After the end of the Second Silesian War the letters between Frederick and Voltaire were more frequent and more enthusiastic than ever before—Frederick asking Voltaire to live with him and be his love; Voltaire hanging back, but less and less convincingly. The offer tempted him, but he had promised Mme du Châtelet never to leave her. Although she now had a new lover, as well as a husband with whom she was on comfortable terms, the habit and affection of twenty-odd years kept Voltaire at her side. For some time now they had lived with ex-King Stanislas at Lunéville. Voltaire’s life had a secret complication: he was enamoured of his sister’s daughter Mme Denis, a fact successfully concealed from history until, in 1957, Mr Theodore Besterman discovered and published their love-letters. Mr Besterman, who knows Voltaire better than anybody, says he loved her ‘sincerely, tenderly, passionately, blindly’. But it is obvious from the available evidence, that Mme Denis cared not for her uncle, but only for his fame and his money. She kept his Paris house for him and their friends thought he looked upon her as a daughter.
In 1749 Mme du Châtelet died giving birth to a baby by her new lover. Voltaire was almost unhinged by this death; the whole tenor of his life was upset; his anchor had gone. He could no longer bear Lunéville, although Stanislas begged him to stay there and was unfailingly kind to him. He had got a room and a job at Versailles, but they gave him little satisfaction since the one king he longed to please never threw him a word. Although Louis XV knew that Voltaire was his most distinguished subject he happened to loathe him; he gave him all the favours and appointments which were his due and avoided his company like the plague. Voltaire also had a house in Paris which he shared with Mme Denis, but he was not happy there. She was extremely promiscuous; he must have known it and must have minded—indeed it may have contributed to his highly nervous state at this time. He was continually upset by the behaviour of certain failed writers who, maddened by jealousy, were doing their best to destroy him and his work. No real man of letters joined these despicable hyenas (Jean-Jacques Rousseau had only just appeared on the horizon) and one wonders why Voltaire paid any attention to them. No doubt he would have snapped his fingers at them if Louis XV had asked him to his supper parties, but the King’s neglect ate into his soul, tortured him and made him touchy.
About a year after the death of Mme du Châtelet, Voltaire decided to go and live at Berlin. He wrote to all his friends giving the reasons for taking such a step. He said he was persecuted in France, but as examples of this persecution he was obliged to hark back to the reception of Le Mondain, many years before, and to the black deeds of the late Bishop of Mirepoix. Even he could hardly pretend that he was being persecuted in 1750, unless by an occasional cross look from Louis XV. He also complained, as old people do, of deteriorating standards in France, of taste having gone downhill; there was no place for him in the brash new world. Each friend in turn was told that only he and Mme Denis made life in Paris tolerable for Voltaire, who was therefore leaving France in order to enjoy the protection of a king, the company of a philosopher and the charm of a delightful man. Mme Denis would have a house in Berlin and, he hoped, spend several months there every year. Voltaire’s contemporaries were puzzled. Lord Chesterfield wrote to a French correspondent: ‘Do explain the motives of this emigration. Academician, Historiographer of France, Gentleman-in-Ordinary to the King and rich into the bargain . . .’
Frederick, like a Victorian lady of the manor engaging a neighbour’s butler, told his minister at Versailles to ask Louis XV if there would be any objection to his having Voltaire. The answer was none whatever, but it was doubted whether His Prussian Majesty would find Voltaire’s character very comfortable in the long run. Louis XV continued the poet’s pension but not his appointment as Historiographer. Frederick wrote very lovingly to Voltaire saying he would do his best to make him happy and Voltaire said he was now assured of eternal tranquillity.
At first all went well. Voltaire had beautiful rooms at Sans Souci next door to Frederick’s; Frederick wandered in and out at all hours, chatting, joking and bringing his Histoire de Brandebourg to be criticized. Voltaire thought the King had been too hard on his grandfather, Frederick I, whom Voltaire rather liked because of the beautiful architecture he had left. When Frederick held his ground, Voltaire said, ‘Oh well, he’s your grandfather, not mine.’ The other he-muses, though envious, were under control; Frederick disciplined them as if they were soldiers and all pretended to be delighted at the arrival of the master wit of the world. Only Maupertuis sulked. Conversation at the supper parties was dazzling; Voltaire, Frederick and the Marquis d’Argens did most of the talking; the others listened and laughed and applauded. All those brilliant words which, said Voltaire, nourished the soul have vanished into air but we have an echo of them in the letters of Voltaire and Frederick, since these were men who wrote as they spoke.
