Odd Bits of History Part 6

Je coule ici mes heureux jours, Dans la plus tranquille des Cours, Sans intrigue, sans jalousie, Aupres d'un roi sans courtisans, Pres de Boufflers et d'Emilie; Je les vois et je les entends, Il faut bien que je fa.s.se envie.

If Voltaire was "G.o.d," Madame du Chatelet was "G.o.ddess"--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 Chatelet.

Stanislas was then already an oldish man--according to one of his biographers, Abbe Aubert, sixty-six; according to another, Abbe 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 Galaiziere mustered what scratch forces he could improvise for defence, and dragged the twelve ornamental pieces of cannon out of the Luneville 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 har." "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 Chatelet 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. "Apres une vie sobre, reglee, 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 antic.i.p.ating the action of his lips. His mind certainly was still young, and so were his tastes. He is described as a most fastidious dandy, _irreprochablement poudre et parfume_, affecting clothes of the latest cut and richly embroidered with gold. To his factotum at Paris, Abbe Moussinot, he writes from Luneville: "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 _a 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 eprouver: La bonte, la valeur a tous deux fut commune, Mais mon heros fit changer la fortune Que votre vertu sut braver.

Of Madame du Chatelet's appearance we have two hopelessly irreconcilable accounts. She was certainly past forty-two; if her ill-natured cousin, the Marquise de Crequi, 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 seche, une maitresse d'ecole sans hanches, la poitrine etroite, et sur la poitrine une pet.i.te mappe-monde perdue dans l'es.p.a.ce, de gros bras trop courts pour ses pa.s.sions, des pieds de grue, une tete d'oiseau de nuit, le nez pointu, deux pet.i.ts yeux verts de mer et verts de terre, le teint noir et rouge, la bouche plate et les dents clair-semees." This hideous portraiture, it is true, Sainte Beuve protests against as a "page plus amerement satirique" than any to be found in French literature. But Madame de Crequi 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." "Voila 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 a l'oeil fripon"--and her peculiar skill in becomingly dressing her dark hair. She spoke with engaging animation and quickly--"comme moi quand je fais la francaise," 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. Abbe Menoux found out that he had reckoned without his host. Between the two Marchionesses, De Boufflers and du Chatelet, in the place of the expected jealousy and rivalry, there proved to be nothing but sincere, close, and demonstrative friends.h.i.+p. To some extent Madame du Chatelet'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 va.s.sal 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 Chatelets--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 marechal des maisons_, worth 2,000 _ecus_ 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 flas.h.i.+ng, 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 "devot," was disarmed by being--quite on the sly, but no less ardently--one of Madame de Boufflers' chosen admirers. Galaiziere 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 Abbe at Court, who might have been expected to help: Porquet, who became the Duke's almoner, a most amusing person in a pa.s.sive 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 empaille." 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 a Jacob." "Comment," interrupted the Duke, "c'est 'en songe' que vous voulez dire!" "Eh, Sire, tout n'est-il pas possible a la puissance de Dieu?"

There was one st.u.r.dy 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 Abbe Aubert and Abbe Proyart. "On vit quelquefois," says Abbe Proyart, "a la Cour du roi de Pologne certains sujets peu dignes de sa confiance, et le Prince les connoissoit; mais il trouvoit dans sa religion meme des motifs de ne pas les eloigner." It was represented to him (by Alliot) that Voltaire "faisoit l'hypocrite." "C'est lui meme, et non pas moi qu'il fait dupe," replied the king. "Son hypocrisie du moins est un hommage qu'il rend a la vertu. Et ne vaut-il pas mieux que nous le voyions hypocrite ici que scandaleux ailleurs?" But "le vrai sage," the Abbe goes on, found himself compelled at last to dismiss "le faux philosphe, qui commencoit a repandre a 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 a.s.sumes a totally new shape. "Ce ne fut pas une pet.i.te affaire que d'obliger Voltaire a sortir du chateau de Luneville." 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 daemoniorum non ejicitur nisi in oratione et jejunio_," which means, he explains, that "pour se debarra.s.ser 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 pa.s.sed most pleasantly. "En verite," writes Voltaire to the Countess D'Argental, "ce sejourci est delicieux; c'est un chateau enchante dont le maitre fait les honneurs. Je crois que Madame du Chatelet pa.s.serait ici sa vie."

Sometimes at Commercy, sometimes at the Malgrange, most generally at Luneville, with visitors coming and going, discussions raised, attentions being paid this side and that, gallantry, billiards, _tric-trac_, _lansquenet_, _comete_ (which was a great favourite), marionettes, fancy b.a.l.l.s, time could hang heavily on no one's hands. "On a de tout ici, hors du temps." Madame du Chatelet, 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 _Siecle 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 amus.e.m.e.nt of the Court; and at masked b.a.l.l.s 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 ma.n.u.scripts.

