Voltaire in Love Read Online Free PDF

having written it. Voltaire’s denials of its authorship, however, were again disbelieved. One afternoon the Regent, walking in the gardens of his Palais-Royal, came face to face with him. ‘Monsieur Arouet,’ he said, ‘I’m going to show you something that you have never seen before: the Bastille.’ ‘Ah! Monseigneur! I’ll take that as seen.’
    On the morning of Whit Sunday 1717, ‘twenty scavenging, starving black crows’ (in the poet’s imagination, really two policemen) appeared in his bedroom and carried him off to gaol. This, in the parlance of time, was his first Bastille. Voltaire was familiar with the inside of the fortress because the Duc de Richelieu, having got out of hand at the age of fifteen, had been sent there with his tutor for a year. Voltaire used to visit him. A spell in the Bastille could hardly be described as durance vile for anybody rich or important. Such ‘guests of the King’ were made very comfortable in a special part of the prison. There was room for fifty but this number was seldom reached, and there were generally about thirty. During the reign of Louis XIV they furnished their own apartments; in Voltaire’s time the rooms contained the necessities of life, but the prisoner was expected to provide tapestry, silver, books, cushions, screens, looking-glasses, and lamps. (Richelieu arrived with family portraits, musical instruments, and a backgammon board.) Women took their maids with them. Food and wine invast quantities and of excellent quality, heating, light, and laundry were provided by the King. The prisoners were only shut in their rooms at night; during the day they were at liberty within the walls; they paid each other visits and received their friends from outside. It need hardly be said that Voltaire dined at the governor’s table.
    Captivity, however, is bad for those of an excitable nature. Although Voltaire lived well at the Bastille and managed to do a great deal of work there, he retained a nervous dread of prison to the end of his days. On 11 April 1718 he was set free but forbidden to stay in Paris. He went to Chatenay to a delightful house belonging to his father. But he was insensible to the charms of this summer in the country; he had a particular reason for wishing to be in Paris. His first play, Œdipe, had been accepted by the Comédie Française and was about to go into rehearsal.
    It was at this point that young Arouet decided to take another name. He said that he had been unhappy under his own and furthermore did not wish to be confounded with the poet Roy. (Roi, in Court parlance, was pronounced Roé.) Younger sons often changed their names in order not to be confused with their brothers; there was also the precedent of Molière, born Poquelin. More pretentious than he, Voltaire gave himself a particle and called himself Arouet de Voltaire. He never told anybody why he chose that name; probably it was an anagram of Arouet l.j. (le jeune); J’s and I’s, U’s and V’s being then interchangeable. The first letter of his that exists with the new signature was written to an Englishman, Lord Ashburnham, and concerns the loan of a horse. It is dated from Chatenay, 12 June 1718. The change of name was accepted quite calmly in society; no mockery or laughter is heard of until the silly insolence of the Chevalier de Rohan-Chabot seven years later. Even the Minister responsible for his exile from Paris, the Marquis de La Vrillière, addressed him as Arouet de Voltaire, in October 1718.
    Å’dipe came on in November. Voltaire was not quite free to live where he liked, but, largely owing to the good offices of the Baron de Breteuil, he was allowed to go to Paris for a few days at a time to help with the production. Always apt to fall in love with hisleading ladies, he was having an affair with Mlle Livry, who played Jocaste. Œdipe contained some passages that would never have been