Voltaire in Love (28 page)

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A gambling game.

Père Menou was King Stanislas's chaplain and he brought an invitation from his master to the philosophers. Would they go back with him to Lunéville? He must have been the first and last Jesuit who ever wanted to import Voltaire into his own sphere of influence; he was driven to this rash act by the following circumstances.

King Stanislas, having been twice chased off the throne of Poland, was comfortably ending his days as the ruler of Lorraine. His Court was a toy model of Versailles. The royal palace was not in the capital, Nancy, but at Lunéville, a small garrison town some miles away. Like his son-in-law, Louis XV, Stanislas had country houses within an easy day's drive of his palace, where he could go with a few friends when he wanted to get away from the crowd of courtiers. He, too, was fond of building; Nancy, rebuilt by him, became one of the most beautiful small towns in Europe. The Place Stanislas there inspired the King of France to make the Place Louis XV (Concorde). Stanislas, like Louis, had a neglected Queen, and was governed by a beautiful Marquise. His cousin, the Duke Ossolinski, had the title, at Lunéville, of M. le Duc like the King of France's cousin, the Duc de Bourbon, at Versailles. At the beginning of his reign Stanislas had filled his Court and its offices with Polish refugees. In due course, however, his ancient mistress ‘Mme la Duchess' (Ossolinska) was replaced by the young Lorrainer Marquise de Boufflers, after which the atmosphere at Lunéville turned very French.

Stanislas was a merry old soul and the Lorrainers loved him, although they had been passionately attached to their own ruling
family and were distressed by the fact that, on his death, their ancient duchy was to become a province of France. No two people could have been found to bridge the awkward period of transition so well as he and his ‘Chancellor' the Marquis de La Galaizière, who was really the French intendant. In perfect harmony they ruled Lorraine together: the King was the figurehead, the Marquis did the work – and so it was in all things, including their liaison with Mme de Boufflers.

This laughing beauty, whose lovers dreaded her jokes even more than her infidelities, had been born and bred for the post of King's mistress. She was one of the eighteen children of the Princesse de Beauvau who had held it during the reign of Duke Leopold. Stanislas worshipped her, but he realized that, in his sixties, he could hardly expect to fulfil all the requirements of a lovely woman thirty years younger. So, at a certain moment, he would leave her room saying, ‘My Chancellor must tell you the rest.' (This was the favourite story of Louis XV.) La Galaizière, too, loved her passionately. She was perfectly bewitching, and no unkind word has ever been said about her, either during her lifetime or since her death. Like the Marquise at Versailles, of whom she was very fond (and whose greatest friend was her sister the Marquise de Mirepoix), Mme de Boufflers had been well educated. She wrote light verse of merit and charm, and was an accomplished pastellist. She possessed every virtue except chastity; while there was a special place in her heart for the King, while the love of her life was La Galaizière, she had a regiment of other lovers. In 1748 she was at the beginning of a new affair. A year or two before, Pan-pan had been the favoured one, Mme de Grafigny's Panpichon. But though both he and Mme de Boufflers cherished the memory of their love into extreme old age, Panpichon had one signal disadvantage as a lover: when his mistress was in his arms, desire for her would fade, only to be reborn in all its force when she was no longer there. In these circumstances it was no surprise to anybody that, while she kept a tender regard for Pan-pan, she should turn to his friend, Saint-Lambert.

The Marquis de Saint-Lambert has not been well treated by historians. The admirers both of Voltaire and of Jean-Jacques
Rousseau have had reason to be unkind about him; his poetry has long been out of fashion; his title even has been disputed. But his contemporaries saw him as a fascinator. At Lunéville he was distinguished from the other courtiers by his manner, different indeed from theirs. King Stanislas, who loved pleasure and ease, had abolished all ceremony at his Court and its atmosphere was that of a large, rather silly, country-house party. The courtiers twittered and shrieked and romped from morning to night; practical jokes were encouraged. The horrid dwarf, Bébé, was the centre of everything, hiding in the women's skirts, losing himself in a cornfield, always bad-tempered, smasher of china, cruel to animals, but adored by Stanislas. He lived in a house three feet high and was dressed in the uniform of a hussar. ‘Just imagine,' wrote President Hénault, ‘his idiot of a mother spends her time praying that he will grow!'

