The Sages of Cirey

VOLTAIRE IN LOVE (320 pp.)--Nancy Mitford--Harper ($5).

Visitors to the chateau of Cirey came away so dumfounded that they could scarcely summon the strength to repeat everything they had seen and heard. One of them, arriving in broad daylight. claimed that he was led by a servant carrying a lantern through a succession of cavernous, shuttered rooms until a door opened into a brilliant drawing room lit by 20 candles. Here sat Emilie, Marquise du Chatelet, surrounded by scientific instruments and glittering "with diamonds like an operatic Venus." Above, "weaving spells" at the head of a secret staircase, sat "the Magician" who was Emilie's lover, the notorious M. de Voltaire. When a bell announced suppertime, the company gathered in a dining room devoid of servants, ate "exquisite" food and wine that was pushed into the room through a hatch. At the ringing of another bell, "moral and philosophical readings" began, continuing until another bell sent everyone to bed. Peace reigned until, at 4 a.m. sharp, the remorseless bell tolled anew--to announce "a poetry reading." Voltaire and his Emilie lived together with only occasional breaks for 16 astonishing years. Their uninhibited quarrels and their nonstop intellectual creativity made one of the spectacles of the 18th century--and only now has their menage had the brilliant attention it deserves. Voltaire in Love is Nancy Mitford's most searching book. On the surface it is all polish and wit; underneath it is solid history.

Triangle Squared. When Franc,ois Marie Arouet (Voltaire) fled to England in 1726 (he was in trouble with the police over a challenge to a duel), he discovered a new world--Pope, Swift and the Duchess of Marlborough. He was at home in the universe of Newtonian mathematics and adored everything English. Three years later he went back to France a dedicated Newtonian ("It is he." says Author Mitford, "who preserved for us the story of Newton and the apple") and a respectful admirer of "an English author who lived 150 years ago called Shakespeare ... He was quite mad, but wrote some admirable things." Back in Paris, Voltaire fell plump into the arms of the most remarkable woman in France.

At 27, Emilie du Chatelet was soft-eyed, handsome, highly sexed--and the mother of three children. She had a fluent knowledge of Latin, Italian and English --not Spanish, because someone had told her that "the only book in that language was frivolous," i.e., Don Quixote. Her scientific and mathematical knowledge surpassed Voltaire's. Together, they were destined to change intellectual history, Voltaire by championing Newton in France, Emilie by helping to open the border to the philosophy of Germany's Leibnitz. Voltaire was high-strung, always ailing, always in hot water with the authorities; Emilie was "strong as an ox" and influential at court: the powerful Due de Richelieu had been her lover. She and Voltaire wrote to each other nearly every day, even when they were in the same house, and though Emilie took other lovers--strong passions, she said, were good for her health--Voltaire was the fixed sun of her life, and she of his.

He was rich, not from his plays and histories but because he was a shrewd investor who "would rise from a sick-bed and travel across France, if he saw a good profit to be made." Chateau Cirey in Champagne was tumbledown; to restore it, Voltaire put his credit at the disposal of Emilie's husband--who, in turn, put his wife and Chateau at the disposal of Voltaire. History does not show a more foursquare example of the eternal triangle.

People came from all over Europe to stare at "the two philosophers.'' Said one visitor: "The voluptuous disorder which reigns in that house makes me regard it as a terrestrial paradise." The philosopher-lovers enlisted the whole village for amateur theatricals, went for picnics "followed by a second carriage full of books." Guests were regaled with readings from Voltaire's embattled works (especially La Pucelle, his scandalous extravaganza on Joan of Arc) and hastened back to Versailles to repeat everything they could remember.

Expensive Jester. Voltaire had been in the Bastille twice, and though the governor had made him quite comfortable, Voltaire had insisted that he must not be arrested again without plenty of notice. The court of Prussia's Frederick the Great was open to Voltaire as a refuge. But it consisted, says Author Mitford tartly, "of middle-class intellectuals, cosmopolitan Sodomites and Prussian soldiers"; moreover, jealous Emilie detested Frederick for trying to lure her lover to the Prussian court. Frederick's efforts to do so make some of the funniest sections of the book. Luckily for Emilie. monarch and mocker could not always hit it off--though Voltaire, in his way, was a just man and never wearied of saying "what a miracle [it was] that this son of a crowned ogre, brought up among animals, should have such a great love of French civilization." In long, nattering letters to the King, Voltaire compared Frederick to Marcus Aurelius, Horace, Hercules and Prometheus, among others; but he made savage fun of him behind his back. "As Court Jesters go, this one is expensive," said Frederick coldly. So Voltaire returned to Emilie--only to tell her that "he was now too old (forty-six) to make love."

In fact, Voltaire soon started a passionate affair with his niece, Mme. Denis, 32. He kept it so secret that it was only found out a few years ago. when a trove of his letters to her came to light. Both Voltaire and Emilie were getting temporarily bored with one another, but, as Voltaire explained, it was necessary for the sake of appearances to maintain one of France's most famous love affairs--otherwise, what would people say? And so the two philosophers remained close--until Emilie became pregnant, at the age of 42 (much too old, by the standards of her day), by the handsome Marquis de Saint-Lambert.

Thorough Consolation. Convinced that she would die in childbirth, Emilie coolly set her affairs in order, devoted most of her pregnancy to finishing her magnum opus, a translation from the Latin of Newton's Principia Mathematica. Haggard of face, soon enormous of body, Emilie worked a solid 16 hours daily: she was at her desk when the baby appeared. The child was "put on a large book'' while the philosopher-mother "arranged some papers and went to bed" ("It is usual to do so," said Voltaire). Several days later, with both Voltaire and Saint-Lambert happy at her bedside, she drank a "large quantity" of iced fluid and next day had difficulty in breathing. Then she was dead.

Voltaire staggered from her room, "fell, rolled down the [terrace] steps and began beating his head on the stone pavement." Saint-Lambert ran after him and lifted him up. Seeing Saint-Lambert through his tears, Voltaire said, gently and sadly: "Ah, my friend, it is you who have killed her for me." Then suddenly he added in a terrible voice: "Eh! Mon Dieu, Monsieur, what gave you the idea of getting her with child?" Voltaire was so stricken that he briefly toyed with the notion of entering a monastery. Generously, he thought about the cuckold husband who had not been on the scene for years. "I am not leaving Monsieur du Chastellet in our mutual sorrow," Voltaire wrote to his niece. "From Cirey I shall come to Paris to embrace you and to seek, in you, my one consolation."

The consolation lasted until Voltaire's death. 29 years later. Of his love for Emilie, he spoke philosophically: "I replaced Richelieu, Saint-Lambert has driven me out. It is the natural order of things, one nail knocks out another, and so it is, in this world."

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