Voltaire/Chapter 19
CHAPTER XIX.
END OF THE CIREY EPOCH.
It is known from the Marquise du Châtelet's correspondence that she considered the first ten years of this life at Cirey paradise. For so long Voltaire continued to be the devoted lover, full of consideration and of attention, ready with graceful gifts and still more graceful verses. He wrote poetical epistles in which she figured as the illustration or pointed the moral; he wrote pieces complimenting her on her learning, and not destitute of allusions to her wit and beauty; he replied in highly-finished rhymes, in her name, to illustrious correspondents. But the inevitable time came when all this changed: the poet was growing old; notwithstanding the astonishing vitality which preserved his mental energy in perfection to eighty-four, he aged physically, perhaps, before his time. He was thinner than ever; he lost his teeth, henceforward assuming that profile to which his busts, made in extreme old age, accustom us; he was often an invalid; and he began to regard the fair sex as to be turned to account chiefly for literary purposes. Thus it was not so much that he gave up love as that love gave him up. Nevertheless they parted friends, and Voltaire made his adieux to the retiring deity with admirable grace. It must have been at this period, and in reply to some domestic remonstrances, that he wrote as follows:—
Then bring me back love's radiant time!
Give to my sunset's parting gleam
The glow and freshness of my prime.
And god of Love hold joyous sway,
Time, in his cold hand taking mine,
Turns my reluctant steps away.
Some benefit at least may spring—
Who still apes youth when age is here,
Knows all the sorrows age can bring.
The dalliance sweet that makes their heaven;
And since our moments are so few,
Let some to wisdom's quest be given.
Illusion, fondness, fantasy?
Celestial gifts that o'er me spread,
A charm to cause all cares to flee?
To cease to love, nor know the bliss
Of being loved, is death indeed—
To cease to live is nought to this.
The errant joys of life's young day;
My heart, reviving, longed once more
For those false fires that led astray.
Fair Friendship to my succour came;
She had, methought, Love's tender grace,
Though nought of Love's impetuous flame.
And, guided by the light she bore,
I followed her—yet still bewailed
"That none but her might lure me more.
Madame du Châtelet was unfortunately indisposed to accept either poetry, or friendship, or even geometry, as a complete substitute for a lover's devotion, and did not reject the opportunity, when it was offered, of obtaining that sympathy which was no longer bestowed by the philosophic poet. At Luneville, sometimes at Commercy, a few miles over the frontier, Stanislaus, the father of Louis XV.'s queen, once king of Poland in reality, and still keeping the title, held his Court as Duke of Lorraine—that being the dominion which the greater Powers had, in the course of their negotiations (high-principled and disinterested as those of great Powers usually are), assigned to him in compensation for the loss of his kingdom; and here Voltaire and his Emilie were warmly-welcomed guests. The monarch, in the absence of other domestic companionship, had concluded a left-handed alliance with the Marquise de Boufflers (the title of Marquise appears to have been almost as fatal to propriety as that of Abbé), who, in turn, had bestowed her left hand upon Monsieur de St Lambert, a young guardsman about the Court of Lorraine. Stanislaus objected to the attentions of the good-looking guardsman, who, accordingly, could only join Madame de Boufflers' card and supper parties after the dethroned potentate had gone to bed. This left a good deal of St Lambert's evening unoccupied, and it was in these trying circumstances that he sought to console himself with the society of Madame du Châtelet until it was time to go to supper with Madame de Boufflers. In these preliminary visits he made himself so agreeable that Voltaire's portrait in the ring shortly went after the Duke of Richelieu's, and was replaced by St Lambert's. Nor was Voltaire long left in doubt as to the new state of affairs, which at first made him very angry, but to which he soon reconciled himself so completely as to make the situation the subject of a little comedy in verse: this work, however, never was published.
This was in 1748; in the following year Madame du Châtelet died, after a very short illness. Of the three widowers whom she left, Voltaire was by far the most inconsolable. The Marquis's loss was not of a kind to be considered irreparable; St Lambert had Madame de Boufilers and other sources of consolation; but Voltaire fell into a transport of grief, and for long continued to appear stunned by the blow, remaining alone in his chamber plunged in the idlest torpor. This event ended his abode at Cirey; the chateau was handed over to the Marquis, and Voltaire took up his residence for a time in Paris, removing thither his furniture, pictures, busts, museums, and the material of his literary works. But it was still a long while before he recovered any degree of calm; nor does it appear that Madame du Châtelet had any successor in his regard, and she may therefore with propriety be styled the Last of Voltaire's Marquises.