Marguerite Agnes Power

“ Crowds arrived to visit him, and grands seigneurs, court beauties, friends, strangers, bourgeois, litterateurs, actors and actresses, celebrities and nobodies, elbowed each other in the desire to see and to hear the illustrious hero, who had for each a smile, a compliment, “une parole aimable, un doux regard.” Hardly was he recovered from the fatigues of his journey, and from the somewhat oppressive homage of his admirers, when, always with an eye to business, he set about preparing for the stage his “Irène,” which he wished to see brought out at the Théâtre Français. ”

“ We are not deficient in our appreciation of esprit, when we find it; but we regard it as a secondary, not a primary quality; as a means rather than as an end; a man must have something besides esprit, and something higher than it, to command our reverence, admiration, and esteem.
A persifleur amuses us, but we have no notion of making him
Our pattern to live and to die,
whereas in France a first-rate persifleur is the perfection of a man of esprit.
Now Voltaire, being the Prince of Persifleurs, was in France considered a great man, a title which no Englishman would accord him. ”

“ The 24th of March was the day fixed for the first representation of Irėne.
Voltaire did all that man could do to collect strength, to be present on the occasion: but in vain; already the approaching Death was beginning to master him,—had his clutch on that Heart which saw yet stranger vicissitudes dead than living. But, obliged, as he found himself, to give up this triumph, he kept messengers hourly on the wing between the theatre and his sick chamber. ”

“ THE HEART OF VOLTAIRE, LIVING AND DEAD.
t sometimes happens that after a man has lived out his life in tranquil obscurity, little noticed, little known, beyond the circle of his own family, friends and acquaintances, his taking his place in the tomb assigned him, after an easy and natural death has made it his fitting abode, so stirs the ashes of other men long dead, perhaps half-forgotten, that these last become for the moment resuscitated; their names are once more pronounced by a generation born since they were buried ”

“ It is hardly likely that we English should regard Voltaire from the same point of view that the French do, even setting aside the grand point of his religious and moral theories. The quality that he possessed, perhaps beyond all other men, that of esprit, is a quality before which every Frenchman bows the knee, and he who possesses it in the largest measure, is, by an inevitable consequence, considered the first of men. ”

“ Where vice the most atrocious, tyranny, indolence, avarice, and the constant effort to keep men’s minds down to a level of brutish ignorance and stagnant demoralisation were the common characteristics of the ministers of what Voltaire and nearly all France with him, were accustomed to regard as the Christian religion.
“L’homme propose et Dieu dispose.” ”

“ Is it likely, is it possible—that possessing such qualities as he did, and having them considered as the greatest and most precious a man could own, he would undervalue them, or seek to raise himself to a higher standard?—or that when his faults,—even his gravest sins, so far from being considered in that light, were such as were daily committed, tolerated, even applauded, in his own circle, he should be troubled with any remorseful sense of them, any idea of the necessity of reforming them? ”

“ What can be more significantly characteristic of the man and of the time than the fact that not long after the production of his epic, his great tragedies, his history of Charles XII., &c., we find him busily engaged, in company with Rameau, the musician, M. de la Popelinière, the fermier-général, and Madame de Pompadour, in composing, for the fêtes of the marriage of the Dauphin with the Infanta of Spain, a spectacle de cour, in which the decorations, the music and the ballet played the chief parts! ”

“ No longer the old man, “en grande toilette, tout charmant, tout égrillard,” parading in triumph the streets of Paris, in broad daylight, with eyes “qui jetoient des flammes;” but a poor, weary worn-out corpse, covered up in a dressing-gown and night-cap, being stolen along bad country roads in the stillness and darkness of night, to escape insult and outrage ”

“ And while he wrote poems, tragedies, histories, epigrams and court entertainments, his hard shrewd head was busily and most successfully employed in making his fortune.
He speculated in the funds, traded with America, and for years was a victualling contractor for armies. At Ferney, “l’auberge de l’Europe,” as he was pleased to call it, he received men and women of every sort of celebrity; he corresponded with kings, queens, princes, philosophers, with the Empress Catherine of Russia, and the Pope Benedict. An active life, truly, and one strangely occupied and organised. ”

“ Dis que Voltaire est mort, pleure, et repose-toi!”
All things considered, we may, I think, reasonably hope that the universe is consoled for the one loss, and that Fame has dried her eyes, and being sufficiently rested from her fatigues, has found employment since the death of the other. ”

“ After many years’ sojourn at Ferney, where, doubtless, some of Voltaire’s happiest years were spent, and where he meant to lay his bones, it pleased his niece, Madame Denis, an elderly dame, yet withal sharing the sublime Emilie’s much-to-be-admired love of pleasure, and some of her thirst for conquest, to decide that he should bend his steps once more towards Paris ”

“ What has become of the heart no one seems to know, nor do those who might be supposed to be specially interested appear to care.
At all events, no claim, no mention of any kind is made of the relic in the trial where all else relating to what were the possessions of M. de Villette is narrowly discussed and warmly disputed; and though the question has been several times put forth since the occurrence of the trial, which took place some three months since, I am not aware that any answer has been given. ”

“ The Academy then addressed themselves to the Prime Minister, M. de Maurepas. The cynic, whose sneers were mere aperies of the sneers of Voltaire, replied that his conscience opposed itself to the accordance of any funeral honours, adding that there would be no great harm if the people of France should be persuaded that M. de Voltaire had been carried off by the devil. ”