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 Luneville at the very moment when he was delighting the Lorrain Court with reading out his just completed chapter of _Le Siecle 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 prives," he wrote later, "qui se plaignent de leurs infortunes jettent leurs yeux sur ce prince et sur ses ancetres."

Several times he left Lorraine for a brief time, going with Madame du Chatelet to Cirey, to Chalons, 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 ete malade," he writes later, "mais il y a plaisir a l'etre chez le roi de Pologne; il n'y a personne a.s.surement qui ait plus soin de ses malades que lui. On ne peut pas etre 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 a rien qu' a perdre ses regards vers la Voge," 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 Chatelet had been to Plombieres 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 rea.s.sembled, 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 _litterateur_ and engaged in versifying. Stanislas took up his pen once more and wrote, among other things, _Le Philosophe Chretien_--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 Galaiziere 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. Luneville became a modern Athens.

But there was a snake in the gra.s.s. One of the pleasantest features of the remarkably sociable life carried on by the brilliant company a.s.sembled under the roof of Stanislas, while at Luneville 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 _comete_ 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 surpa.s.sed 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 eleve_, of whose poetry he owns himself "jealous." "Il prend un pen ma tournure et l'embellit--j'espere que la posterite m'en remerciera." Posterity has done nothing of the kind. In matters of courts.h.i.+p Saint Lambert resembled the "_papillon libertin_" sketched by himself in one of his prettiest _pieces fugitives_:--

Plus pressant qu'amoureux, plus galant que fidele, 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 Chatelet, and later that of Madame de Houdetot. Madame de Houdetot and he turned out to be really congenial spirits. For Madame du Chatelet 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 impa.s.sioned 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 _Epitre a la Calomnie_ had not whitewashed the Magdalen who had had relations successively with Guebriant, with Richelieu, and with Voltaire. Of Voltaire's overstrained praise of her a.s.sumed modesty Saint Lambert himself writes:--

De cette tendre Courtisane Il faisait presque une Susanne.

But what could have induced Madame du Chatelet 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 courts.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.sed daily. Of Madame du Chatelet's pa.s.sion 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 Chatelet 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 a.s.siduity 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 Abbe Moussinot: "Je vous laisse la choix du peintre, et je ne le trouverai pas cher, quoiqu'il puisse couter." 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 navely 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! voila bien les femmes! J'en avais ote Richelieu, Saint Lambert m'a expulse: cela est dans l'ordre, un clou cha.s.se l'autre."

Growing poetic, he says:

"Dans ces vallons et dans ces bois, Les fleurs dont Horace autrefois Faisait des bouquets pour Glycere-- Saint Lambert ce n'est que pour toi Que ces belles fleurs sont ecloses: C'est ta main qui cueille les roses.

Et les epines sont pour moi."

Indeed, his relations with Madame du Chatelet 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 ame pour qui la mienne etait 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 rus.h.i.+ng 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 Luneville.

Madame du Chatelet 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 pet.i.t 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 pet.i.tioner 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 facade of Chanteheux), in which Voltaire was to be lodged. Those rooms in the first story are now appropriated as a granary. Madame du Chatelet's apartments serve as quarters for the divisional General. King Stanislas, kind-hearted as ever, gladly acceded to the pet.i.tion, 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 gla.s.s 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. Luneville was no longer a place for him. "Je ne pourrais pas supporter Luneville, ou je l'ai perdue d'une maniere 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 Isse, and that a ma.s.s 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 Luneville 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 traca.s.serie, ni medisance, ni mechancete." 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 Luneville. 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 "Societe 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, Helvetius, Henault, Fontenelle, Bishop Poncet, Bishop Drouas--all begged as a favour to be admitted. Really, that Academy--which is still a flouris.h.i.+ng inst.i.tution 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 pa.s.ses dans votre palais. Je me souviendrai que vous daigniez faire les charmes de la societe comme vous faisiez la felicite de vos peuples, et que si c'etait un bonheur de dependre de vous, c'en etait 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 hea.r.s.e. 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 _comedie_ 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."

