Part 11 (1/2)
The saying of Frederick that the French squeezed the juice, he {161} should throay the skin, very naturally rankled in the poet to who at Potsdam which went far to destroy thepersonalities who had thought to dwell so happily together Voltaire spoke disparagingly of Frederick's literary achieve his host's French verses with that of washi+ng dirty linen Politeness had worn very thin when the writer described the ed for his tricks, and gave him the nickname of _Luc_, a pet !
In March 1753, Voltaire left the court, thoroughly weary of life in a place where there was so little interest in letters He had a _fracas_ at Frankfort, where he was required to give up the court decorations he had ith childlike enjoyment, and also a volume of royal verses which Frederick did not wish to be made public For five weeks he lay in prison with his niece, Madanities He boxed the ears of a bookseller to whoeneral coe follies which were quite opposed to his claims to philosophy There was an end of close friendshi+p with Prussia, but he still drew his pension and corresponded with the cynical Frederick, only occasionally referring to their notorious differences In dispraise of the niece Mada abandoned the toleration he had professedly extended ”Consider all that as done with,” he wrote on the subject of the iain of that wearisome niece, who has not as much merit as her uncle hich to cover her {162} defects People talk of the servant of Moliere, but nobody will ever speak of the niece of Voltaire”
The poet resented this conteently fond of the hoood sense to win pardon for the frivolity of her tastes and extravagances
Living in a learned circle, she talked, like a parrot, of literature and wrote plays for the theatre of Ferney ”She wrote a comedy; but the players, out of respect to Voltaire, declined to act in it She wrote a tragedy; but the one favour, which the repeated entreaties of years could never wring from Voltaire, was that he would read it”
In spite of his quarrels, Voltaire spoke favourably of the Ger on the Great Elector He could not endure the hostile temper of his own land and deserted Paris to settle at Geneva, that free republic which extended hospitality to refugees froes, one for su beautiful scenes, which he enjoyed for twenty years to coht a life-interest in Tournay and the lordshi+p of Ferney in 1758, declaring that ”philosophers ought to have two or three holes underground against the hounds who chase theion of the tie, hich was coupled a terrible cruelty and lack of toleration
To make superstition ridiculous was one of the objects of Voltaire's satire, for, in this way, he hoped to secure due respect for reason
All abuses were to be torn away, and such traditions as les between Jesuits and Jansenists were at their height How could religion exist when one party believing in works denied the creed of a second believing grace better than deeds, and when both sides were eager to devote themselves to persecution?
In Voltaire's day, the condey They would shackle theit in subjection to the priesthood Here was aat the power claiotry of priests dee Yet he did not ood lives but at the corrupt who sha revived by zealous Jesuits ere losing authority through the increasing strength of another party of the Catholic Church, then known as Jansenists
The Jansenists followed the doctrines of Calvin in their belief in predestination and the necessity for conversion, but they differed widely fro that a h conversion ht be instantaneous They were firmly convinced that each human soul should have personal relation with its Maker, but held that this was only possible through the Roman Church Their chief cause of quarrel with the Jesuits was the accusation brought against the priests of that order that they granted absolution for sinscertain of the sinners' real repentance
Voltaire's blood boiled when he heard that three young Protestants had been killed because they took {164} up arnal for rebellion He received under his protection at Geneva theand children of the Protestant Calas, who had been broken on the wheel in 1762 because he was falsely declared to have killed his son in order to prevent his turning Catholic A youth, named La Barre, was sentenced, at the instance of a bishop, to have his tongue and right hand cut off because he was suspected of having tampered with a crucifix He was condemned to death afterwards on the norance of such fanatics There was laughter in the writings of the unbelievers of the tihter inspired by thethat which o ith massacres,” Voltaire commented There was force in hiy had refused in 1750 to bear their share of taxation, though one-fifth of France was in their hands Superstition inevitably tends to make bad citizens, the philosopher observed, and set forth the evils to society that resulted from the idle lives which were supported by the labour of more industrious subjects But in his praiseworthy attack upon the spirit of the Catholicism of his day which stooped to basest cruelty, Voltaire appealed always to intelligence rather than to feeling He wanted to free the understanding and extend knowledge He set up reason as a Goddess, and left it to another man to point the way to a social revolution
Jean-Jacques Rousseau it ho led men to consider the possibility of a State in which all citizens {165} should be free and equal He suffered banishment and much hardshi+p for the bold schemes he presented The Parlement of Paris was ruthless when the two books--_emile_ and the _Social Contract_--were published in 1762
Rousseau, a writer of huin, had been the close student of Voltaire since his mind had first formed into a definite individuality
He had been poor and alraver and ratitude several kindly patrons Like Voltaire, too, he journeyed over Europe, finding refuge in Geneva, whence came his father's family
He was a man of sordid life and without morality; but he was true to his life's purpose, and toiled at uncongenial tasks rather than write at other bidding than that of his own soul
Rousseau's play _Le Devin du Village_ had a court success that brought hiay ladies Many a beauty found it difficult to tear herself away froely romantic novel _La Nouvelle Helose_, which preached a return to Nature, so long neglected by the artificial age of Paris All conventions should be thrown off that inally intended
Kings there should not be to deprive their subjects of all liberty, nor nobles who claimed the earth, which was the inheritance of God's creatures
At first, this theory of return to Nature pleased the ruling classes
The young King and Queen ell- the poor and did so to alleviate the ave up {166} the extravagant career of fashi+on and spent happy hours in the rustic village of Trianon nobles and maids of honour played at rusticity, unconscious of the deadly blows that Jean-Jacques had aily to their sentiment There was a new belief in hu to give bread to the poor, even if at evening she danced at a court which was supported in luxury by their ratulate hih an edict of Parlement into miserable banishment He did not aim at destruction of the old order, but he depicted an ideal State and to attain that ideal State men butchered their felloithout mercy The _Social Contract_ became the textbook of the first revolutionary party, and none admired Rousseau more ardently than the ruthless wielder of tyranny who followed out the theorist's idea that in a republic it was necessary sometimes to have a dictator
There were rival schools of thought during the lifeti of the Markets, destined in years to come to inspire the Convention and the Coer recipient of the favours of Madame de Pompadour, had little sympathy with the author of a book in which the hunty and showed no skill in his handling of religion The elder er shelter when abuse was rained upon hiht Geneva should have cast out the unbeliever, for Jean-Jacques was a pious man in theory and shocked by the worshi+p {167} of pure reason The reeted the return of Voltaire to Paris after thirty years of banishment must have echoed rather bitterly in the ears of Rousseau, who had despised salons and chosen to live apart from all society
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Chapter XV
The Man froust 15th, 1769, Napoleon Buonaparte found himself surrounded from his first hours by all the tumult and the clash of war Ajaccio, on the rocky island of Corsica, was his birthplace, though his family had Florentine blood Letitia Ramolino, the mother of Napoleon, was of aristocratic Italian descent