Too soon Voltaire began to get on the King’s nerves. For one thing, he talked so stupidly about warfare. He pretended that the subject bored him to death—very well, but then he would come back to it. He made idiotic remarks: ‘the bullet speeds, the powder flames’, instead of the other way round. He supposed that when Frederick was fighting he was in a rage? Certainly not—that is the moment when you must have ‘Marlborough’s cold head’ (sic). Then his behaviour over Countess Bentinck was tactless in the extreme. She was an old friend of Voltaire’s, now in Prussia for a lawsuit against her husband. Frederick suspected that she was having an affair with the newly married Prince Henry, which might have accounted for his indifference to his bride. Voltaire bombarded the King with requests on her behalf and then urged her to buy a house in Potsdam where she could entertain the wits.
Voltaire arrived at Berlin in July; in November the gilt was wearing thin. One evening at supper they were all teasing him about Mme Denis—his letters were full of her and so no doubt was his conversation. It all began in quite a good-natured way, Frederick saying, ‘Do admit, Voltaire, that your niece is rather absurd.’ ‘But she is witty and well informed.’ ‘Perhaps that makes her more absurd.’ Then Baculard d’Arnaud, a young protégé of Voltaire’s whom he had wished on Frederick, said annoyingly, ‘So true!’ Now Voltaire could take it from the King but this was too much and he flew into a rage. Declaiming like an actor: ‘Sire, my niece whom I love and esteem is being attacked in my presence—as for you, little d’Arnaud, abortion from Parnassus, you to whom I gave the first inkling of what is poetry, you whom my niece took in and protected in your poverty—away with you and your base ingratitude!’ D’Arnaud replied, ‘Your absurd niece was good to me, I don’t deny it, but in return I had to sleep with her.’ Frederick noticed that Voltaire, who generally had a ready reply, was suddenly turned to stone; he looked so desperate and the King felt so sorry for him that he broke up the party there and then. Furthermore, at Voltaire’s request, he sent d’Arnaud back to Paris. Of course none of them knew the real reason for Voltaire’s distress.
‘My dear child,’ he wrote to Mme Denis, ‘the weather is turning cold.’
Three days later he sent for Abraham Hirschel, a diamond merchant, to meet him at Sans Souci on urgent business. The glass was going down.
Voltaire was a rich man, but not from his writings. His books were nearly always pirated; his plays brought in money but he generously distributed it among the actors. He was interested in high finance, and by clever transactions had greatly increased the fortune which he had inherited from his father. He now heard of an investment which seemed profitable indeed. Under the Treaty of Dresden, Prussian holders of Saxon bonds had to be paid in gold by the Saxon Treasury. As these bonds were only worth a fraction of their nominal value this naturally led to abuses and to very bad feeling at Dresden; Frederick soon forbade his subjects to speculate in them. Voltaire knew it, but the smell of lucre was strong; he gave Abraham Hirschel a sum of money, part of which was in the form of a letter on a Paris bank, and sent him to Dresden to buy the bonds, at a thirty-five per cent discount; he was then to smuggle them out
and sell them for gold in Berlin. Hirschel left some diamonds with Voltaire as a security. Frederick heard of this transaction, but refused to believe what he took to be spiteful gossip.
The sum involved, not translatable into modern money, was a large one; as soon as Hirschel had left for Dresden Voltaire began to worry, and he was in a pitiable state of anguish when weeks went by with no numbers of bonds, only an occasional vague and unsatisfactory letter. He consulted financiers in Berlin who said they only hoped everything was tied up so that Hirschel could not cheat; they hinted at dire dishonesty. So Voltaire told his Paris banker not to honour his bill and this brought Hirschel hot-foot from Dresden. There were awful scenes and almost every day the affair took some new turn which fascinated not only the Berliners but, soon, the whole of Europe. Voltaire went for the Jew, tried to strangle him and dragged a ring off his finger: Hirschel’s honest old father began to die of a broken heart; Hirschel accused Voltaire of having substituted sham stones for the diamonds he had left with him.
