It was one of the very doubtful privileges of Madame du ChÂtelet’s rank that she was permitted to play cards at the Queen’s table. Émilie had never done anything in moderation in her life. She not only loved, worked, and dressed to excess, but she gambled to excess also. High play was in the air of that eighteenth century. In England, as well as in France, men lost an estate or a fortune in an evening, and women staked the diamonds on their breast and the doweries of their children.

The thrifty Voltaire regarded the dangerous craze in Madame du ChÂtelet with not a little apprehension. He had known poverty not by name, but in person; and had no desire to renew the acquaintance.

One night at Fontainebleau, probably at the end of October, 1747, but the actual date is not quite clear, Émilie lost four hundred louis. She must have exerted all her power over the man who had ceased to love her, but not to fear her or to be faithful to her, to make him lend her two hundred more. She played again the next evening, and lost those. One can fancy the scene—the crowded ante-chamber of royalty; the flushed and excited players; lights, laughter, and talk; Émilie, desperate and breathless, forgetting alike her fine clothes which were the sign she was but as other women, and her cool reason which set her far above them—and at her side, Voltaire, urging her in fervent English whispers to come away, that the game was played, and the loss must be accepted with a shrug of the shoulders and as good a grace and philosophy as one could muster.

A fly buzzing at her ear could not have moved her less. The intoxication of play was upon her. She sent out and raised from her man of business and a friend, Mademoiselle du Thil, three hundred and eighty louis more. She lost them. Luck had been against her. It must turn now! She played on and on. At last she owed eighty-four thousand francs. The quick Voltaire at her elbow, robbed of all prudence and discretion (to be sure, he never had much of either), bent over her desperately at last and said in an agitated whisper in English: “Don’t you see you are playing with cheats?” The words were hardly out of his mouth before he realised that they had been overheard and understood, or before one of the quickest intelligences that ever man had, had decided on action. Madame du ChÂtelet, sobered suddenly, was herself far too clever not to see the danger of the situation. The pair rose at once and left the palace. The room was full of their enemies; noble Gentlemen-in-Ordinary jealous of a brother whose pedigree was his brain and who had no birthright but genius; and women angry with Émilie for her absurd airs of youth, and her passion for learning which must be affected in her, because it certainly would be affected in us!

Would Madame de Pompadour’s patronage save her brilliant protÉgÉ? By no means. The play was at the Queen’s table; and the silent Queen had no reason to love the Pompadour’s friends. Historiographer of France and Member of the French Academy—even that would not save a Voltaire, with a Voltaire’s record behind him, from the consequences of such an utterance as this.

The two returned post-haste to Richelieu’s house where they had their quarters. It was half-past one in the morning. They waited for nothing. The horses were put to at once. Longchamp was sent in search of their servants who were lodging at different houses in the place. Émilie’s femme de chambre had only time to throw together a few packages of chiffons. She, Voltaire, and Émilie got into the carriage just as the October day was breaking. Longchamp was left behind to pack. The carriage was driven towards Paris, and the desperate pair within hastily sketched in the details of their scheme of action. A wheel of the carriage broke when they were near Essore, and the wheelwright, who had no mind to be cheated of his dues even by fine folk in gala attire, declined to let the carriage proceed till his bill was paid. Neither Voltaire nor Émilie had a single sou. A lettre de cachet and the Bastille loomed much too close for delays to be endurable. Luckily, an old acquaintance of the du ChÂtelets, coming by post-chaise from Paris, recognised Madame and paid the wheelwright. They drove on. At a little village near Paris, Voltaire alighted. Madame proceeded to the capital. It had been arranged that there she should make arrangement for the payment of her gambling debts, and if possible smooth the way for Voltaire’s return. She was used to that office.

From a wayside inn Voltaire wrote to the Duchesse du Maine, now hard by at Sceaux; and sent the letter by messenger. He had asked his old friend for hiding, shelter, refuge, till the storm blew over. She responded, telling him to come that night to the chÂteau, where one Duplessis, known to Voltaire, would meet him and conduct him to the rooms she was keeping for him. He did as she said. He entered the house unknown to any save Duplessis and the Duchess.

