Voltaire in Love (32 page)

All this time the guests, led by Voltaire, kept up a convivial din, bursting occasionally into song. In due course, Émilie surrendered and, begging to be excused, host and hostess retired. The second honeymoon, thus begun, lasted for three weeks while the jollities continued in full swing. Then Émilie told her husband that their union was once more to be blessed. M. du Châtelet nearly fainted with joy. He announced the happy news to all assembled friends and went round his estate announcing it to the tenants. He was warmly congratulated, not to say applauded, and a party was given to celebrate his splendid achievement. After this, everybody went their separate ways —Voltaire and Mme du Châtelet to Paris, Saint-Lambert to Nancy, du Châtelet to Dijon, and the gentlefolk of Champagne to their anonymous country lives.

Émilie's character in its extraordinary contrasts, her equal enthusiasm for serious and trivial matters, has never been so brilliantly illuminated as during the months of her pregnancy. Though she felt ill with sickness and headaches and also suffered from deep melancholia, she set herself the task of finishing Newton. At this time when a woman longs for the support of the man she loves, she even had the strength of mind to separate from Saint-Lambert in order to be able to work. She knew that she was going to die, as much as human beings ever know it, and she was determined to leave a monument to her fame. At the same time she flung herself into the wordly life of which she was so fond, and conducted her love-affair. Her letters to Saint-Lambert alone would have occupied the leisure and energy of an ordinary woman. Neither lover comes well out of them; Saint-Lambert is shown to have been cold, neglectful, not, in fact, loving; Mme du Châtelet possessive, self-pitying, and a terrible nag. Greatly to her despair he was moving heaven and earth to get an army command which would take him
away from Nancy, and the theme of many of her letters was: ‘You want to be free to separate from me for ever if it suits you, and yet you keep the right to reproach me for this and that —'

She was very much occupied with where to have her baby. Her pregnancy, at her age, made her a figure of fun and she knew it. She also knew that, while M. du Châtelet had been pleased about it at first, the indiscretion of an acquaintance might soon spoil everything. Their son made no secret of his displeasure, he had no desire to share his fortune with this deplorable afterthought. Altogether, Émilie's position was delicate, and she looked for a shelter from all the chill winds that might blow upon herself and her baby. She decided that Stanislas had better provide it. She would give birth at Lunéville, in the Queen of Poland's apartment; nothing could possibly be more respectable. There was also the advantage that she would be near her lover (if, indeed, he were still in Lorraine); and her two husbands could also be in attendance. It seemed a good deal to ask of the old King that he should turn his late wife's bedroom into a ward for such a strange maternity, but Émilie was never shy of asking and generally got what she wanted. First of all she wrote to Mme de Boufflers, 3 April 1749.

‘I am pregnant and you may imagine my distress, my fears for my health – for my very life even – how ridiculous I feel it to have a baby at the age of forty [forty-four, really] and how much I mind on my son's account. Nobody knows yet, it shows very little, I think it must be in the fourth [month]. I haven't felt it move, but that won't be until four and a half months. I am so thin that if I felt giddy or unwell, and if my breasts were not swollen, I should think it was simply an irregularity. You can imagine how much I count on your friendship now, and how much I need it to console and help me to bear my condition. It would be very hard for me to be so long away from you and not to have you at my lying-in, yet how can I go to Lunéville and put everybody to so much trouble? I really do not know if I can ask the King, good as he always is, to let me have the Queen's small apartment which I used to occupy. The wing would not do because of the noise, the smell of the manure-heap and the fact that I would be too far from you and M. de Voltaire.'

After Easter Stanislas went to Trianon to see his eldest granddaughter, Mme Infante, who had come back from Spain, with her little girl, to visit her parents. He was accompanied, as usual, by the husband and lover of his mistress, the Marquesses de Boufflers et de La Galaizière. Mme du Châtelet asked if she could go and stay with him at Trianon and when permission was given she moved in with a mountain of trunks containing all her summer dresses. In about a fortnight she had extracted everything she wanted from the King. He said she could have the Queen's small apartment, and he would shut up the big one so that she would be entirely private. The
bosquet
near the Queen's terrace would be reserved for Émilie and when her time was near, she could take air and exercise there without being seen. Stanislas even promised to furnish a little summer-house where she could go and rest.