Frederick was naturally displeased; he refused to keep Voltaire at Sans Souci and lodged him at the palace in Berlin: ‘Brother Voltaire is here in penitence’, he told Wilhelmine. Voltaire went no more to the two Queens, was ill, wretched and lonely. Finally he brought a lawsuit against Hirschel. He seems to have imagined that Frederick and his Chancellor Cocceji would arrange for him to win it, but they were proud of their new law reforms by which litigation in Prussia had been made speedy and cheap and justice put above reproach; they would not have dreamed of interfering with its course. Before the reforms such a case would have dragged on for years, but now it only took two months. Voltaire and Hirschel both lied like troopers. Facts very damaging to Voltaire and annoying to Frederick came out. Hirschel had been several times to Sans Souci where he and Voltaire had plotted almost within earshot of the King. When Hirschel had told him of the risks involved, Voltaire let it be understood that Frederick had no objection to the arrangement and he even hinted that if it succeeded Hirschel might become court jeweller. Each man declared that the other had tempted him. The judges struggled to understand what had really happened, but a great deal of the matter remains obscure to this day.
Frederick to Wilhelmine, 22 January 1751:
You ask about Voltaire’s lawsuit with a Jew. It’s the story of a knave cheating a scamp—unpardonable for a man with Voltaire’s gifts to make such use of them. The case is now being tried and in a few days we shall know which is the greater scoundrel. Voltaire assaulted the Jew; he was rude to M. de Cocceji—in short he has behaved like a madman. When the case is over I shall wash his head and see if, at the age of fifty-six one can’t induce him to be, if not more sensible, at any rate less crooked.
2 February 1751:
Voltaire’s case is not yet over though I think he’ll dodge his way out of it. It won’t affect his talent but his character will be more despised than ever. I’ll see him again when it’s all over but in the long run I’d rather live with Maupertuis. He is dependable and easier company than the poet, who lays down the law.
Wilhelmine to Frederick, 6 February 1751:
I’ve had a very funny letter from Voltaire describing his adventures with the Israelite. I wouldn’t swear that he won’t now become a Christian from rage and vexation.
Baron von Pöllnitz to Wilhelmine, Potsdam, 13 February 1751:
Y.R.H. asks me for news of our wits. The head of the band is still exiled from the court of Augustus but better treated than Ovid was at the height of his favour. He is lodged in the palace at Berlin where he has food, carriages and all expenses paid. His salary is 5,000 écus and he is allowed to plead against Israel and give rise to all sorts of jokes. The satirists practise their verve on him and he commits a new folly every day. He went to see the Chancellor [Cocceji] and told him that the new code of law is full of absurdities, especially as regards letters of credit. The Chancellor thanked him warmly and said he would look into it, but not until Voltaire’s case was over . . . To go back to the poet, one begins to see the Jew was in the wrong . . .
Pöllnitz adds that Algarotti is back at Potsdam, rather distracted, but he will soon find his feet. M. de Maupertuis is in the ascendant, the Marquis d’Argens is at Menton and will return when the snows have melted and M. Darget is still sad from the death of his wife, greatly attached to the King and to his duties and talks of hanging himself during his hours off.
At last the court delivered its verdict. Voltaire was to have his money back, and if Hirschel could prove that the diamonds were not the ones he left with Voltaire he could bring a new action. (He never did.) He was fined a nominal sum for contempt of court. Voltaire had won a technical victory which he blew up into a triumph.
He wrote to the King, a long letter of which this is the gist: he had never bought a single Saxon bond; most people had, but Voltaire found out that the speculation was wrong and refused to touch it. Why is everybody against an unfortunate foreigner, an invalid and a solitary who is only here to be with the King? He did his best not to bring a lawsuit but had he not done so he would have lost a huge sum of money which he needs to maintain his Paris house. He has won the case on every point. He can only endure the torments of his illness by the thought that he does not displease the great man for whose sake alone he lives and feels and thinks. He begs His Majesty to take pity on his distress.
