke's grandson, was lodged there, was hatched the Absolutist conspiracy of the "Holy Alliance."
The Court itself was modelled entirely on the pattern of the superior Olympus of Versailles. "On ne croyait pas avoir changé de lieu quand on passait de Versailles à Lunéville," says Voltaire. There was splendour, display, lavishness, gilding everywhere—only in Lorraine there was an absolute absence of etiquette and restraint—"ce qui complétait le charme." At Lunéville the etiquette was of the slightest. From the other palaces it was wholly banished—"me voici dans un beau palais, avec la plus grande liberté (et pourtant chez un roi)—à la Cour sans être courtisan." "C'est un homme charmant que le roi Stanislas," Voltaire goes on, in another letter. And not without cause. For Stanislas had placed himself and all his household at the great writer's service. The king entertained a perfect army of Court dignitaries, who had scarcely anything to do for their salaries. He had his gardes-du-corps, resplendent in scarlet and silver, his cadets-gentilhommes, who were practically pages, half of them Lorrains, the remainder Poles, his regular pages, two of whom must always stand by him, when playing at tric-trac, never moving a muscle all the while. He had his pet dwarf "Bébé," decked out in military dress, with a diminutive toy-coach and two goats to carry him about, and a page in yellow and black always to wait upon him. This dwarf the king would for a joke occasionally have baked up in a pie. Upon the pie being opened Bébé would jump out, sword in hand, greatly frightening the ladies and performing on the dinner-table a sort of war-dance, which was his great accomplishment. Then he had his musique, headed by Anet, the particular friend of Lulli, and with Baptiste, another friend of Lulli, for "premier violon." The Lorrain court had always been noted for its concerts, its theatricals and its sauteries—that was at the time the fashionable name for balls. Adrienne Lecouvreur, Mademoiselle Clairon, Fleury, had all come out first on the Lorrain stage. Lunéville it was which invented the "Cotillon," which has become so popular all over the continent. Lunéville also was the birthplace of the aristocratic and graceful "Chapelet." And king Stanislas' orchestra enjoyed a European reputation. "Do you pay your musicians better than I do?" asked Louis Quinze of his father-in-law with a touch of jealousy. "No, my brother; but I pay them for what they do, you pay them for what they know." There was wit and fashion in abundance, and a galaxy of beauty—the royal-born Princesse de Roche-sur-Yon, the Princesse de Lützelburg, the fascinating Princesse de Talmonde, Stanislas' cousin, who subdued the heart of our young Pretender, the Countess of Leiningen, the Princesse de Craon, Madame de Mirepoix, Madame de Chimay, and others. But what of all things Stanislas prided himself upon most were his table and his kitchen. He was, as I have said, fond of gimcracks and he was a great eater, though he often concentrated all his eating upon one Gargantuan meal. The dinner-hour never came round fast enough for him, which made Galaizière say, "If you go on like that, Sire, we shall shortly have you dining the day before." His particular delight were quaint culinary refinements, "imitations" and "surprises," which were only to be achieved with the help of so accomplished a master as his supreme chef de cuisine (there were five other chefs besides) Gilliers, the author of that unsurpassed cookery-book, Le cannaméliste français. Every dining-table at Court was a mechanical work of art. Touch a spring, when the cloth was removed, and there would start up a magnificent surtout—there were some measuring five feet by three—a silversmith's chef d'œuvre, covered with rocks, and castles, and trees, and statuary, a swan spouting water at a beautiful Leda, and the like. And between these ornaments was set out a rich array of dessert, likewise so shaped as to represent every variety of figures, like Dresden China. One year, when all the fruit failed—I believe it was while Voltaire was in Lorraine, in 1749, which was a year of unparalleled distress—Gilliers kept the Court supplied with a continual succession of imitation fruit, which did service for real plums and peaches. Stanislas had introduced such "bizarreries septentrionales" as raw choucroûte and unsavoury messes of meat and fruit, and imitation plongeon (great northern diver), produced by plucking a goose alive, beating it to death with rods, and preparing it in a peculiar way. A turkey treated in the same manner found itself transformed into a sham capercailzie. But the chefs d'œuvre were Gilliers' "surprises," prepared after much thought, to which Stanislas contributed his share. Voltaire makes out that "bread and wine"—which he did not always get—would have been amply sufficient for his modest wants; but what we hear of the Lorrain Court shows him to have been by no means indifferent to the products of Gillier's inimitable cuisine. We read of Voltaire's eyes glistening with delight when, after the removal of the cloth, what looked like a ham was brought upon the table, and a truffled tongue. The ham turned out to be a confectionery made up of strawberry preserve and whipped cream, pané with macaroons; the tongue something of the same sort, truffled with chocolate. I must not forget the coffee, to which Voltaire, like most great writers, was devoted. Swift declared that he could not write unless he had "his coffee twice a week." Voltaire consumed from six to eight cups at a sitting—which is nothing compared with the performance of Delille, who, to keep off the megrim, swallowed twenty. Stanislas employed a special chef du café, La Veuve Christian, who was responsible for its quality. Then, there was the wine, Stanislas' special hobby. Of course, he had all the Lorrain crûs. The best of these, that grown on the famous Côte de Malzéville, close to Nancy, he had made sure of by bespeaking the entire produce in advance for his lifetime, at twelve francs the "measure." His peculiar pride, however, was his Tokay. Every year his predecessor, Francis, become Emperor of Germany, sent him a large cask, escorted all the way by a guard of Austrian grenadiers. As soon as ever that cask arrived, Stanislas set personally to work. What with drugs, and syrups, and sugar, and other wine, he manufactured out of one cask about ten, which he drew off into bottles specially made for the purpose. Some he kept for his own use at dessert. The larger portion he distributed among his friends, who every one of them becomingly declared upon their oath that better Tokay they had never tasted.
