Receiving no answer to his request to be allowed to travel, Voltaire prudently resolved to consider that silence gave consent. But he was still not a little nervous that if he took refuge in a foreign country Louis XV. might consider himself justified in seizing the pensions of his truant subject.

And then, where was he to go? It seems most likely that if it had not been for that unromantic disorder called mal de mer he would have ended his days in Pennsylvania. He had still his bizarre liking for the Quakers; and America was the country of the free. To be sure mal du pays was a worse and a longer lived disorder with him than the other: and if he had tried Pennsylvania on one impulse, he would quickly have left it on another.

He looked back lovingly, too, on bold little England, “where one thinks as a free man.” And on March 19, 1754, he asked M. Polier de Bottens, who had been a Calvinist minister at Lausanne, if he could assure him of as much freedom in Lausanne as in Britain. Meanwhile, there was no reason why, in the near future, that long-deferred and greatly discussed PlombiÈres visit should not take place.

And, for the time, he was in Colmar. On January 12th of this year he had sent his Duchess of Saxe-Gotha twelve advance copies of those “Annals of the Empire” written at her request, and just printed under Voltaire’s own eye at Colmar by Schoepflin. In return, Madame had done her gracious best to reconcile him with Frederick. He was anxious to be reconciled. Frederick could influence France to receive back her prodigal, as could no one else. “Brother Voltaire,” as he signed himself in his letters to her, also pleaded his cause once more with the Margravine of Bayreuth; and then sent Frederick himself a copy of those “Annals” as a tentative olive branch. Frederick accepted the book, and declined the peace overtures in a letter, dated March 16, 1754, which contained bitter allusion to the Maupertuis affair and showed that the kingly heart was still sore and that the kingly soul still angrily admired the great gifts of his Voltaire.

The famous suppers “went to the devil” without him. But if the King missed his wit much, he dreaded it more; and if Voltaire wanted the King’s powerful friendship—he did not want the King’s society. They were better apart. And, for the first time, both were wise enough to know it.

To this spring belongs a very active correspondence between Voltaire, the most voluble correspondent who ever put pen to paper, and Madame du Deffand. Blind, bored, and brilliant, the friend of Horace Walpole, a courtier at Sceaux, and the head of one of the most famous salons in Paris, Madame du Deffand had long been a friend of Voltaire’s, and had visited him in the Bastille in 1726, just before his exile in England.

If she thought, as Frederick the Great wrote to Darget on April 1st of this same year 1754, that Voltaire was “good to read and bad to know,” her cynic old soul loved his wit if she feared it. Perhaps she even loved him—though mistrustingly. Blindness had just fallen upon her. And “the hermit of Colmar”—neither now nor ever only mÉchant—wrote to her with the finest sympathy and tact, cheering, amusing, rallying her. “My eyes were a little wet when I read what had happened to yours.... If you are an annuitant, Madame, take care of yourself, eat little, go to bed early, and live to be a hundred, if only to enrage those who pay your annuities. For my part, it is the only pleasure I have left. I reflect, when I feel an indigestion coming on, that two or three princes will gain by my death: and I take courage out of pure malice and conspire against them with rhubarb and sobriety.”

As Voltaire could have had nothing to gain by continually writing to amuse this blind old mondaine, it may be conceded that he did it out of kindness; and that if he loved her cleverness, he also pitied her misfortune. The eighteenth century, which failed so dismally in all other domestic relationships, perfectly understood the art of friendship.

On the Easter Day of this 1754, Voltaire, having first confessed to a Capuchin monk, received the Sacrament. Faire ses PÂques declares the laxest Catholic to be still a son of the Church. What Voltaire’s motives were in this action, it is not easy to see. It is said that his anxious friends in Paris recommended the action as an answer to the charges of unbelief brought against him. But a Voltaire must have known well enough that such an answer as that would impose on no one. Besides, it was not like him to be governed by the advice of fools—even if they happened to be his friends. The reasons he himself gave for the action were that at Rome one must do as Rome does. “When men are surrounded by barbarians ... one must imitate their contortions.... Some people are afraid to touch spiders, others swallow them.” “If I had a hundred thousand men, I know exactly what I should do: but I have not, so I shall communicate at Easter, and you can call me a hypocrite as much as you like.”

The hypocrisy was but ill acted. Voltaire received the Sacrament with an irreverence painful to believers and harmful to his own reputation. To him the thing was a jest—“the contortions of barbarians.” He was quite mocking and gay. When he got home, he sent to the Capuchin convent a dozen of good wine and a loin of veal. I despise you too much to be ill-natured to you! If you believe in this mummery, you are fools! If you connive at it, unbelieving, you are knaves! Knaves or fools, I can laugh at you quite good-humouredly. If ever present conveyed a message, this was the message conveyed by the dozen of wine and the loin of veal.