For not less than a month he lived in those rooms on the second floor, with the shutters barred night and day. Longchamp joined him there, bringing luggage, books, and papers. All day long the master wrote and the valet copied. Voltaire never slept more than five or six hours; but wrote, wrote, wrote by that eternal candle-light. At two o’clock every night, when the rest of the house was asleep, he came softly downstairs into the Duchess’s bedroom, where the little, great lady was already in bed and where, propped on pillows, she royally waited to be amused by her guest. She was never disappointed. A servant, the only one in her confidence, brought M. de Voltaire a little supper which he ate on a little table between his hostess’s bed and the wall. The valet left the room. During the meal the old Duchess told her visitor the most delightful, wicked stories of the Court of Louis XIV.—from her own experience. And then, M. de Voltaire produced a manuscript and read to the Duchess the charming result of his imprisonment—those miniature masterpieces of romance, “Zadig,” “Scarmentado,” “MicromÉgas,” and “Babouc.”

Only children of that astonishing eighteenth century could have enacted such a scene entirely without awkwardness, self-consciousness, or exaggeration. It was worth days of labour and darkness to find a listener as acute, as sympathetic and intelligent as this little old woman who had lived so fully and knew human nature to the core.

While this lean M. de Voltaire with his startlingly brilliant eyes, and the sardonic mouth and drooping hook-nose more nearly meeting year by year—his conversation alone could turn night into day, and make one forget that such things as fatigue, ennui, sleep, are part of man’s portion. Out of gratitude for her goodness—gratitude was never a virtue he lacked—he was wittier now than ever. Gratitude guided his pen as well as his speech, and made his stories the most easy, graceful, and delightful in the world.

Voltaire had not been a romancer hitherto. He did not find it in him to invent plots now. “Zadig” is founded on a story by English Thomas Parnell; and “MicromÉgas” pretty openly taken from Cyrano de Bergerac’s “Journey to the Moon.” But as the “amazing genius” of Shakespeare took the stillborn children of lesser men’s brains and breathed on them the breath of life, so did Voltaire. Everything that makes a story immortal is his own in those matchless contes. Charm, wit, delicacy, an exquisite lightness of touch, the finest taste in satire, humour, variety, epigram, gaiety—with that ever-present undercurrent of biting meaning—almost all the Voltairian gifts are here. Every story is a pungent satire on the King, Court, rÉgime, or religion of that evil day. The characters are very palpably drawn from life. In “Zadig” there is a certain Yebor who could by no possibility be anyone else than Boyer, the Âne of Mirepoix.

The graceless old Duchess, sitting up in bed, thoroughly enjoyed hearing her order castigated. She laughed loud and long to see how this Voltaire always had his whip on the raw.

No wonder she was eager for the tales to be given to the larger public of her court. The imprisonment was becoming wearisome. The unlucky Longchamp was ennuied to death. Voltaire’s health began to suffer for want of light and fresh air. The secret of his whereabouts had been kept so well, that his enemies at Court supposed him to be on the road to Frederick and Berlin.

Everybody was glad when one fine day, probably about the end of November, Madame du ChÂtelet appeared with the news that the storm had blown over, that the unlucky utterance was more or less forgotten, and the gambling debts settled—somehow. The autocratic little Duchess was not going to part with her Voltaire now she might enjoy him openly. He and Madame du ChÂtelet joined her throng of gay satellites. There were comedies, operas, and balls. Voltaire, Émilie, and Madame de Staal all took parts in his play of “The Prude,” imitated from Wycherley’s “Plain Dealer,” and now played for the first time—December 15, 1747. They acted “IssÉ” by La Motte, “ZÉlindor” by Moncrif, and “Les Originaux,” a comedy by Voltaire, first performed at Cirey. Émilie took the part of IssÉ; was Fanchon in the “Originaux,” and ZirphÉ in the opera of “ZÉlindor.” If she was one-and-forty years old and would dress her parts, not to suit them, but her own love of finery, it must be confessed that she was matchlessly accomplished and versatile.

Voltaire, after the manner of the days when he was lover indeed, improvised gay verses of compliment to her. “Madame du ChÂtelet,” he wrote to a friend, “sang ZirphÉ correctly and acted with nobility and grace: a thousand diamonds were her least ornament.”

Besides play-acting there was an orchestra of marquises and viscounts. Dancers from the Opera amused the pleasure-loving little court. A delightful girl of thirteen carried that art to its highest perfection and charmed everyone with her grace and talent. And, in the bad quarter of an hour before dinner, Voltaire read the contes composed for the Duchess, to the Duchess’s guests gathered together in the great salon.