But there were better things to entertain the Lorrain Court. There were fêtes; there were theatricals—at some of which Voltaire and du Châtelet performed in person, Voltaire as the "Assesseur" in L'Etourderie, du Châtelet as "Issé"; there was brilliant conversation, music, everything that money could buy and good company produce. And Voltaire was the fêted of all. "Voltaire était dieu à la Cour de Stanislas," says Capefigue. He could do as he liked—sleep, wake, work, mix with the company, stroll about alone—without any restraint; the king and all were at his beck, all eager for his every word, taking everything from him in the best part, appreciating, admiring, worshipping. His plays were put upon the stage. He was allowed to drill the actors at his pleasure. In this way, Le Glorieux was produced with great pomp; also Nanine, Brutus, Mérope, and Zaïre, the last-named, for a novelty, by a troupe of children. Whatever he wrote, he could make sure that he would have an attentive audience of illustrious personages to hear him read out.
Je coule ici mes heureux jours,
Dans la plus tranquille des Cours,
Sans intrigue, sans jalousie,
Auprès d'un roi sans courtisans,
Près de Boufflers et d'Emilie;
Je les vois et je les entends,
Il faut bien que je fasse envie.
If Voltaire was "god," Madame du Châtelet was "goddess"—waited upon, petted, having her every wish and every whim studied and gratified. There could seemingly be no more congenial, mutually appreciative group of persons than Stanislas and Voltaire, the Marquise de Boufflers and the Marquise du Châtelet.
Stanislas was then already an oldish man—according to one of his biographers, Abbé Aubert, sixty-six; according to another, Abbé Proyart, seventy-one. He was not quite the robust hero that he had been when he accompanied Charles XII. on his trying ride to Bender, and shared rough camp-life with Mazeppa. When, in 1744, Charles Alexander of Lorraine crossed the Rhine at the head of 80,000 Austrians, and sent out manifestos which gladdened his countrymen's hearts, proclaiming that he was coming to take possession of the old Duchy—when signal-fires blazed on every hilltop of the Vosges to bid him welcome, and all Lorraine was throbbing with patriotic excitement; when Galaizière mustered what scratch forces he could improvise for defence, and dragged the twelve ornamental pieces of cannon out of the Lunéville Park to point against the foe—then Stanislas, remembering his age, had discreetly retired, in a sad state of tremor, behind the safe walls of Nancy. But in 1748 he was at any rate still hale and hearty, and bore the weight of his years with an easy grace. He managed to gallop to the Malgrange at a pace which left all his younger companions far behind. He is described as of winning manners, rather majestic in figure and bearing, of an engaging countenance, exceedingly good-natured and affable. It was said that "il ne savait pas haïr." "Je ne veux pas," he declared when multiplying charities and hospitals, "qu'il y ait un genre de maladie dont mes sujets pauvres ne puissent se faire traiter gratuitement." Among such "maladies" he included "the law"—for he paid advocates to give gratuitous advice to the poor.