To justify Voltaire for this act is not possible. It was at best a mÉchancetÉ. It was the mocking, jesting nature of the man getting the upper hand alike of his prudence and of his consideration for others. He was himself a Deist, and a firmly convinced Deist. To him the religion of Rome was not merely a folly but the stronghold of tyranny and of darkness. The fact that millions of faithful souls had found in her bosom consolation for the sorrows, and a key to the mysteries of life and of death, did not soften him.

In Voltaire was lacking now and ever that “crown of man’s moral manhood,” reverence. To find in “the last restraint of the powerful and the last hope of the wretched” only subject for a laugh was the greatest of his faults. If he had been a nobler nature, he would have seen the beauty and the virtue which lie even in the most degrading theologies: and respecting them, would have stayed his hand from the smashing blow, and for the sake of the virtue which sweetens corruption, have let corruption alone.

It has been done many times. “No man can achieve great things for his country without some loss of the private virtues.” A reverent Voltaire—what a contradiction in terms!—to spare some goodness, must have spared much vice. To arouse eighteenth-century France, steeped to her painted lips in superstition, and the slavery which had debased her till she came to love it, the shrieks and the blasphemies of a Voltaire and a Rousseau were necessary. No calmer voice would have waked her from her narcotic sleep. “Without Voltaire and Rousseau there would have been no Revolution.” No honest student of eighteenth-century France can doubt that that Revolution, though it crushed the innocent with the guilty and left behind it some of the worst fruits of anarchy, left behind it too a France which, with all its faults, is a thousand times better than the France it found.

By the middle of April the PlombiÈres arrangements were well advanced. The d’Argental household was to be there; and Madame Denis, more or less penitent and more or less forgiven, had asked to join the party. The waters would be good for a health—ruined, said her temperate uncle, by “remedies and gourmandising.” Voltaire would come, with a couple of servants at the most. He was anticipating the change with pleasure when at the very last minute Madame Denis wrote to tell him that Maupertuis was at PlombiÈres too. It was certainly not big enough to hold both him and his enemy. The events of the last months had taught even Voltaire some kind of caution. He was absolutely en partant when Madame Denis’s letter came; but on June 8th, though he left Colmar, it was to stop halfway between it and PlombiÈres, at the Abbey of Senones, as the guest of Dom Calmet, who had himself been a visitor at Cirey. Calmet had a splendid library. His visitor, who was condemned, as he said, to work at a correct edition of that “General History, printed for my misfortune,” made good use of it, during his three weeks’ visit. Absurd reports were noised abroad—which the Dom did not contradict—that he had converted “the most pronounced Deist in Europe.” But, as the Deist himself said, his business was with the library—not with matins and vespers. Directly Maupertuis left PlombiÈres, Voltaire took leave of Calmet and his monks, and on some day not earlier than July 2d left for PlombiÈres, where he found not only his dear d’Argentals and Madame Denis, but her sister, Madame de Fontaine, as well.

The little party passed here an agreeable fortnight or so. About July 22d, Voltaire returned to Colmar with Madame Denis, who from this time forth managed, or mismanaged, his house for him till his death. The “Universal History” greatly occupied him after his holiday. But there was another subject which was even more engrossing.

It was the idea of living in Switzerland. Since March the plan of seeking “an agreeable tomb in the neighbourhood of Geneva,” or possibly near Lausanne, had been growing—growing. There were many reasons why the little republic was a suitable home for Voltaire. In the first place, it was a republic. It was quite close to France, though not in it; and though France might not like to have such a firebrand as Voltaire burning in her midst, she would not object to be lit by his light if it were burning near.

Then Switzerland was Protestant—and in Voltaire’s English experience of Protestantism he had found that faith singularly tolerant and easy-going—in practice, that is, not in principle. By August he was negotiating actively with M. de Brenles, a lawyer of Lausanne, about “a rather pretty property” on the lake of Geneva. It was called Allamans; and Voltaire was not a little disappointed when his negotiations for buying it fell through. In October he was inquiring if a Papist could not possess and bequeath land in the territory of Lausanne. He urged secrecy on de Brenles; and entered fully into money matters. If he bought land, it was to be in the name of his niece, Madame Denis. There was a danger throughout these months of that bomb the “Pucelle” bursting—into print—“and killing me.” That fear made the Swiss arrangements go forward with a will.

On October 23d, Voltaire went to supper at a poor tavern of Colmar, called the “Black Mountain,” with no less a personage than his friend Wilhelmina of Bayreuth. She overwhelmed him with kindness and attention; asked him to stay with her; begged she might see Madame Denis, and made a thousand excuses for the bad behaviour of brother Frederick; so that impulsive Voltaire jumped once more to that favourite conclusion of his that “women are worth more than men.” To be sure, if he had seen an account of the interview his clever Princess wrote to her brother, he might have thought something less highly of her and her sex. But he did not see it; nor Frederick’s bitter reply. If he had, neither flattery nor opprobrium would have moved him now from one fixed resolve—to shelter in Switzerland.