VII.--THE PRINCE CONSORT'S UNIVERSITY DAYS.[10]

"Quarum virtutum laude hominum animas, dum in hac urbe morabaris, mirifice Tibi devinxisti."--_Address of the Senate of Bonn to Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, January, 28, 1840._

There are incidents in a man's life--sometimes important, sometimes insignificant--which impress themselves upon his mind as if graven in "with a pen of iron." Thirty-two years have now pa.s.sed away, but I remember, as if it had happened only a few weeks ago, old "Senius" putting his weather-worn face into my bedroom at Bonn, on the memorable grey morning of mid-December, 1861, to make the melancholy announcement: "Uur Prinz is doht." "Dat war 'ne johde Heer," he added rather impressively.

"Senius" was our "Stiefelfuchs"--which means a great deal more than having to "polish our boots." And in some capacity or other--it must have been a subordinate one--it had been his fate to be employed in the Prince Consort's household while the latter was a student at Bonn. What qualified him for either of these positions I am at a loss to conjecture.

He was nothing of a valet. We used to beg him, for mercy's sake, not to attempt to remove stains from our clothes, inasmuch as in doing so (in the only way which seemed to suggest itself to his untutored mind) he invariably made two smudges out of one by spitting just a little wide of the mark. At least that was the tradition. For any delicate mission, such as smuggling liquor into the "Carcer," he was absolutely useless. He knew well enough how to bandage a man for a "Mensur." And on the bitter cold days of a North-German winter the huge bowl of his ever-smoking pipe would be very acceptable as a hand-warmer to those gloved for the fight. He was honest, no doubt, and strictly faithful, and that must have helped to ingratiate him with the Prince. But his main recommendation appears to have been his curious capacity for saying odd things in an odd way, and in the quaintest of broad Rhenish _patois_, which made them sound doubly droll. What with quaint habits and quaint sayings, he had become a "character" at Bonn, generally popular as such, known to every man, woman and child in the place, and allowed almost any lat.i.tude of speech. The Prince, whose relish for humour was, in his student days, fully as keen as ever in after-life, appears to have been tickled with the man's unintended drollery; for, according to "Senius's" own navely frank account, he made it his amus.e.m.e.nt to "draw" him, eliciting odd answers by inoffensively unmerciful chaff. And this may account for "Senius" remaining in the princely household, and experiencing much kindness at his master's hands.

If grat.i.tude be a return, the Prince had it in ample measure. That "dat war 'ne johde Heer" was spoken with unmistakable feeling, and it proved the prelude to a whole string of little anecdotes which--though not perhaps in themselves particularly remarkable or worth repeating--were poured forth with such simple earnestness as sufficiently testified, how firmly a sense of regard and affection had taken root in the old man's heart, to live there through many years of separation.

"Senius" was not the only person in Bonn who could grow warm upon this subject. The Prince's death, indeed, set loose in the University town a whole flood of anecdotes and reminiscences, some very trivial and commonplace, but all of them evidencing a lively interest and abiding regard. It is strange what power some persons possess of impressing men's minds. There have been scores of princes students at Bonn since, some of them spending more money and making much more of a show; but memory has closed over them like water over a ripple. There is none remembered like the then Prince of Coburg--down to the days of his grandson, the present Emperor, who, of course, conquered local hearts by identifying himself rather demonstratively with the place.

At my time people spoke frequently of "der Prinz Albehrt." All the older townsfolk remembered the "bildschone junge Mann," who sat his horse like a born cavalier, and whose mere appearance was calculated to prepossess people in his favour. Two friends of mine--the brothers von C---- (one of them is now a retired general who has covered himself with glory in the wars in 1866 and 1870)--used as boys to make a point of watching for the Coburg Princes when about to mount horse, from the house of their neighbour, Landrath von Hymmen, who lived just opposite. They would rush out eagerly at the proper moment to hold the Princes' stirrups, and consider themselves amply rewarded with a kind word or a genial smile.

Travelling Englishmen have afterwards made it a matter of duty, Murray or Baedecker in hand, to "do" the simple house "in which Prince Albert lived," as they "did" the Munster and the Alte Zoll. To the people of Bonn the Prince's doings were a living memory. Only eighteen months ago I was surprised, while accidentally alluding to the subject in conversation with an old resident, since dead, to find that gentleman at once pulling out of his pocket a photograph of the Prince's house, which he seemed to carry about with him habitually. He knew all the windows, and the gateway, and answered questions about the Prince's habits of life as if they had referred to matters of yesterday.