Voltaire is described as about at his best at that period. The air of Lorraine is said to have suited him particularly well. He was just turned fifty—a little too old, as Madame du Châtelet was cruel enough to inform him, to act the part of an ardent lover, but appearing to less exacting persons still in the very vigour of manhood. "Après une vie sobre, réglée, sagement laborieuse," he is represented as "well preserved"—slim, straight, upright, of a good bearing, with a well-shaped leg and a neat little foot. His features, we know, were wanting in regularity; but they wore a benevolent and pleasing expression. His greatest charm is said to have lain in his brilliant and expressive eyes, which seemed by their play to be ever anticipating the action of his lips. His mind certainly was still young, and so were his tastes. He is described as a most fastidious dandy, irréprochablement poudré et parfumé, affecting clothes of the latest cut and richly embroidered with gold. To his factotum at Paris, Abbé Moussinot, he writes from Lunéville: "Send me some diamond buckles for shoes or garters, twenty pounds of hair-powder, twenty pounds of scent, a bottle of essence of jessamine, two 'enormous' pots of pomatum à la fleur d'orange, two powder puffs, two embroidered vests,"—&c. He was, moreover, an accomplished courtier. Properly to ingratiate himself with his new host, he made his appearance at Commercy with a complimentary copy of his Henriade in his hand, on the flyleaf of which were penned these lines:
Le ciel, comme Henri, voulut vous éprouver:
La bonté, la valeur à tous deux fut commune,
Mais mon héros fit changer la fortune
Que votre vertu sut braver.
Of Madame du Châtelet's appearance we have two hopelessly irreconcilable accounts. She was certainly past forty-two; if her ill-natured cousin, the Marquise de Créqui, speaks truly (and she refers doubters to the parish register of St. Roch), she was even five years more. Voltaire's portrait of her, painted with the brush of admiration, is probably more complimentary than strictly truthful. Madame du Deffand limns her in very different lines:—"Une femme grande et sèche, une maîtresse d'école sans hanches, la poitrine étroite, et sur la poitrine une petite mappe-monde perdue dans l'espace, de gros bras trop courts pour ses passions, des pieds de grue, une tête d'oiseau de nuit, le nez pointu, deux petits yeux verts de mer et verts de terre, le teint noir et rouge, la bouche plate et les dents clair-semées." This hideous portraiture, it is true, Sainte Beuve protests against as a "page plus amèrement satirique" than any to be found in French literature. But Madame de Créqui has even worse to say of her cousin, adding, by way of further embellishment, "des pieds terribles, et des mains formidables"—let alone that, if Emilie was "une merveille de force," she was also at the same time "un prodige de gaucherie." "Voilà la belle Emilie!" Even Voltaire speaks of her "main d'encre encore salie." However, everybody agrees in praising the grace of her manner, the remarkably attractive play of her expressive eyes—Saint Lambert calls her "la brune à l'œil fripon"—and her peculiar skill in becomingly dressing her dark hair. She spoke with engaging animation and quickly—"comme moi quand je fais la française," says Madame de Grafigny (who was always proud of being a Lorraine)—"comme un ange," she completes the sentence. If during the day, while wholly engrossed upon her Newton, Emilie showed a little too much of the pedant, according to the same lady's testimony—"le soir elle est charmante."
The advent of the brilliant couple from Cirey, it need not be stated, added further strength to the philosophe party. Abbé Menoux found out that he had reckoned without his host. Between the two Marchionesses, De Boufflers and du Châtelet, in the place of the expected jealousy and rivalry, there proved to be nothing but sincere, close, and demonstrative friendship. To some extent Madame du Châtelet's amiability towards the Duke's favourite was a piece of diplomacy. She had not come into Lorraine without a very material object in view. Her husband was not as well off as either he or she might have wished; and, although in other matters she showed herself very indifferent to the dull "bonhomme"—that is what she used to call him—in matters of money she thoroughly supported his interest. As in some respect a vassal of the Duke of Lorraine, and a member of one of those four distinguished families which were known in Lorraine as "Les grands Chevaux"—the Lignivilles, the Lenoncourts, the Haraucourts and the du Châtelets—she considered that her husband had something like a claim upon king Stanislas. One of King Stanislas' best pieces of patronage, the post of grand maréchal des maisons, worth 2,000 écus a year, had at the time fallen vacant, and for her husband la belle Emilie resolved to secure it. It cost her a tough struggle, for there was a formidable rival in the field in the person of Berchenyi, a Hungarian, and one of the King's old favourites. However, her woman's persistence triumphed in the end. Apart from such cupboard love, the two women, both of them possessing esprit, both born courtiers, and both, moreover, sharing a sublime