On November 11th, Voltaire, Collini, Madame Denis, a lady’s maid, and a servant left Colmar to visit the Duke of Richelieu at Lyons. Voltaire had lived at Colmar on and off for thirteen months—among Jesuits who five years earlier had publicly burnt the works of Bayle, the prophet of tolerance. He could not have left with regret. Just as they were starting off, Collini declares that his master, finding the travelling carriage overladen with luggage, gave orders that everything should be taken out except his own trunk and Madame Denis’s; and that he told Collini to sell his portmanteau and its contents. The hot-tempered young Italian refused to do so, and gave notice on the spot. On his own showing, his impetuous master made at once the handsomest apologies for his little burst of temper; gave the secretary generous presents of money as a peace-offering; and made him re-pack his portmanteau and put it back in the carriage. The storm blew over; but Collini, like almost all Voltaire’s servants, was beginning to take advantage of his master’s indulgence, and to trespass on a kindness which Voltaire made doubly kind to compensate for his irritability.

By November 15th, the party were installed in a very bad inn, called the “Palais Royal,” at Lyons. Voltaire complained that it was “a little too much of a joke for a sick man to come a hundred lieues to talk to the MarÉchal de Richelieu.” But he and Richelieu were not only very old friends but, in spite of little disagreements such as that affair of the “Panegyric of Louis XV.” at Court in 1749, very faithful friends. The brilliant author and the brilliant soldier had still for each other the attraction which had been potent twenty years earlier in those June days at Montjeu, when Voltaire had negotiated the marriage between Mademoiselle de Guise and the gallant Duke. The charming wife had died young; and her husband and Voltaire had met little of late. But Voltaire received Richelieu in the bad inn, and clever Richelieu made the five days he stayed at Lyons so infinitely soothing and agreeable for his much tried and harassed friend, that when Richelieu left, Voltaire said he felt like Ariadne in Naxos after the desertion of Theseus.

While he was at Lyons the enterprising traveller also went to call on Cardinal de Tencin, head of the Church there, uncle of d’Argental, and brother of that famous Madame de Tencin who had played Thisbe to Voltaire’s Pyramus when Voltaire was in the Bastille in 1726. The wary Lord Cardinal stated to M. de Voltaire that he could not ask a person in such ill-favour with his Majesty of France to dine with him. Voltaire replied that he never dined out, and knew how to take his own part against kings and cardinals; and, so saying, turned his back on his Eminence and went out of the room. As he and Collini were returning from that brief visit, the visitor observed absently that this country was not made for him. The officer in command of the troops in Lyons received him in much the same way. All the authorities were cold, in fact, to propitiate that Highest Authority at the Court of France, who was colder still. However, their disapproval was not very afflicting. The town of Lyons saw Voltaire with bolder eyes. It acted his plays at the theatre; and when he appeared in his box there, loudly applauded him. On November 26th, he formally took his seat in the Lyons Academy, of which he had long been an honorary member. Then, too, Wilhelmina was in Lyons; and Wilhelmina used her shrewd influence with de Tencin, and at a second interview, behold! the Church and Deism on quite friendly terms.

As a whole, the Lyons visit was a success; or would have been but for Voltaire’s ill-health and “mortal anxieties” about “that cursed ‘Pucelle.’” He was afraid that it was in the possession of Mademoiselle du Thil, once companion to Madame du ChÂtelet, who had found it among Émilie’s effects. The ill-health, too, which took the form of gouty rheumatism this time, was so painful and annoying that many of his friends had strongly recommended him to try for it the waters of Aix-in-Savoy. In the meantime he had been lent “a charming house halfway.” On December 10, 1754, he, Madame Denis, and Collini left Lyons for ninety-three miles distant Geneva, which they reached on December 13th and found gaily celebrating a victory gained in 1602 over the Duke of Savoy. The gates of the city were shut for the night when they arrived. But the great M. de Voltaire was expected: and they were flung open for him. He supped that night in Geneva with a man who was to be till his death one of the best and wisest friends he ever had, the famous Dr. Tronchin.

No account of Voltaire’s life in Switzerland could be complete without mention of that honourable and celebrated family, who in the eighteenth century nobly filled many important posts in the Swiss republic and whose descendants are well known in it to the present day. One Tronchin, the Swiss jurisconsult, is celebrated as having provoked, by certain “Letters from the Country,” the famous “Letters from the Mountain” of Jean Jacques Rousseau. Another, the Councillor FranÇois Tronchin, the most delightful and hospitable of men, was at once the constant correspondent, the legal adviser—in brief, the factotum of Voltaire.