Five days later the King replied:
I was happy to receive you here; I admired your wit, your talents, your learning; I suppose I thought that a man of your age, tired of fencing with other authors and of exposure to storms, came here to find a haven. You prevented me from engaging Fréron [to write a news letter from Paris]. D’Arnaud behaved badly but a generous man would have forgiven him—he had done nothing to me but I sent him away on your account. You went to the Russian minister to talk about things which were not your business and led him to suppose that I had commissioned you to do so. You have been meddling in the affairs of Mme de Bentinck who is nothing to do with you. You have had a disgusting mix-up with the Jew, making a frightful stink in the town. The matter of the bonds is well known in Saxony whence I have had grievous complaints. Until you came here I had peace in my house. I must warn you that if you have a mania for intrigue and cabals you have come to the wrong place. I like easy-going, quiet people whose conduct is not that of tragedians. If you will resolve to live like a philosopher I shall be happy to see you, but if you must burn with the flames of passion, bearing grudges to right and to left, it gives me no pleasure to have you here and you may as well stay in Berlin.
After this they made it up. Voltaire wrote and apologized; Frederick answered in a friendly tone: he hoped that in future Voltaire would quarrel neither with the Old nor the New Testament—it was not suitable that wretched little crooks should be named in the same breath as he. But their friendship had cooled. Voltaire was given a pretty house near Sans Souci and also rooms in the Potsdam town palace. Here he finished his Siècle de Louis XIV, one of his most remarkable works and unequalled in the enormous literature on the Sun King. He said he would never have finished it in Paris. The Siècle was published in Berlin at Christmas 1751 and at the same time Frederick’s Art de la Guerre in six volumes appeared, read for him and corrected by Voltaire. When he was cross with Voltaire the King used to say that he put up with him because he helped with his writing, and he is supposed to have remarked to somebody, who repeated it to Voltaire, that when you have squeezed an orange you can throw away the rind. Whether he really did say it or not, Voltaire was cut to the quick; he retorted that he got all the King’s dirty linen to wash. Maupertuis told this to Frederick.
Frederick began to tease Voltaire at the supper parties; all the art with which as a little boy he had maddened his father was now employed in maddening the poet. He hardly looked in his direction; he laughed at the jokes of the other wits and ignored his—he singled out Maupertuis for exaggeratedly deep and undivided attention. It is odd that Voltaire, himself such an accomplished tease, should no
t have been able to counter Frederick’s naughtiness or to rise above it. But he minded, passionately. His Paris friends worried about him: they could see in his letters that he was miserable. The charming d’Argental, his greatest friend, begged him to come home, saying very sensibly that in Paris he could avoid people who tormented him, whereas in Potsdam he had to live cheek by jowl with them. Unfortunately, those friends of Frederick’s who might have smoothed things over happened to be away: Milord Maréchal (Lord Keith) was now Prussian minister to Versailles (to the fury of Uncle George, who, with Tyrconnel as French minister at Berlin, was beginning to suspect some Jacobite plot between the two countries); Valory, greatly regretted, was dividing his time between his estates and Versailles; d’Argens too was in France. Darget was a help, although he was only a much-loved secretary and had not the weight of the others, but he, distracted by the loss of his wife and real or imaginary ill health, soon went back to Paris. He lived there for many years as deputy governor of the École Militaire; he and Frederick corresponded to the end of his life and he never had anything but good to say of the King.
It may be some excuse for Frederick’s unkindness to Voltaire to remember that at this time he had three bereavements and was very sad. His little dog Biche died. She had been a beloved companion for years—he used to write letters from her to Wilhelmine’s Folichon. Frederick said he was ashamed to be so much affected by this loss but he confessed that his philosophy was deranged by it. The Old Dessauer died, broken-hearted at the death of his old wife, the apothecary’s daughter; that was in the nature of things. The death that utterly shattered Frederick was that of Rothenburg. ‘Oh my dear sister,’ he wrote to Wilhelmine, ‘with your tender heart have pity on the situation in which I find myself. I have lost the Prince of Anhalt-Dessau and yesterday Rothenburg expired in my arms . . . I can think of nothing but the loss of one with whom I have spent twelve years in perfect friendship.’ And—after she had written—‘I must confess to you that I am disgusted with the stupid part I play and that the world seems very dull. You ask how he died? Alas, dearest sister, he died in my arms, heroically firm and indifferent. Sometimes he exclaimed in his agony, “O God, have pity on me!” But there was no superstition or weakening at the end. He held out his hand to me, saying, “Adieu, Sire, I must leave you and there will be no return.” My condition the first days was frightful. I am calmer now but I am left with a deep melancholy which I shan’t be able to root out yet awhile . . . I see the only happy people on earth are those who love nobody.’