contempt for the prosaic rules of what has become known as the "Nonconformist Conscience," seemed thoroughly made for one another. And their alliance told upon the Court. The Jesuits became alarmed. Menoux put himself upon his defence, and threw himself into the contest, more particularly with Voltaire, with a degree of vigour and energy which taxed all the combative power of his opponent. Others might eye the infidel askance and profess a holy horror of the opinions of one whom Heaven was fully expected some day to punish in its own way. There is an amusing anecdote of an unexpected encounter between Madame Alliot, the wife of the "Jesuit" intendant, and Voltaire, both of whom rushed for shelter, in a sudden and exceptionally violent storm, under the same tree. At first the lady shrank from the atheist as from an unclean thing. The rain, however, was inexorable. She revenged herself by preaching to the infidel, attributing the entire displeasure of Heaven, as evidenced in that fearful storm, to his unbelief. Voltaire, it is said, not feeling quite sure of his ground while lightnings were flashing, and in no sort of mood to play the Ajax, contented himself with meekly pleading that he had "written very much more that was good of Him to whom the lady referred than the lady herself could ever say in her whole life." Such harmless little hits the philosophe had now and then to put up with; but for serious fighting few besides Menoux had any stomach. Devaux (Panpan), however "dévot," was disarmed by being—quite on the sly, but no less ardently—one of Madame de Boufflers' chosen admirers. Galaizière was taken up with other things. Solignac was too much of a dependent. "Mon Dieu" Choiseul did not carry sufficient weight. There was, indeed, another Abbé at Court, who might have been expected to help: Porquet, who became the Duke's almoner, a most amusing person in a passive way. But he was by no means cut out for a champion. Besides, being tutor to the young de Boufflers, he was scarcely a free agent. He himself describes himself as an "homme empaillé." When first appointed almoner, and called upon to say grace, he found that he had quite forgotten his Benedicite. Stanislas made him occasionally read to him out of the Bible, with the result that, half-dozing over the sacred page, he fell into mis-readings such as this: "Dieu apparut en singe à Jacob." "Comment," interrupted the Duke, "c'est 'en songe' que vous voulez dire!" "Eh, Sire, tout n'est-il pas possible à la puissance de Dieu?"
There was one sturdy supporter of Catholicism, however, who never flinched from the fight: that was Alliot, the Duke's intendant, who, by virtue of his office, had it in his power to make his dislike sharply felt. With what abhorrence he regarded the infidel guest, for whom he had to cater, we may learn from the contemporary records of his clerical allies, narratives which do not ordinarily come under the notice of persons reading about Voltaire. One can scarcely help drawing the inference that King Stanislas, with all his goodness and all his affected devotion to periculosa libertas, was a little bit of a "Mr. Facing-both-ways," using very different arguments in different companies—a Pharisee to the Pharisees, a philosophe to the philosophes. Only thus could it come about that we have such extraordinary stories, altogether inconsistent with known facts, vouched for on the authority of reverend divines like Abbé Aubert and Abbé Proyart. "On vit quelquefois," says Abbé Proyart, "à la Cour du roi de Pologne certains sujets peu dignes de sa confiance, et le Prince les connoissoit; mais il trouvoit dans sa religion même des motifs de ne pas les éloigner." It was represented to him (by Alliot) that Voltaire "faisoit l'hypocrite." "C'est lui même, et non pas moi qu'il fait dupe," replied the king. "Son hypocrisie du moins est un hommage qu'il rend à la vertu. Et ne vaut-il pas mieux que nous le voyions hypocrite ici que scandaleux ailleurs?" But "le vrai sage," the Abbé goes on, found himself compelled at last to dismiss "le faux philosphe, qui commençoit à répandre à sa Cour le poison de ses dangereuses maximes." Under this clerical gloss the well-known story of Alliot stopping Voltaire's supply of food and candles assumes a totally new shape. "Ce ne fut pas une petite affaire que d'obliger Voltaire à sortir du château de Lunéville." In vain did the king treat his guest with marked coldness; the philosopher would not take the hint. In his predicament Stanislas appealed to the intendant for advice. "Sire," replies Alliot, "hoc genus dæmoniorum non ejicitur nisi in oratione et jejunio," which means, he explains, that "pour se débarrasser de pareilles pestes," having "prayed" them to go without avail, he should now enforce a "fast," which would certainly drive them out of the place. Stanislas is alleged to have fallen in with the Jesuit's counsels; hence that open tiff with Alliot over the stoppage of provisions, which made Voltaire complain that he had not been allowed "bread, wine and candles." In truth, of course, all this clerical story is pure invention. Of the stopping of the provisions Stanislas knew nothing till advised by Voltaire, when he quickly set the matter right.