But the most famous of the family, as well as the one most intimately associated with Voltaire, was Theodore Tronchin, the doctor. Handsome face, noble mind, fearless spirit, with the stern uprightness of the Puritan, and an infinite benevolence and compassion all his own—if greatness meant only goodness, friend Theodore was a greater man than his great patient, Voltaire.

Yet, though no spark of the Voltairian genius was in him, he was the most enlightened doctor of his age. It is not only as the intimate of that “old baby” as he called him, the Patriarch of Ferney, that Tronchin may well interest the present day: but as the earliest discoverer—after eighteen centuries of stuffiness—of the value of fresh air; as the first of his class who preached the Gospel of Nature; recommended temperance, exercise, cleanliness in lieu of the drugs of the Pharmacopoeia; and, after years of labour, taught the woman of his age to be very nearly as good a mother to her children as is the lioness to her cubs. Tronchin deserves to be famous.

It was he who discountenanced the idea of Voltaire trying the waters of Aix. Tronchin’s diagnosis always went through the body to the soul. No doubt he saw that this vif, irritable, nervous patient—torn to pieces with the quarrels and the excitement of the last five years—wanted, not the waters of Aix, but of Lethe: peace, quiet, monotony, and a home.

After four days’ stay in Geneva, Voltaire and suite reached the “charming house” which had been lent him, and which was ten miles from Geneva and called the ChÂteau of Prangins. It stood on very high ground, overlooking the lake from thirteen immense windows. There was too much house and too little garden. The house was only half furnished, and beaten by every wind that blew. And it was mid-winter in Switzerland. Was it really so charming? Madame Denis was volubly discontented. Italian Collini, who felt he had been cheated out of going to Paris, was extremely cross and cold. His master and mistress were always calling him to make up the fires, shut the windows, and bring them their furs. The draughts were really abominable. And what was one to do here? “Be bored; in a worse temper than usual; and write a great deal of history; be as bad a philosopher as in the town; and have not the slightest idea what is to become of us.” This was discontented Collini’s account of Prangins. He was pluming his wings for flight, and not at all in the mood to make the best of things.

It was Voltaire who did that. Between the grumbling niece and secretary, acutely sensitive himself to physical discomfort, not a little worried by the memory of that “abortion of a Universal History,” compelled to wait for a package of absolutely necessary books that ought to have come from Paris and had not, so ill that by January 3, 1755, he could not even hold a pen, he was still, in spite of angry Collini’s insinuations, the same true philosopher who had astronomised with Madame du ChÂtelet sitting by the roadside on a January evening on the cushions of their broken-down carriage. He was still busy and cheerful. “They have need of courage,” he wrote of his companions, very justly. As for himself, he worked and forgot the cold. It was in these early days of his life in Switzerland that he arranged with the Brothers Cramer, the famous publishers of Geneva, to bring out the first complete edition of his writings. Then he heard from d’Argental that the public of Paris resented his exile. What warmth and comfort in that! “Nanine” was played there with success; and a play of CrÉbillon’s was a failure. That would have made one glow with satisfaction in any climate. And if Prangins was cold, two at least of the influential persons in the neighbourhood had written warmly to assure the famous newcomer of their good offices.

And better than all, better a thousand times, through this chill, discontented January, Voltaire was eagerly looking for a house and property of his own, in this free little Switzerland, where he might settle down at last and be in peace. On January 31, 1755, he was in active negotiation about two houses. On February 1st there appeared in the Registers of the Council of State of Geneva a special permission to M. de Voltaire—who alleged the state of his health and the necessity for living near his doctor, Tronchin, as a reason for wishing to settle in Switzerland—to inhabit the territory of the republic under the good pleasure of the Seigneury.

On February 8th or 9th the Councillor Tronchin bought a property quite close to Geneva, called Saint-Jean, which he let on a life lease to Voltaire, and which, in a characteristic enthusiasm and before he had had any practical experience of it, Voltaire rechristened “Les DÉlices.” Thus he was enabled to evade the law of the republic, and, Papist though he nominally was, to live and hold property under the Genevan republic.

A few days later he acquired a second house, called Monrion, on the way from Lausanne to Ouchy.

He was now sixty-one years old. Strong in his heart all his life had been his love of a home. For a while Cirey had seemed like one. But it had never belonged to him. It was, too, in France; and there had been often the painful necessity of leaving it as quickly as possible, and without any surety of being allowed to come back again. The man’s whole life had been a buffeting from pillar to post.

But the fretted youth in Paris, the restless middle age at LunÉville, Brussels, Cirey, and the angry hurry of Prussia were over for ever.

When he settled in Switzerland Voltaire took a new lease of his life. He entered upon its last, greatest, noblest, and calmest epoch.