In truth, Bonn owes a great deal to the Prince Consort--more than most people are aware. If the University has grown great and popular, a favourite with reigning houses, a High School in which every King of Prussia is expected to have pursued his studies, something like a "Christ Church" among German Universities; if the town has grown rich and flouris.h.i.+ng, a favourite residence with wealth and position _en retraite_, the merit is in no small measure due to the Prince who, practically speaking, first set the fas.h.i.+on among ill.u.s.trious folk. No scion of a reigning house, to speak of--none, certainly, to make a mark--had been at Bonn before. Indeed, Bonn, with its a.s.sociations of the Burschenschaft, of disaffection and of ecclesiastical strife, did not stand in the best of odours. Hence, when a Prince came to break the ice, of more than ordinary promise, and already connected by rumour with a high destiny, very naturally, all eyes were turned upon him. His subsequent marriage with the Queen--at that time certainly the most powerful sovereign in Christendom--following almost immediately upon his students.h.i.+p, no doubt emphasised the effect and added force to the example. We see at once princes flocking to the _Fridericia Guilelmia Rhenana_--Schaumburgs, and Mecklenburgs, and Schleswig-Holsteins, and Meiningens. Twelve years after we have the heir to the Prussian Crown matriculating as a student. We find the roll of students growing at a bound from 650 to 731--to increase since to above 1,200. In short, we see Bonn developing into a different place.

English folk--as the Prince's friend, Professor Loebell, puts it, rather uncomplimentarily, in one of his Belgian letters--send their "young bears"

to Bonn in whole batches, "to be licked." Then the parents come themselves, bringing their families with them, to settle there. German rank and fas.h.i.+on follow in their wake, quintupling the population in less than sixty years--and the reputation and position of the town are made.

Bonn was a very different place from the fas.h.i.+onable town that it is now, when, on May 3, 1837, Professor Wutzer, as Rector Magnificus, pledged "Prinz Albrecht Franz, Herzog von Sachsen-Coburg-Gotha", "by pressure of hand in place of oath," to be a faithful "citizen" of the University.

Prince Ernest, the Prince's elder brother, matriculated at the same time.

There was also a Prince of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, of whom little was seen or heard; moreover, Prince William of Lowenstein, who grew to be the Prince's intimate friend; and two Hohenlohes. (Prince Erbach is not in the University Register included among persons of ill.u.s.trious birth.) All the wide belt of spruce and tidy villas set up amid laughing gardens, which now make Bonn so charming and attractive, and impart to it so pleasing a look of prosperity and comfort, were still a thing to come. The little town, having only about 12,000 inhabitants, still lay hemmed in within the lines of its old walls, the gates of which were carefully closed for security every night. There was an air of "smallness" about everything, except the handsome "Schloss," which Archbishop Clemens August had built (with money received from France) as a sumptuous residence for himself, but which King Frederick William III. in 1818, without much regard for Roman Catholic susceptibilities, converted into a "double-denomination"

University. Lutheran divines now taught where the most orthodox of Catholic princes had held court. A non-denominational Senate conferred degrees where the last Archbishop-Elector, the Austrian Archduke Max Franz--"Abbe Sacrebleu," as he was popularly called--had danced with most unepiscopal perseverance and vigour. And at Poppelsdorf learned professors made the air malodorous with chemical stenches in the same palace in which that most courtly of all archbishops, Clemens August, had entertained those beautiful ladies who got him into rather serious trouble at Rome.

But, apart from these costly buildings, all was country-townish. There was no Coblenzer Stra.s.se as yet--only a small cl.u.s.ter of houses, among which the _Vinca Domini_--whilom the winepress of the local lord--and the villa of the patriot Arndt, were alone conspicuous. Inside the walls the students were much in evidence, rough in their uncouth costume of those days, very "Guys" in embroidered "pikesches" and wide petticoat-trousers, having long curls dangling from their heads and heavy rapiers from their waists. However, opinion in high quarters was not altogether favourable to them. The revolutionary "Burschenschaft" had been strong in Bonn, numbering Heinrich Heine among its members. Rhineland was, moreover, at that time still wholly unreconciled to Prussian rule. Its seventeen years of incorporation with France had raised a crop of free and anti-Prussian ideas which were not soon to be eradicated. And with Austria so powerful, and Austrian sympathies so widely diffused, thanks to Max Franz, the authorities had still to deal gingerly with their new subjects. It made them wince to hear the words "'ne Pruss" commonly and openly used as a term of reproach and contempt--they were so to down in the fifties. But they could not interfere too rigorously. Then there was the ecclesiastical squabble, foreshadowing Prince Bismarck's "Culturkampf," and every bit as serious and as violent. Only incapacity like that of a Schmedding, and infatuation like that of a Bunsen, could have created such a hopeless dilemma. "Is your Government mad?" Cardinal Lambruschini is reported to have asked, when Bunsen communicated to him the appointment of Droste von Vischering to be Archbishop of Cologne, as a supposed "angel of peace."