What with feasting, working, acting, dancing, travelling, the time passed most pleasantly. "En vérité," writes Voltaire to the Countess D'Argental, "ce séjourci est délicieux; c'est un château enchanté dont le maître fait les honneurs. Je crois que Madame du Châtelet passerait ici sa vie." Sometimes at Commercy, sometimes at the Malgrange, most generally at Lunéville, with visitors coming and going, discussions raised, attentions being paid this side and that, gallantry, billiards, tric-trac, lansquenet, comète (which was a great favourite), marionettes, fancy balls, time could hang heavily on no one's hands. "On a de tout ici, hors du temps." Madame du Châtelet, writing till five o'clock in the morning, though she rose not later than nine, worked hard at her translation of Newton, which Voltaire cried up as a masterpiece—more particularly the preface. Whenever she found herself at fault, she had a splendidly fitted-up astronomical cabinet, kept up by Stanislas, to fall back upon, a cabinet which, says Voltaire, "n'a pas son pareil en France." Voltaire himself carried on a brisk correspondence with the Argentals, with Frederick the Great, with his friend Falkener in Wandsworth, and with many more, and worked at his history "de cette maudite guerre," at the Siècle de Louis XIV., at Catilina, and so on, with the easy industry which comes from comfort and absolute absence of restraint amid agreeable surroundings. To ingratiate himself the more with Madame de Boufflers, he wrote La Femme qui a raison. He acted and he criticized. He performed with a magic lantern, to the great amusement of the Court; and at masked balls he got himself up, sometimes as a "wild man," sometimes as an ancient augur. He was sorely troubled when threatened with a performance in Paris of a travesty of Semiramis. Then he lost some manuscripts. Then, again, Menoux frightened him with a tale that Le Mondain and Le Portatif, published at Amsterdam, had both been in France traced to his pen. Among the visitors who in the second year of his stay came to enliven the Court was our Young Pretender—over whose misfortunes Voltaire had pathetically lamented before King Stanislas—and Prince Cantacuzene. The Pretender's cause Voltaire had espoused with fervid warmth. The news of his arrest in Paris arrived at Lunéville at the very moment when he was delighting the Lorrain Court with reading out his just completed chapter of Le Siècle de Louis XIV., treating of the Stuarts. "O ciel!" he exclaimed, "est-il possible que le roi souffre cet affront et que sa gloire subisse une tache que toute l'eau de la Seine ne saurait laver?" "Que les hommes privés," he wrote later, "qui se plaignent de leurs infortunes jettent leurs yeux sur ce prince et sur ses ancêtres."
Several times he left Lorraine for a brief time, going with Madame du Châtelet to Cirey, to Châlons, and to Paris. One visit he paid to Paris by himself, to see Semiramis put on the stage. He came back in a pitiable state, the account of which in Longchamp's journal reads comical enough. "Il est vrai que j'ai été malade," he writes later, "mais il y a plaisir à l'être chez le roi de Pologne; il n'y a personne assurément qui ait plus soin de ses malades que lui. On ne peut pas être meilleur roi et meilleur homme." One would think not. Voltaire was petted like an invalid child. He had but to send word that he wished to see Stanislas, to bring the king to his bedside. When he found himself "malingre, bon à rien qu' à perdre ses regards vers la Vôge," he was taken out to Chanteheux, and made thoroughly comfortable there, where he could best indulge in the idle pleasure of contemplating the mountains. Meanwhile Madame du Châtelet had been to Plombières with Madame de Boufflers, and had come home just as much disgusted with the place as Voltaire himself had been nine or ten years before. Then the gay Court reassembled, and there was the same life, the same succession of pleasures, the same effusion of wit and raillery. Gilliers invented new dishes. King Stanislas exhibited his indifferent pastels. Madame de Boufflers played the harp, and courtiers with voices sang to her accompaniment. Under Voltaire's inspiration, all the Court turned littérateur and engaged in versifying. Stanislas took up his pen once more and wrote, among other things, Le Philosophe Chrétien—horrifying thereby his daughter, the Queen of France, who persuaded herself that in the book she discerned the malignant teaching of the infidel Voltaire. Madame de Boufflers wrote; Saint Lambert composed fresh ditties; Devaux grew industrious; even Galaizière found himself impressed by the lyric Muse. Every courtier mounted his own little Pegasus and made an attempt to produce something witty, or clever, or at least readable. Lunéville became a modern Athens.