The matter of her lying-in off her mind, Mme du Châtelet went back to Paris and concentrated on Newton. No more social life, no supper-parties – she refused to see Mme du Deffand and indeed everybody except Voltaire and Clairaut. Clairaut went through each chapter of her book as she finished it to make sure that there were no careless mistakes; these were so easily made and overlooked that the manuscript was then given to a third party to correct. She translated the Latin into French, and amplified the demonstrations to bring the material within the grasp of French mathematicians. Her working hours were from eight, or at the latest nine, in the morning, to 3 p.m. when she had her coffee. At four she began again and went on until supper time at ten o'clock. After supper she chatted with Voltaire an hour or two and then worked until 5 a.m. She was feeling very well and thought the baby particularly lively, it jumped about so much.

‘I don't love Newton,' she wrote to Saint-Lambert. ‘I am finishing him because it is reasonable and honourable to do so, but I only love you.'

Voltaire was leading, as he always did in Paris, a life divided between intellectual activity and nervous upsets. A new play of his,
Nanine,
was put on at the Théâtre Français without making much of a splash. His correspondence with Frederick, which had flagged of late, began again, as loving as ever. Frederick was, of course,
delighted at the discomfiture of his female rival. ‘It seems that Apollo, as God of Medicine
[sic],
has ordered you to preside at Mme du Châtelet's lying-in.' Voltaire promised to go to Berlin as soon as it was over. He would see his King again, die happy, and be buried in Frederick's church with ‘
Ci-gît Vadmirateur de Frédéric le Grand'
on his tombstone. Frederick replied that his proudest title would be ‘
Possesseur de Voltaire'
. Voltaire hinted that he would be irresistibly drawn to Berlin if he were presented with the Prussian order
Pour le Mérite.
The flirtation, in fact, was resuming its prickly course. Frederick told his sister Wilhelmine, ‘We shall have Voltaire here this autumn, he is coming as soon as Mme du Châtelet has had her baby. It's doing him too much honour to father it on him; a certain Saint-Lambert enjoys the glory, her husband the shame, and Voltaire the spectacle.' At about this time Frederick made his often-quoted remark to Algarotti: ‘
C'est bien dommage qu'une âme aussi lâche soit unie à un aussi beau génie. Il a les gentillesses et les malices d'un singe.'
*

Voltaire now had a quarrel with Richelieu which very nearly put an end to their age-old friendship. The Duke and he had arranged a little back-scratching with the object of gaining favour in the eyes of Louis XV. The French Academicians were to go to Versailles and congratulate their master on the recent peace treaty (Aix-la-Chapelle). Richelieu, a member of that body, which always includes two or three Dukes, had been chosen as spokesman and particularly wanted to shine. So he made Voltaire write the address for him to learn by heart and deliver as his own. ‘If the Academy has chosen me to express its sentiments it must be because it is my good fortune to enjoy daily contact with the great soul and essence of all we admire . . . It is the duty of my colleagues, Your Majesty, to acquaint future generations of your triumphs over your enemies and over yourself, the good you do to the nations and the example you set to other Kings . . . .' This was not entirely insincere. Voltaire did in fact greatly admire Louis XV for the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle – by which France reaped practically no benefit from a series of glorious victories to her arms. The King had said
that he was not a merchant and did not intend to bargain. Most of his subjects, however, thought his generosity misplaced and were very much annoyed with him for making such an unprofitable treaty.

Voltaire having written Richelieu's speech, the Duke, for his part, had engaged to present the King with Voltaire's
Panégyrique à Louis
XV, in Latin and the four civilized modern languages, French, Italian, Spanish, and English, finely bound in blue morocco. In this Voltaire went much further. Louis XV, he said, was the greatest French King since Charlemagne and it was to be hoped that all the monarchs of the future would resemble him. As Louis XV never now spoke to Voltaire, or even looked in his direction, he did not dare present the
Panégyrique
himself.

