Which roaring cannot, of course, convince; and since it is not permitted to kill, can only provoke a talking spirit into still deeper strains of heterodoxy for his own private behoof. These are the Lions on his path: beasts conscious to themselves of good intentions; but manifesting from Voltaire's point of view, it must be owned, a physiognomy unlovely to a degree. (Light is superior to darkness, I should think,' meditates Voltaire; 'power of thought to the want of power! The ANE DE MIREPOIX (Ass of Mirepoix), [Poor joke of Voltaire's, continually applied to this Bishop, or Ex-Bishop,--who was thought, generally, a rather tenebrific man for appointment to the FEUILLE DES BENEFICES(charge of nominating Bishops, keeping King's conscience, &c.);and who, in that capacity, signed himself ANC (by no means "ANE,"but "ANCIEN, Whilom") DE MIREPOIX,--to the enragement of Voltaire bften enough.] pretending to use me in this manner, is it other, in the court of Rhadamanthus, than transcendent Stupidity, with transcendent Insolence superadded?' Voltaire grows more and more heterodox; and is ripening towards dangerous utterances, though he, strives to hold in.
"The Dogs upon his path, again, are all the disloyal envious persons of the Writing Class, whom his success has offended;and, more generally, all the dishonest hungry persons who can gain a morsel by biting him: and their name is legion. It must be owned, about as ugly a Doggery ('INFAME CANAILLE' he might well reckon them) as has, before or since, infested the path of a man.
They are not hired and set on, as angry suspicion might suggest;but they are covertly somewhat patronized by the Mirepoix, or orthodox Official class. Scandalous Ex-Jesuit Desfontaines, Thersites Freron,--these are but types of an endless Doggery;whose names and works should be blotted out; whose one claim to memory is, that the riding man so often angrily sprang down, and tried horsewhipping them into silence. A vain attempt.
The individual hound flies howling, abjectly petitioning and promising; but the rest bark all with new comfort, and even he starts again straightway. It is bad travelling in those woods, with such Lions and such Dogs. And then the sparsely scattered HUMAN Creatures (so we may call them in contrast, persons of Quality for most part) are not always what they should be.
The grand mansions you arrive at, in this waste-howling solitude, prove sometimes essentially Robber-towers;--and there may be Armida Palaces, and divine-looking Armidas, where your ultimate fate is still worse.
<italic> 'Que le monde est rempli d'enchanteurs, je ne dis rien d'enchanteresses!' <end italic>
To think of it, the solitary Ishmaelite journeying, never so well mounted, through such a wilderness: with lions, dogs, human robbers and Armidas all about him; himself lonely, friendless under the stars:--one could pity him withal, though that is not the feeling he solicits; nor gets hitherto, even at this impartial distance.
"One of the beautiful creatures of Quality,--we hope, not an Armida,--who came athwart Voltaire, in these times, was a Madame du Chatelet; distinguished from all the others by a love of mathematics and the pure sciences, were it nothing else. She was still young, under thirty; the literary man still under forty.
With her Husband, to whom she had brought a child, or couple of children, there was no formal quarrel; but they were living apart, neither much heeding the other, as was by no means a case without example at that time; Monsieur soldiering, and philandering about, in garrison or elsewhere; Madame, in a like humor, doing the best for herself in the high circles of society, to which he and she belonged. Most wearisome barren circles to a person of thought, as both she and M. de Voltaire emphatically admitted to one another, on first making acquaintance. But is there no help?
"Madame had tried the pure sciences and philosophies, in Books:
but how much more charming, when they come to you as a Human Philosopher; handsome, magnanimous, and the wittiest man in the world! Young Madame was not regularly beautiful; but she was very piquant, radiant, adventurous; understood other things than the pure sciences, and could be abundantly coquettish and engaging.
I have known her scuttle off, on an evening, with a couple of adventurous young wives of Quality, to the remote lodging of the witty M. de Voltaire, and make his dim evening radiant to him.
[One of Voltaire's Letters.] Then again, in public crowds, I have seen them; obliged to dismount to the peril of Madame's diamonds, there being a jam of carriages, and no getting forward for half the day. In short, they are becoming more and more intimate, to the extremest degree; and, scorning the world, thank Heaven that they are mutually indispensable. Cannot we get away from this scurvy wasp's-nest of a Paris, thought they, and live to ourselves and our books?