But there was a snake in the grass. One of the pleasantest features of the remarkably sociable life carried on by the brilliant company assembled under the roof of Stanislas, while at Lunéville and at Commercy, were those merry nocturnal gatherings held as soon as the king had retired to rest—which he did punctually at ten o'clock, without ever troubling the company, in spite of his jealousy, with an unexpected reappearance. Then began Madame de Boufflers' reign in good earnest; and to the good cheer of a choice little supper, to which often an exciting game of comète or of cavagnole added a fresh delight, was summoned, by means of a lighted candle placed in a particular window, a new guest, whom Stanislas' jealousy would not otherwise tolerate in the palace. This guest was the young and handsome Saint Lambert, a captain in the Duke of Lorraine's Guards, the cynosure of the ladies' world, of whom it was said that no fair heart to which he seriously laid siege could resist him. His muse had not yet taken the frigid turn which eventually produced those dull and chilling Seasons, a poem in which no one will now detect any merit, though Voltaire praised it up to the skies, and French contemporaries declared that the poet had surpassed Thomson. But he dabbled very neatly in little ditties, vers d'occasion, and the like, some of them rather light and pretty, though not of the most perfect style. Voltaire professes to regard Saint Lambert as a terrible élève, of whose poetry he owns himself "jealous." "Il prend un pen ma tournure et l'embellit—j'éspère que la postérité m'en remerciera." Posterity has done nothing of the kind. In matters of courtship Saint Lambert resembled the "papillon libertin" sketched by himself in one of his prettiest pièces fugitives:—
Plus pressant qu'amoureux, plus galant que fidèle,
De la rose coquette allez baiser le sein.
D'aimer et de changer faites-vous une loi:
A ces douces erreurs consacrez votre vie.
Neither Society nor History would ever have known him, nor have detected any talent in him, had it not been his fortune to dispossess his two great contemporaries, Voltaire and Rousseau, successively of their mistresses, conquering the heart, first of Madame du Châtelet, and later that of Madame de Houdetot. Madame de Houdetot and he turned out to be really congenial spirits. For Madame du Châtelet his own conduct shows that he did not really care—as how could a young man of thirty-one for a woman of forty-two or else forty-seven, who had been some years a grandmother? Her letters are full of impassioned professions of affection, impatient longings for his presence, reproaches for his indifference. On his side it was all a question of vanity. It flattered him to think that he had eclipsed the great genius of the age in the affections of a woman of whom all the polite world was talking. What she was he knew well enough. More than once had she tasted of the forbidden fruit. Voltaire's Epître à la Calomnie had not whitewashed the Magdalen who had had relations successively with Guébriant, with Richelieu, and with Voltaire. Of Voltaire's overstrained praise of her assumed modesty Saint Lambert himself writes:—
De cette tendre Courtisane
Il faisait presque une Susanne.
But what could have induced Madame du Châtelet to engage in this conspiracy of deceit all round—deceit on her part towards Voltaire, deceit on Saint Lambert's part towards both Voltaire (with whom he was not then on terms of intimacy) and Madame de Boufflers (with whom he had a standing liaison)? It was in Madame de Boufflers' drawing-room, of all places, that the courtship was most actively carried on. Her gilt-framed harp, we hear, served as a letter-box for the lovers. There was a slit in it just of a convenient size to hold the letters, which passed daily. Of Madame du Châtelet's passion there could be no doubt. She threw herself into the amour with the fervour of a girl of sixteen. She sent her lover dainty billets-doux written on pink and blue-edged, fringed, and scented paper; declared that she could not live two days without hearing from him, when he was away; appointed rendez-vous in the "Bosquet"—watched and waited for him. It seems ridiculous in a grandmother; but she was not the first woman of her age to go wrong.
Clogenson will have it that the attachment sprang up some years before—that Madame du Châtelet became annoyed at Voltaire's long absence at the Court of King Frederick, and looked out for a new lover. We know, however, that Emilie and Saint Lambert met for the first time at the Lorrain Court in 1748, when Voltaire had long been back from Berlin, and was devoting himself to his lady with an assiduity which could not be excelled. Besides, we know—from correspondence quite recently come to light—that as late as 1744 the relations between Voltaire and Emilie were still quite unclouded. The miniature portrait of Voltaire, which she wore so long secretly in her ring, and which was after her death found to have been replaced by one of Saint Lambert, was painted in 1744. In February of that year she writes to Abbé Moussinot: "Je vous laisse la choix du peintre, et je ne le trouverai pas cher, quoiqu'il puisse coûter." That does not sound like pining for a fresh lover. Evidently the later attachment dated only from 1748, when she first became personally acquainted with Saint Lambert; and, as the late M. Meaume puts it, "threw herself at his head." There is no need to look very far for an explanation. Emilie herself is perfectly outspoken about it. The temptation came. She had yielded so often that she had not sufficient virtue left to resist. The odd part of the business is, that Voltaire so readily forgave her; that he continued to dote upon her, to look upon her as half of his own self; and that he grew fast and admiring friends, almost in consequence of the betrayal, with his betrayer, Saint Lambert. Many years after, Saint Lambert very naïvely set forth his own views on the proper conduct of friends in matters of this kind in his Conte Iroquois. Voltaire accepted that not very chivalrous theory readily, and contented himself with protesting—"O ciel! voilà bien les femmes! J'en avais ôté Richelieu, Saint Lambert m'a expulsé: cela est dans l'ordre, un clou chasse l'autre."