On the appointed day, a party of Academicians went to Versailles: Richelieu, the Duc de Saint-Aignan, Mirabaud, Abbé d'Olivet, President Hénault, Abbé Alary, Hardion, Crébillon, the Bishop of Mirepoix, La Chaussée, Foncemagne, Cardinal de Soubise, Abbé Duresnel, Marivaux, the Bishop of Bayeux, Bignon, Abbé de Bernis, Abbé de laVille, Duclos, Paulmy, and Gresset. It included two great enemies of Voltaire, Crébillon and the Bishop of Mirepoix, and four great friends, Richelieu, d'Olivet, Bernis, and Hénault. He himself was not present. The delegation was assembled in the Œil de Bœuf awaiting its audience when, to his horror, Richelieu heard somebody in the crowd reciting the very phrases that he had so carefully learnt and was just about to deliver. He was obliged to make up a new speech there and then and stammer it out under the mocking glances of his enemy, Maurepas, who knew quite well what had happened.

The Duke thought that this was one of Voltaire's monkey tricks; he was furious and riposted by sending the
Panégyrique
back to its author without comment. Voltaire, in his turn, flew into a wild rage. He tore down an
Apothéose du Duc de Richelieu
in gouache which always hung in his bedroom and trampled it to pieces. In the end the matter of the ‘leakage', was cleared up. It was the usual story. Mme du Châtelet, it seemed, had read the address to Mme de Boufflers who had come to pick her up and take her to the Opera. Mme de Boufflers asked for a copy, had twenty more made,
and distributed them among her friends. Voltaire and Richelieu laughed together over this feminine indiscretion, all was forgiven and forgotten, and they never quarrelled again in the course of their long lives.

The
Panégyrique
was presented to the King by Mme de Pompadour. He was quite clever enough to see through its fulsome flattery and Voltaire complained that the only person who did not seem to like it was Louis XV.

*
‘It is a great pity that such a despicable soul should be joined to such a beautiful genius. He has all the charming ways and all the malice of a monkey.'

In June 1749 Mme du Châtelet had finished her work with Clairaut, though not her book. She and Voltaire set out for Cirey. The weather was bad, and on three days of that month there was hard frost. Voltaire said: ‘We hear a great deal about St Martin's summer and always forget St John's winter.' (St John's Day is 24 June.)

Saint-Lambert was supposed to meet them at Cirey. Émilie had told him to go there from Nancy with M. du Châtelet. But in the end he said he really could not risk spending several days alone with the Marquis and preferred to wait for Émilie in Lorraine. She and Voltaire only stayed a fortnight at Cirey and then went on to Lunéville. Voltaire says that Émilie now behaved like a man about to embark on a long journey. Sadly, but firmly, she put her affairs in order and began to take leave of her friends. She made up various parcels of letters and manuscripts, some of which she gave to Longchamp with directions for disposing of them in case of her death.

Saint-Lambert was very kind and affectionate during the last two months of Émilie's pregnancy, and so was Mme de Boufflers. In fact she was surrounded by love and it would have been a happy time but for her melancholy premonitions and her physical state. She became absolutely enormous and had a great deal of pain in her back. Everybody at Lunéville was worried about her, it was thought most dangerous to have a child so late in life and she seemed worn out by her exertions in Paris. Saint-Lambert blamed Voltaire for having allowed her to work so hard.

‘When I am with you,' she wrote to Saint-Lambert, who had
gone to see the Prince de Beauvau at Haroué, ‘I can bear my condition, often, indeed, I hardly notice it, but when I lose you everything goes blank. I walked to my little summer-house today and my belly is so terribly fallen, I am suffering such pain in my kidneys, I feel so sad this evening, that it would not surprise me if I had the baby tonight. I should be miserable, though you, I know, would be pleased. My pains would be easier to bear if you were here in the same house. I wrote you eight pages yesterday . . .'

Voltaire's nerves began to give way under the strain of waiting for the baby to be born and he found an outlet for them in a short but violent quarrel with M. Alliot, the Controller of the Household at Lunéville. Alliot, a
fermier-général,
was one of the remarkable Frenchmen whom Louis XV had sent to administer Lorraine. By his honest, clever, and thrifty conduct of the treasury there he made it possible for Stanislas, who was far from rich, to gratify his taste for building. Nancy owes its beautiful monuments almost as much to Alliot as to Stanislas himself. Mme Alliot, a pious
bourgeoise,
had already had a passage with Voltaire. During a tremendous storm at Lunéville she made it clear that in her view God would most likely destroy all the courtiers with a thunderbolt to punish them for associating with so much wickedness. ‘Madame,' said Voltaire, ‘I have thought and written more good of Him than you, who find Him so terrifying, could say in a lifetime.'