The visit came to an end about the middle of December, when Voltaire had been at Sceaux about two months. Once more in Paris, he busied himself with a very pretty little ruse, by which he evaded the piracy of publishers and had two hundred private copies of “Zadig” printed to give to the Duchess and her friends, before the rest of the world had read it.

Then came the pleasing news that on December 30th “The Prodigal Son” had been played in the private apartments before the King by a distinguished company of amateurs: and that his Majesty had deigned to be amused. Amateur theatricals had a vogue only second to gaming in eighteenth-century France. To play the smallest parts in the feeblest piece in the King’s presence, men and women made incredible sacrifices of fortune, of honour, and of truth. Madame de Pompadour’s femme de chambre obtained a commission in the army for one of her friends by procuring, for a duke, the very minor rÔle of a policeman, who had only two lines in his part, in “Tartuffe.” The clever Pompadour herself was an actress of no mean ability. She took a part in the “Prodigal.” Voltaire had not been behindhand in encouraging her histrionic tastes. He does not appear to have been present at this performance of his comedy. When a play had already been performed in public (and “The Prodigal Son,” it will be remembered, was played, anonymously, in October, 1736), it was not etiquette to invite its author to witness its dÉbut before royalty. But it pleased his bored Majesty so much that, on the strength of it, Madame de Pompadour obtained for her brilliant Voltaire the delightful right and privilege of being henceforth always a spectator at the plays acted in the private apartments. And this unlucky Voltaire, in his enthusiasm and gratitude, must needs look among his papers and discover a poem, which, with a little artful alteration, will express his thanks to the mistress.

Nothing would ever have made Voltaire cautious. Audacity was in his nature, and there was no preventing it oozing out, like Bob Acres’s courage, at the tips of his fingers whenever he got a pen in his hand. To be sure, if he had been circumspect he could not have been half so witty. If wit is not spontaneous, it is rarely wit at all. And this verse really would not have done him the slightest harm, if the favourite had but kept it to herself.

But, after all, though she was an astute, cool-blooded Pompadour, she was a woman too and loved a compliment; and that her entourage should be aware she received such beautiful ones as that.

It soon reached the ears of poor Marie Leczinska, patient and dignified in the dreary and respectable seclusion of her apartments. The days were long gone when, a bride of one-and-twenty, she had called Voltaire “my poor Voltaire” and pensioned him from her own purse. The ugly daughters, Mesdames, too, had still some influence over their royal father, the King, and were not slow to use it.

Old Roy took occasion to sententiously point out in a dreary poem how abominable it was to allude to royal—mistakes: and how the loves of gods and kings were never meant for the comment of the vulgar. The unlucky Voltaire was further suspected at the moment of having been the author of some lines to the Dauphine, whose gay philosophy offended the King. He denied the authorship, of course, in toto. But that was very little use. It was whispered that Mesdames, the daughters, so worked upon Louis that he signed a decree of banishment for Voltaire, without even consulting Madame de Pompadour. That would seem to have been an addition to make a good story better. There was most likely no edict of banishment on paper. Voltaire himself denied that there was ever any idea of such a thing. But on January 13, 1748, coming gaily to Versailles and not in the least anticipating any evil effect from the charming audacity of his verses, he found the Court too hot to hold him. He dined in Paris that night at a coffee-house, with a few other literary men. He arrived rather late. He had come straight from Versailles, and alone of the company knew what had occurred there. He made his dinner, after his frugal fashion, off seven or eight cups of black coffee and a couple of rolls, and was very talkative and amusing. The conversation turned on the newly imposed tax on playing-cards, and on luxury. When the dinner was over other visitors at the coffee-house gathered round him and “plied him with questions.”

He was not exiled. But he had committed an offence which made it expedient to Go. He knew the Pompadour much too well to suppose she would put her position in jeopardy by trying to save a friend, even if he were a Voltaire. “Circumspection is all very well,” he had once written to d’Argenson, “but it is a melancholy thing in poetry: to be reasonable and cold is almost the same thing.” For his part, he would rather write even compliments and madrigals as he chose, and be banished for them, than remain at Court, tongue-tied and careful. If the Historiographership and the Academy and the solemn joy of signing oneself Gentleman-in-Ordinary to the King did not give one freedom, they were useless. Neither Voltaire nor Émilie had seen Cirey for many months. On the whole, it was best to go. They left Paris in the deep midwinter at nine o’clock on a January evening, 1748, with the snow thick on the ground and a temperature many degrees below freezing-point.