"Dans ces vallons et dans ces bois,
Les fleurs dont Horace autrefois
Faisait des bouquets pour Glycère—
Saint Lambert ce n'est que pour toi
Que ces belles fleurs sont écloses:
C'est ta main qui cueille les roses.
Et les épines sont pour moi."
Indeed, his relations with Madame du Châtelet were not those of an ordinary lover. He did not look upon her as in his young days he had looked upon the inconstant "Pimpette," on the beautiful "Aurore," the pretty "Artemire," on the very "natural" Rupelmonde, or the false Adrienne. His heart beat to a different tune at Cirey from what it did in the Rue Cloche Perce. She was a companion and a friend—"une âme pour qui la mienne était faite."
There is no need to review the incidents of that melancholy love-making in detail. They are well known. It was at Commercy that the treachery was detected, and that those half-comical, half pathetic scenes described by Longchamp occurred—Voltaire, mad with a sense of the injury endured, firing up, abjuring Emilie, almost accepting Saint Lambert's challenge to fight, ordering his valet, Longchamp, to bespeak a coach and horses at once, that very night, for Paris. Longchamp knew too well who was master. Instead of rushing to the posting-house, he went quietly to Emilie, who directed him to let post-master, horses, and coach alone, and report that there were none to be had. Her cynically frank explanation, next morning, in Voltaire's own room put matters straight and Saint Lambert was not only pardoned but asked pardon of by Voltaire and admitted as a friend to both parties. Later came the ludicrous trick played off upon the Marquis at Cirey. Last of all, there was the sad ending at Lunéville.
Madame du Châtelet had a short time before met Stanislas at the Trianon, and had begged him for the use, for the time of her confinement, of "le petit appartement de la reine" in the ducal palace, a handsome set of apartments on the ground-floor, looking out on one side on the Cour d'Honneur, on the other on the private gardens reserved for the Court—apartments which were magnificently furnished, but were prized by the petitioner chiefly for their comfort, and for their nearness to those other rooms, on the first floor (which command a splendid view across the Bosquet, bounded in the distance by the gorgeous façade of Chanteheux), in which Voltaire was to be lodged. Those rooms in the first story are now appropriated as a granary. Madame du Châtelet's apartments serve as quarters for the divisional General. King Stanislas, kind-hearted as ever, gladly acceded to the petition, and entered into all the arrangements with particular personal interest, as if they had concerned some near relative of his. Under his own and Madame de Bouffler's attentive care (to say nothing of Voltaire and Mademoiselle du Thil), we know how admirably Emilie was looked after, how satisfactorily at first all seemed to proceed—her Newton was finished just in the nick of time—till that fatal glass of iced orgeat suddenly turned happiness into grief, and made the palace a house of mourning.
