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Voltaire, with enthusiasm, and no doubt promptly, answers within three weeks: "CIREY, 26th August, 1736. "MONSEIGNEUR, A man must be void of all feeling who were not infinitely moved by the Letter which your Royal Highness has deigned to honor me with.
He himself, however, had been obliged to seek refuge from the wrath of the government in the remote seclusion of Madame du Châtelet's country house at Cirey. In this retirement he pursued his studies of Newton, and a few years later produced an exact and brilliant summary of the work of the great English philosopher. Once more the authorities intervened, and condemned Voltaire's book.
A six months of actual Letters written by poor Grafigny, while sheltering at Cirey, Winter and Spring, 1738-1739; straitened there in various respects, extremely ill off for fuel, among other things. Rugged practical Letters, shadowing out to us, unconsciously oftenest, and like a very mirror, the splendid and the sordid, the seamy side and the smooth, of Life at Cirey, in her experience of it.
One thing is lamentable: the relation with Madame is not now a flourishing one, or capable again of being: "Does not love me as he did, the wretch!" thinks Madame always; yet sticks by him, were it but in the form of blister. They had been to Luneville, Spring, 1747; happy dull place, within reach of Cirey; far from Versailles and its cabals.
She was especially interested in sciences, mathematics, geometry, and astronomy, and did more than any other woman of that time to encourage nature study. It was at her Château de Cirey that Voltaire found protection when threatened with a second visit to the Bastille; and there, from time to time for sixteen years, he did some of the best work of his life.
He accused her of sending to a friend a copy of his "Pucello," an unfinished poem which was kept under triple lock, though parts of it had been read to her. Her letters were opened, her innocent praises were turned against her, there was a scene, and Cirey was a paradise no more. She came to Paris, ill, sad, and penniless. She wrote "Les Lettres d'une Peruvienne" and found herself famous.
Of his envies, deep-hidden splenetic discontents and rages, with Voltaire's return for them, there will be enough to say in the ulterior stages. Maupertuis is well known at Cirey; such a lion could not fail there. A BON GARCON, Voltaire says; though otherwise, I think, a little noisy on occasion.
Voltaire and the divine Emilie are home to Cirey again; that of Brussels, with the Royal Aachen Excursion, has been only an interlude. They returned, by slow stages, visit after visit, in October last, some slake occurring, I suppose, in that interminable Honsbruck Lawsuit; and much business, not to speak of ennui, urging them back.
There began a course of metaphysics, tales, tragedies; Alzire, Merope, Mahomet, were composed at Cirey and played with ever increasing success. Pope Benedict XIV. had accepted the dedication of Mahomet, which Voltaire had addressed to him in order to cover the freedoms of his piece.
A sublime enough Voltaire; radiant enough, over at Cirey yonder. To all lands, a visible Phoebus Apollo, climbing the eastern steeps; with arrows of celestial "new light" in his quiver; capable of stretching many a big foul Python, belly uppermost, in its native mud, and ridding the poor world of her Nightmares and Mud-Serpents in some measure, we may hope!
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