"Madame was of high quality, one of the Breteuils; but was poor in comparison, and her Husband the like. An old Chateau of theirs, named Cirey, stands in a pleasant enough little valley in Champagne; but so dilapidated, gaunt and vacant, nobody can live in it. Voltaire, who is by this time a man of ample moneys, furnishes the requisite cash; Madame and he, in sweet symphony, concert the plans: Cirey is repaired, at least parts of it are, into a boudoir of the gods, regardless of expense; nothing ever seen so tasteful, so magnificent; and the two withdraw thither to study, in peace, what sciences, pure and other, they have a mind to. They are recognized as lovers, by the Parisian public, with little audible censure from anybody there,--with none at all from the easy Husband; who occasionally even visits Cirey, if he be passing that way; and is content to take matters as he finds them, without looking below the surface. [See (whosoever is curious)Madame de Grafigny, Vie Privee de Voltaire et de Madame du Chatelet (Paris, 1820). A six months of actual Letters written by poor Grafigny, while sheltering at Cirey, Winter and Spring, 1738-1739; straitened there in various respects,--extremely ill off for fuel, among other things.
Rugged practical Letters, shadowing out to us, unconsciously oftenest, and like a very mirror, the splendid and the sordid, the seamy side and the smooth, of Life at Cirey, in her experience of it. Published, fourscore years after, under the above title.]
For the Ten Commandments are at a singular pass in cultivated France at this epoch. Such illicit-idyllic form of life has been the form of Voltaire's since 1733,"--for some three years now, when Friedrich and we first make acquaintance with him. "It lasted above a dozen years more: an illicit marriage after its sort, and subject only to the liabilities of such. Perhaps we may look in upon the Cirey Household, ourselves, at some future time; and"--This Editor hopes not!
"Madame admits that for the first ten years it was, on the whole, sublime; a perfect Eden on Earth, though stormy now and then.
[ Lettres Inedites de Madame la Marquise du Chastelet;auxquelles on a joint une Dissertation (&c. of hers):
Paris, 1806.] After ten years, it began to grow decidedly dimmer;and in the course of few years more, it became undeniably evident that M. de Voltaire 'did not love me as formerly:'--in fact, if Madame could have seen it, M. de Voltaire was growing old, losing his teeth, and the like; and did not care for anything as formerly! Which was a dreadful discovery, and gave rise to results by and by.
"In this retreat at Cirey, varied with flying visits to Paris, and kept awake by multifarious Correspondences, the quantity of Literature done by the two was great and miscellaneous. By Madame, chiefly in the region of the pure sciences, in Newtonian Dissertations, competitions for Prizes, and the like: really sound and ingenious Pieces, entirely forgotten long since. By Voltaire, in serious Tragedies, Histories, in light Sketches and deep Dissertations:--mockery getting ever wilder with him; the satirical vein, in prose and verse, amazingly copious, and growing more and more heterodox, as we can perceive. His troubles from the ecclesiastical or Lion kind in the Literary forest, still more from the rabid Doggery in it, are manifold, incessant. And it is pleasantly notable,--during these first ten years,--with what desperate intensity, vigilance and fierceness, Madame watches over all his interests and liabilities and casualties great and small;leaping with her whole force into M. de Voltaire's scale of the balance, careless of antecedences and consequences alike;flying, with the spirit of an angry brood-hen, at the face of mastiffs, in defence of any feather that is M. de Voltaire's.
To which Voltaire replies, as he well may, with eloquent gratitude; with Verses to the divine Emilie, with Gifts to her, verses and gifts the prettiest in the world;--and industriously celebrates the divine Emilie to herself and all third parties.
"An ardent, aerial, gracefully predominant, and in the end somewhat termagant female figure, this divine Emilie. Her temper, radiant rather than bland, was none of the patientest on occasion;nor was M. de Voltaire the least of a Job, if you came athwart him the wrong way. I have heard, their domestic symphony was liable to furious flaws,--let us hope at great distances apart:--that 'plates' in presence of the lackeys, actual crockery or metal, have been known to fly from end to end of the dinner-table;nay they mention 'knives' (though only in the way of oratorical action); and Voltaire has been heard to exclaim, the sombre and majestic voice of him risen to a very high pitch: 'Ne me regardez tant de ces yeux hagards et louches, Don't fix those haggard sidelong eyes on me in that way!'--mere shrillness of pale rage presiding over the scene. But we hope it was only once in the quarter, or seldomer: after which the element would be clearer for some time. A lonesome literary man, who has got a Brood Phoenix to preside over him, and fly at the face of gods and men for him in that manner, ought to be grateful.