In this exuberant society Saint-Lambert stood conspicuously aloof. He observed the antics around him with a sardonic eye, he never used exaggerated phrases, never flattered anybody, seldom laughed. There was something Byronic about him, and like Lord Byron he was a poet, though not so talented. He wrote about nature and the countryside. Mme du Deffand, who hardly ever spoke well of anybody except the members of her own clique, said that he was ‘
froid, fade, et faux'
(cold, insipid, and false) and of his poetry ‘
sans les roseaux, les ruisseaux, les ormeaux et leurs rameaux il aura bien peu de choses à dire'
which might be translated ‘he would be lost without pines and vines and twining eglantines'. Diderot remarked that though his body might be in the fields his soul was in the town. All the same, he has his place among minor French poets and he became a member of the Académie Française.

He was capable of love and constancy. His affair with Mme d'Houdetot, with whom Jean-Jacques Rousseau had also been in love, lasted fifty-two years. When she and M. d'Houdetot, who had lived comfortably together, wanted to celebrate their golden wedding, Saint-Lambert flew into a rage of jealousy and forbade it. In his youth he liked to capture hearts and to break up love affairs. Women generally loved him longer than he loved them, but not Mme de Boufflers, though their liaison, while it lasted, was extremely passionate. Stanislas and his Chancellor put up with an
endless succession of infidelities, but she was at pains to keep this one from them – it was so serious.

Mme de Boufflers was the least grasping of women, she accepted fewer presents and favours than almost any other royal mistress on record, but it would have been foolish to throw away her brilliant position simply for lack of a little prudence, and she was not foolish. Besides, she was fond of her old King and loved La Galaizière. On the other hand, she and Saint-Lambert wanted more than an occasional hasty rendezvous; they liked to spend whole nights together, to go to sleep and wake up in each other's arms. This was rather difficult to arrange. Saint-Lambert was a captain in the regiment of Mme de Boufflers's brother Alexandre de Beauvau; he was often on garrison duty in the town of Lunéville but had no function in the royal household and therefore no apartment in the château. He went there to pay his court, like the other officers. Mme de Boufflers's rooms were on the ground floor, with their own entrance to the street, but comings and goings were observed by the sentry and were never a secret for very long. However, she discovered a tiny empty room between her own apartment and the chapel. She managed somehow to get a bed put into it without the whole world knowing and here she and her lover spent delicious nights. Luckily, King Stanislas dropped with sleepiness by nine and was never in bed later than ten, a habit which had long been encouraged by his mistress.

When the Court moved to Commercy, one of the King's country houses, it became more difficult for the lovers to be together. Stanislas invited his special friends there but he had an unreasonable aversion to Saint-Lambert and never asked him. Every evening a supper-party was held in Mme de Boufflers's room; Saint-Lambert was not of it. Commercy had no forgotten corners, nowhere to hide a mouse. How could they manage? Of course they did: Mme de Boufflers always got what she wanted. There was an orangery which communicated with her rooms and at its other end with the house of the village priest. M. le Curé, like everybody else, was under her charm. She arranged with him that Saint-Lambert should wait in his parlour until the King had gone to bed. When the coast was clear, Mme de Boufflers blew out a lighted candle
in her window as a signal that Saint-Lambert could now go to her through the orangery.

Alas! Mme de Boufflers was incapable of constancy. In 1747 Saint-Lambert went to the wars; when he returned he had been supplanted by a shadowy Vicomte d'Adhémar. Mme de Boufflers was finding it easier to conduct this liaison because King Stanislas rather liked d'Adhémar. Saint-Lambert suffered, and not in silence. Torrents of rhymed reproaches flowed from his pen, and his demeanour became more melancholy and romantic than ever.

Mme de Boufflers and her King had most friends and all tastes in common with the exception of Père Menou and his spiritual exercises. She believed that Paradise was here on earth, while Stanislas was pious as only a Pole can be. The Father made him tremble with his strictures, delivered from the pulpit and in the confessional, on the sin, the mortal sin, of double adultery. Stanislas would come out of Church resolved to mend his ways. The Father had another hold over him. Like everybody with intellectual pretensions Stanislas felt obliged to compose French verses; Père Menou did for him what Jordan, and sometimes Voltaire, did for Frederick, he revised his work and put it into grammatical French. To please the Father, Stanislas built a Jesuit mission at Nancy, reserving a few exquisite rooms for himself. Here he would go, from time to time, for a retreat, while M. de La Galaizière and other adorers of the Marquise took advantage of his absence. The Father would then bring him into such a penitent frame of mind that Mme de Boufflers's dismissal seemed certain. But the moment Stanislas saw her again, his resolution melted away and he became more amorous than ever. The Marquise was a jewel, not to be discarded lightly; she was beautiful, clever, and an excellent hostess, she set a brilliant tone at Lunéville, and besides all that, he loved her. In her company his fear of hell-fire seemed ridiculous, and the delights of this earth paramount. As soon as she saw that he was at her feet again, the Marquise would begin coaxing and wheedling him to send away the confessor. Well, and why not? So priest and mistress used all their respective weapons to get rid of each other, and the poor old King was tormented between the two of them. At last he had an inspiration: he would keep them both. Mme de Boufflers, easy
going, all for a quiet life, asked nothing better, but the Father never gave up his design of dislodging her. It was gradually borne in upon him that things of the spirit alone were not likely to do so, and that his best chance would be another woman. So he began to look about for a suitable rival, not so easy to find, however. She must be cheerful and amusing, beautiful and not too young, a noble Lorrainer by birth or marriage so that she would be acceptable to the aristocrats who formed the little Court.

