Volume II Part 23 (1/2)
Quelques plaisirs dans la jeunesse, Des soins dans la maternit, Tous les malheurs dans la vieillesse, Puis la peur de l'ternit.
She was first dissipated; then an _esprit fort_; then _trs dvote_. In obedience to her confessor, she discarded, one after the other, her rouge, her ribbons, and the presents and billets-doux of her lovers; but no remonstrances could induce her to give up Voltaire's picture. When he returned from exile in 1778, he went to pay a visit to his old love; they had not met for fifty years, and they now gazed on each other in silent dismay. _He_ looked, I suppose, like the dried mummy of an ape: _she_, like a withered _sorcire_. The same evening she sent him back his portrait, which she had hitherto refused to part with. Nothing remained to shed illusion over the past; she had beheld, even before the last terrible proof--
What dust we doat on, when 'tis man we love.
And Voltaire, on his side, was not less dismayed by his visit. On returning from her, he exclaimed, with a shrug of mingled disgust and horror, ”Ah, mes amis! je viens de pa.s.ser l'autre bord du Cocyte!” It was not thus that Cowper felt for his Mary, when ”her auburn locks were changed to grey:” but it is almost an insult to the memory of true tenderness to mention them both in the same page.
To enumerate other women who have been celebrated by Voltaire, would be to give a list of all the beautiful and distinguished women of France for half a century; from the d.u.c.h.ess de Richelieu and Madame de Luxembourg, down to Camargo the dancer, and Clairon and le Couvreur the actresses: but I can find no name of any _poetical_ fame or interest among them: nor can I conceive any thing more revolting than the history of French society and manners during the Regency and the whole of the reign of Louis the Fifteenth.
FOOTNOTES:
[137] Madame de Tencin used to call the men of letters she a.s.sembled at her house ”mes btes,” and her society went by the name of Madame de Tencin's mnagerie. Her advice to Marmontel, when a young man, was excellent. See his Memoirs, vol. i.
[138] Correspondence de Grimm, vol. ii. 421.
[139] Je ris plus que personne aux marionettes; et j'avoue qu'une boite, une porcelaine, un meuble nouveau, sont pour moi une vrai jouissance.--_Oeuvres de Madame du Chtelet_--_Trait de Bonheur._
[140] The then fas.h.i.+onable game at cards.
[141] Voltaire once said of her, ”C'est une femme terrible, qui n'a point de flexibilit dans le coeur, quoiqu'elle l'ait bon.” This hardness of temper, this _volont tyrannique_, this cold determination never to yield a point, were worse than all her violence.
[142] The t.i.tle which Voltaire gave her.
[143] ”Vie prive de Voltaire et de Madame du Chtelet,” in a series of letters, written by Madame de Graffigny during her stay at Cirey. The details in these letters are exceedingly amusing, but the style so diffuse, that it is scarcely possible to make extracts.
[144] Epitre Saint-Lambert.
[145] Madlle. de Launay: it has become necessary to distinguish between two celebrated women bearing the same name, at least in sound.
[146] ”Les principes de la philosophie de Newton.”
[147] V. Correspondence de Madame de Deffand. In another letter from Seaux, Madame de Stael adds the following clever, satirical,--but most characteristic picture:--
”En tout cas on vous garde un bon appartement: c'est celui dont Madame du Chtelet, aprs une revue exacte de toute la maison, s'tait empare.
Il y aura un peu moins de meubles qu'elle n'y en avait mis; car elle avait dvast tous ceux par o elle avait pa.s.s pour garnir celui-l. On y a trouv six ou sept tables; il lui en faut de toutes les grandeurs; d'immenses pour taler ses papiers, de solides pour soutenir son necessaire, de plus lgers pour ses pompons, pour ses bijoux; et cette belle ordonnance ne l'a pas garantie d'une accident pareil celui qui arrive Philippe II. quand, aprs avoir pa.s.s la nuit crire, on rpandit une bouteille d'encre sur ses dpches. La dame ne s'est pas pique d'imiter la moderation de ce prince; aussi n'avait-il crit que sur des affaires d'tat; et ce qu'on lui a barbouill, c'etait de l'algbre, bien plus difficile remettre au net.”
CHAPTER XIX.
FRENCH POETRY CONTINUED.
MADAME D'HOUDETOT.
Saint-Lambert, who seemed destined to rival greater men than himself, after carrying off Madame du Chtelet from Voltaire, became the favoured lover of the Comtesse d'Houdetot, Rousseau's Sophie; she for whom the philosopher first felt love, ”_dans toute son energie, toutes ses fureurs_,”--but in vain.
Saint-Lambert is allowed to be an elegant poet: his _Saisons_ were once as popular in France, as Thomson's Seasons are here; but they have not retained their popularity. The French poem, though in many parts imitated from the English, is as unlike it as possible: correct, polished, elegant, full of beautiful lines,--of what the French call _de beaux vers_,--and yet excessively dull. It is equally impossible to find fault with it in parts, or endure it as a whole. _Une pet.i.te pointe de verve_ would have rendered it delightful; but the total want of enthusiasm in the writer freezes the reader. As Madame du Deffand said, in humorous mockery of his monotonous harmony, ”Sans les oiseaux, les ruisseaux, les hameaux, les ormeaux, et leur rameaux, il aurait bien pen de choses a dire!”
Madame d'Houdetot was the _Doris_ to whom the Seasons are dedicated; and the opening pa.s.sage addressed to her, is extremely admired by French critics.