Voltaire was dazed at the loss, unable to command his words or his steps. He tottered out on to the little flight of stairs, where he sat in dull despair and stupefaction. In spite of all that had happened of late, he declared that he had lost, not a mistress, but "half of his own self." The world would be a different world to him now. There was to be no more of woman's love for him in his after-life. Lunéville was no longer a place for him. "Je ne pourrais pas supporter Lunéville, où je l'ai perdue d'une manière plus funeste que vous ne pensez." Stanislas, kind to the last, did all that he could to comfort his distressed friend. On the day of his great trial he went up thrice into his room, sat with him, and wept with him. We hear little of the funeral, except that it was carried out in a magnificent style, attended by the whole of the Court, and with all the honours which were due to a member of one of the four "Grands Chevaux." It seemed like a mockery of Fate that, on being carried out to be placed on the car the bier should have broken down in the large saloon in which only a few weeks before Emilie had gathered brilliant laurels in her favourite character of Issé, and that a mass of flowers, with which her coffin was covered, should have dropped on the very spot where on that occasion had fallen a shower of bouquets thrown in token of admiration. The parish church of St. Remy, then quite new, received the body—it is that same hideously grotesque rococo church now dedicated to St. Jacques, overladen with misshapen ornament, whose two lofty but gingerbread spires, "bourgeoises, lourdes, cossues et bonhommes au demeurant," as Edmond About describes them, stand up, a conspicuous landmark, visible from afar off, and looking down on a scene far more attractive than themselves—the little town with its rectangular streets and squares, brightly-green vineyards all around, and laughing hop-grounds, carefully-kept gardens, dark bosquets, and luxuriant meadows, watered on one side by the broad Meurthe, on the other by the modest Vesouze—with the chain of the Vosges rising in the distance, overtopping those prettily undulating elevations with which Lunéville is fenced in. The tomb was new, the first dug in the nave—and it has remained the last. A black marble slab, bearing no inscription, was laid over the grave. That same black slab is there still. It was displaced once, when the rough champions of the Revolution raised it, in order to possess themselves of the lead of the coffin, scattering about rudely the bones which that coffin enclosed—almost at the precise moment when the body of Voltaire was being carried in triumph to the Pantheon in Paris. Pious hands gathered the remains once more together, and there they rest in the same humble vault.
Voltaire wrote serious verses upon Emilie's death; King Frederick the Great wrote flippant ones. Maupertuis lamented the possessor of brilliant powers never put to a bad use, a woman guilty of "ni tracasserie, ni médisance, ni mechanceté." Madame de Grafigny mourned over one who had "never told a lie:" Voltaire added that she had "never spoken ill of anyone." It all mattered little after she was gone. Voltaire packed up his things, and hurried off sorrowfully to Cirey, where he gathered together the various chattels with which he had made that place more habitable and more attractive; and before the Marquis could seriously object, he had carried them off to Paris.
He had done his work at Lunéville. He had put the stamp of literature and taste on the place. He had set the current of learning flowing towards the Lorrain capital, where a year after de Tressan appeared, to add one more captive to the admiring army vanquished by de Boufflers—Tressan, the "Horace, Pollion et Tibulle" of Voltaire, but forgotten now—who in 1751 founded, under Stanislas' auspices, that "Société de Sciences et de Belles Lettres," which soon acquired the name of "Academy," and took rank in public estimation almost on a par with the sacred Olympus of the "Forty" at Paris. Montesquieu, Helvétius, Hénault, Fontenelle, Bishop Poncet, Bishop Drouas—all begged as a favour to be admitted. Really, that Academy—which is still a flourishing institution at Nancy—was Voltaire's work. Stanislas' fond dream had been realized, and the Court of Lorraine had become a foremost seat of the Muses.
Voltaire never forgot the hospitality received at Stanislas' hands. To the time of that nominal sovereign's melancholy death, he continued in friendly and affectionate correspondence with him. In 1760, after Louis XV. had refused him permission to settle once more on the banks of the Vesouze, we find him writing to the Polish king:—"Je me souviendrai toujours, Sire, avec la plus tendre et la plus respectueuse reconnaissance des jours heureux que j'ai passés dans votre palais. Je me souviendrai que vous daigniez faire les charmes de la société comme vous faisiez la félicité de vos peuples, et que si c'était un bonheur de dépendre de vous, c'en était un plus grand de vous approcher."
Six years after that the little drama of the Lorrain Court was played out. Blind, and old, and deserted, Stanislas was not even sufficiently cared for to have some one handy to help when his silk dressing-gown caught fire. He died of his wounds—with an innocent bon-mot on his lips. The Lorrains, who had been slow to welcome him, crowded round his sick bed and his hearse. He had done his work. In spite of his failings, his posings, his airs, and his frivolities, no one need grudge him that tribute of esteem. He had made the change from independence, dear as life itself to the Lorrains while under their own dukes, to incorporation with France very much easier. He had done much material good to the Duchy, and to literature he had rendered very useful service. His Court is forgotten now. His Palace is turned into a barrack; and the once gay capital has, but for its garrison, become a sleepy little provincial town, in which the presence of a stray stranger puts the police at once on the qui vive. The hop-trade and the manufacture of dentelleries monopolize the attention of the inhabitants; and only rarely is it that some inquiring traveller comes to inspect with interest the spot on which was enacted the most important scene of what the late Comte d'Haussonville has aptly called "the great second act" of the comédie of Voltaire's life—that act which, according to the same gifted author, might be named "L'amour de la science, et la science de l'amour."