Did it come to him in a flash one wakeful night? Of course, Mme du Châtelet. Why had he not thought of her long ago? Where was she now? At Cirey! Too good to be true. He suggested to King Stanislas that a visit from Voltaire and his celebrated friend might be very interesting. Stanislas was delighted at the idea and so was the Marquise. She had known Émilie all her life, and foresaw that she would liven up their little society. As for Voltaire, he would be an ornament to any Court. So Père Menou was hurried off to Cirey, with a royal command. Voltaire and Mme du Châtelet, no longer comfortable in their
tête-à-tête,
asked nothing better than a visit to Lunéville. It suited Voltaire very well to go and stay with the Queen's father, a move which would scotch the rumours that he had been exiled by the Queen's party at Versailles. So they abandoned the neighbours, cancelled the theatrical programme, borrowed M. du Châtelet's horses, which he had sent back from the front to have a rest, and in less time than it takes to tell they were on the road again to Lunéville.

They were royally received. The Queen of Poland had died in 1746 and Mme du Châtelet was given her apartment on the ground floor, Voltaire was on the second floor, over the King, and his rooms communicated with Émilie's by a secret staircase. Père Menou soon saw that he had made a mistake in bringing them to Lunéville. Mesdames du Châtelet and de Boufflers became inseparable, twin sisters, adoring friends. Émilie had not the shadow of a design on Stanislas. What had he to give her? In her eyes it was more glorious to be the mistress of Voltaire than of the greatest King on earth. Her rank and precedence were undisputed; she did not mind her lack of fortune; if she wanted anything it was love. The King of Poland would have been less like a new lover than an old husband and of such she already had two.

The visit began with Voltaire falling seriously ill. Stanislas was all kindness and concern. Voltaire treated himself, as usual, with bed, starvation, and tisane, and was on his feet again in a few days. He then threw himself into the production of comedies, wrote verses for all the women of the Court, and kept the party in a cheerful stir. He broadcast enthusiastic letters describing the goodness of the King. How sweet is his so-called banishment, Lunéville is an enchanted palace, with a monarch who favours the poor exile in every way.
Mérope
has been given in Voltaire's honour, he forgot himself and wept at his own tragedy. Mme du Châtelet has acted three times already in Houdart de la Mothe's
Issé.
Nevertheless, reading between the lines of his letters, one sees that something was lacking. No doubt he missed Mme
Denis, but that was not all. He missed the French Court and Louis XV.

King Stanislas was well disposed towards the things of the mind. He loved Voltaire, was neither irritated nor embarrassed by him, never snubbed him, laid himself out to please. But, he was the ex-King of Poland, not the ruler of France. The courtiers were delightful, they were not snobs; they did not care (or not much) about precedence and birth; they never thought of sending Voltaire to Coventry. But they were provincials. There was freedom of speech but nobody to exchange it with. In short, Lunéville was not Versailles. Versailles may have had many silly and regrettable features but it was the hub of the universe, the palace of the most powerful King, the seat of the most important government in the world. The power and importance were in a decline but this was not, as yet, apparent. Society there was not confined to a handful of courtiers; nearly everybody of interest and influence came sooner or later. While frivolous young aristocrats were idling away their lives in green alleys and gilded temples, on the other side of the palace Marshals of France were clattering off to the front, Ministers and Ambassadors were arriving for audiences with the King. France was governed from Versailles. Lunéville was all make-believe, the society there was too frothy to be interesting. Mme de Boufflers, as she grew older, became a great reader and said that this was because she had to escape, somehow, from the eternal chattering which went on around her.