The day but one after his arrival, he received a deputation from the Academy, with a petition that he would be present at the approaching meeting of the assembly. At the same time arrived the semainiers of the Théâtre Français, submitting, as it was the custom to do to the king, the programme of the entertainment, at which was to be played Cinna, for the benefit of a grand-nephew of Corneille, and humbly requesting his presence.
On the 17th of February arrived a fresh deputation of the artistes who were to play in Irène. He replied with perfect ease and grace to the solemn speech prepared and addressed to him by M. Bellecour, their leader. On the 18th, fatigue and illness rendered it impossible to him to attend the representation of Cinna, given in his honour, but despite all remonstrance, he received Franklin, Madame Necker, the English ambassador, and others, who all cried “au miracle!” at the brilliancy, lucidity, and àpropos of his conversation. On the 19th, it was absolutely necessary to close the door to the crowds of visitors who arrived, entreating for a look, a word, a touch of the hand of their divinity, and the intimations from Marie Antoinette and the Duc d’ Artois, that the Queen requested his presence at a spectacle de la cour, and that the Duc would be happy to see him that evening at the Comédie, were powerless to give him even the amount of health and strength necessary to avail himself of them.
And Heaven knows what the gentilhomme ordinaire de la chambre du roi would not have done to set himself well at court! “Et pourtant le roi ne veut pas me voir!” he exclaimed in bitterness of spirit, when, in the midst of all these triumphs, M. Pigal, sculptor to the king, came to inform him that his Majesty had consented that he should execute a statue of him for the Academy. For two days he was confined to bed, utterly worn out with this constant strain on body and mind.
Yet not then, nor for many of the brief days he had still to live, does the idea seem to have occurred to him, even put interrogatively,—Is this Death that comes so near?
On the 22nd took place two curious scenes. In the morning Franklin brought his young son, and Voltaire gave him his blessing! in the names of “Dieu, liberté, tolérance.” At mid-day, M. de Villette ushered in “un grand vieillard de grande apparence, décoré du cordon bleu et de toutes les beautés de la vieillesse”—no less than M. le Maréchal de Richelieu, arrived from Versailles “to embrace the poet who had so flattered him in his life.”
An eventful and a suggestive, though not an edifying sight—that of those two wily, wicked, worldly old men, standing each on the side of a yawning grave, towards which they were tottering, stretching hands to each other across it, with smiles and compliments and courtly speeches, as though it had been a bed of flowers, and they met in their own and in the world’s golden age to congratulate each other on their and on its happiness and virtues!
The next day, Voltaire, engaged in a further revision of Irène, had not dressed himself, but sat in his dressing-gown, having forbidden access to whoever might come. A coach entered the courtyard. The rustle of silks, the tapping of red heels, ascended the staircase—stopped at the door; “On n’entre pas!” cried Voltaire. “Sauve qui peut!” said the Marquis de Villette, “c'est Madame Dubarry!” “Non, non!” protested Voltaire, in high trepidation, “elle est trop belle et je suis trop vieux!—she is dressed, and I am undressed; she has her rouge and her patches, and I am not shaved! Send her away—tell her I am dead!” In vain: “Ami Voltaire,” said a little sharp voice at the door, “Ami Voltaire, ouvrez-moi, je vous montrerai patte-blanche! Ouvrez-moi, nous parlerons de nos beaux jours!”
Could Voltaire be deaf to the voice that had charmed his sovereign? He opened his door. He took in his old withered trembling hands the yet beautiful little ones that had once, in a spurious fashion, touched a sceptre,—that ere many years should pass would be clasped in vain and agonised supplications to the executioner. And there the somewhile courtier and the royal courtezan sat down together to talk frankly and without unnecessary retinences over the delights of those “beaux jours” of vice, vanity, flattery, and corruption!
Then arrived Sophie Arnould, the glittering actress whose bon-mots are to this day repeated overall Paris. “Bruyante et très attifée,” she came in, kissing the poet on both cheeks. He presented to her—the Marquise presented to the actress of not doubtful reputation! “Belle-et-bonne,” to whom she laughingly addressed an equivocal compliment, at which those present “riaient si fort,” that the Marquis, entering at the moment, anxiously but vainly demanded the cause of their mirth.
The end of February brought with it an augmentation of Voltaire’s weakness and sufferings, and those around him began to see “the beginning of the end.” In the midst of all, two ideas seemed chiefly to occupy his thought: the success of Irène, and the coldness of the Court,—of the king, especially. And these are the dying preoccupations of a “great man!”
He had now adopted the sour-grapes tone with regard to his non reception at Court. “After all,” he said, “though the king would not see me at Versailles, I know well enough what would have happened to me, without having put a foot there. The king would have said, laughing,—a loud, foolish laugh—‘M. de Voltaire, have you good hunting at Ferney?’ the Queen, with a fine salute, would have talked to me of the theatre at Ferney; Monsieur would have asked me what income Ferney brought in; Madame would have recited four or five lines of Mérope; the Comtesse d’Artois would have stammered I know not what, and the Comte d’Artois would have talked to me of the Pucelle.” Poor consolation, and rather late arrived at!
The malady continuing to make alarming progress, the priests arrive, and on being denied admittance, threaten to break open the door. The abbé Gautier, sent by the curé of St. Sulpice, is allowed to enter, and is well received, but on attempting to press the matter of confession, is requested to “call again.” On the Mardi gras
