Passionate Minds

by David Bodanis

  Instead, to Menou's mortification, it was Catherine and Emilie who became fast friends. Although Emilie was renowned in scientific circles and received awards from foreign academies, she'd always had a healthy appetite for earthly pleasures, and in Catherine she recognized a kindred spirit. There was a popular doggerel that Catherine modified and proposed for the epitaph on her own tomb:

  Here within this peace profound

  a most genteel woman rests

  Who took her pleasure while on earth

  as all her lovers can attest.

  The two women began gossiping about mutual acquaintances, and dressed as matching sultan and Turk for a masked ball, and in general showed no sign whatsoever of competing for the same lover.

  The king was happy, for at his age he experienced only fear at the thought he might have to satisfy a second mistress (for no one who'd known the wondrous Catherine was going to drop her as the first one). What he wanted from his new guests was something very different. He'd heard about the massively popular new play that had been performed at Sceaux—like everyone in the small provincial courts that France was dotted with, he followed Parisian gossip with desperation— and now he had the chance of getting its creators to direct the same roles here.

  Voltaire loved that. Could Zadig himself have had a greater transformation than to escape from the desolation of the Honey Bee's tower to the glory of Stanislas's luxurious court? They performed the Sceaux plays, which were so well received here that they performed them again; Voltaire even let himself be persuaded to bring out his other old manuscripts and let the Lunéville court perform them as well.

  Through it all, Emilie was flourishing. She starred in one show after another, carrying the singing lead in Destouches and La Motte's opera Issé more beautifully than she'd ever done before. She and Voltaire both realized that their physical relationship was not going to start again—the way they'd hurt each other in the Versailles years was too much to overcome—but Emilie's exuberance here reminded Voltaire of what he'd always loved about her. From their friendship, he began to write little odes to her again.

  Everyone admired the two of them. There was plenty of opportunity, for Stanislas always went to bed by 10 p.m., and once he was asleep, Catherine opened up her rooms for a livelier group to meet. The impossible Madame de Graffigny had long since moved to Paris, but several of her friends, who'd hung on every word of her letters during her breathless visit to Cirey in 1738, were still at the Lunéville court. Now they had the chance to lionize Voltaire and Emilie in person, and so they crowded around.

  One young poet in those gatherings, Jean-François, the marquis de Saint-Lambert, was especially attractive for Voltaire. His family's seat had been in an isolated hamlet, and from his teenage years he had planned to be a poet, even admitting in a note to an older admirer when he was eighteen that, “yes, despite my youth, and I'm sure my weak talents, I'm going to let out my Muse. I know it's insolent, but that's the beauty of my plan!”

  Voltaire had met him briefly then, and had been struck by the youngster's poetry. Now, seeing how his writing had matured, as well as seeing the confidence and dry wit this healthy young man had developed, he liked him even more. The fact that there were rumors that Saint-Lambert had managed to bed Catherine herself—with nothing more to offer than his charm and quick wit—was another mark in his favor. Saint-Lambert in turn worshiped Voltaire, as the hero he'd always wished to be.

  Despite the attention and admirers, though, after barely a month Voltaire was feeling ready to go back. He'd made his point to anyone watching from Versailles that the queen's own father was happy to have him as an honored visitor, but even Voltaire had a level, albeit an elevated one, beyond which endless attention began to pale. But when he suggested to Emilie that they leave Lunéville and return to Cirey or Paris, she barely seemed to register it. Surely, she suggested, they could stay a bit longer.

  Voltaire was bemused, and wrote in absolute secrecy as always to Marie-Louise in Paris, with whom he was continuing his on-again offagain affair: “My dear child, I don't know when I'll return. I'm here without my cozy slippers, or—what's worse—without my books. Perhaps we'll leave in three or four days, perhaps in two weeks… Life in Lunéville is still charming—but ah, nothing is as charming as life with you, V.”

  The delay meant more plays, and then, when even that got tiring, more tours that Stanislas led around his miniature kingdom, proudly pointing out his new grottoes and water jets and canals. This usually excited visitors from rural Lorraine tremendously, for they were nearperfect replicas of what could be found at Louis XV's Versailles. Yet since Voltaire had just suffered several years stuck in the grubby reality of that court, he found this small-scale copy less than compelling. He made polite noises, but truly was ready to go. When he insisted to Emilie, she seemed to agree. Yet then, to Marie-Louise:

  At Lunéville, 3 April [1748] My dear child, I've already forwarded my baggage; I suspect it's in Paris by now. But we've had a further delay, for Madame de Boufflers [Catherine] seems to be experiencing a female indisposition. With her raised temperature we can't abandon her. I've absolutely no idea when we'll be able to leave….

  V

  The only consolation was that Emilie was even more glowing than before. She'd often been tense about getting enough time for her work, yet now, when Voltaire would stroll through her rooms, he could see that her Newton papers were stacked to one side and not messily strewn about, as when she was working at full tilt. Something about the easy life at Lunéville was relaxing her. It was puzzling, actually. Why wouldn't she be working at this physics she loved, Voltaire wondered, now that she had so much time?

  23

  Saint-Lambert

  LUNéVILLE, 1748

  She was in love: deliriously, wonderfully, inescapably. It was SaintLambert, of course—she'd eyed him from the very beginning, and found something about his confident eagerness irresistible. It helped that he'd grown into a strapping man, and, having just returned to Lunéville from several years in the cavalry—much as with Maupertuis a decade earlier—he had the gentleness that often comes from being physically confident.

  Their affair had begun at a party that one of Catherine's friends had given (“If I hadn't gone up to you and spoken first, we'd never have started,” Emilie wrote), and then had continued with walks, rides, and soon the first snatched nights together. It had been hard to make the arrangements at first—everything had to be kept private, for Lunéville was crowded with gossip-ready courtiers—but Emilie had noted a large harp that was kept in one of the king's public rooms, which anyone might walk past. It was only used for occasional concerts, but it was so well carved that it would be natural for interested visitors to pause in front of it, as if examining the woodwork or strings.

  That's where she and Saint-Lambert left their first notes. Emilie would ink one on a small lace-edged card, fold it with a blue or pink ribbon around it, and then ever so casually, while strolling through the palace—but checking that no one was too close—leave it in the harp. Saint-Lambert, strolling a little later, would pass by the harp and collect it, leaving one of his own in return.

  All of his are lost, but several of Emilie's survive, half crumbled and yellowed from the two centuries that have passed:

  It's a beautiful day out, but I can't do anything without you! Let's go and feed bread to the swans. We can ride out on horseback.

  You whispered such wonderful things to me last night. You've conquered my heart, you know.

  I'm such a lazy girl. When I wake up, all I do is think of you. Come over as soon as you can, will you? I… think we can stay in today.

  A few years earlier, in the “Happiness” manuscript that she'd worked on when everything was falling apart with Voltaire, she'd written, with calm logic, that it was ridiculous to think that an intelligent woman needed a man to be happy; that even if there were pleasures such a relation could bring, no one who'd grown old—she gave the age of thirty as the cutoff—could f
eel them with the full intensity of the young. But that had been written before Saint-Lambert—and he was the most devoted of lovers. He described waking in the morning:

  How wonderful to sense you beside me Bare, uncovered naked in the fresh dawn light.

  I open the shutters and you stretch your arms to me I seek your beautiful eyes I press my lips to yours.

  You breathe faster.

  And when you cry out you barely hear me when I whisper what I feel

  When I whisper how I adore you

  They helped each other, as all lovers must. She was given the confidence that she was worthy of love; he found that this famous, internationally respected woman thought him worth loving as well. They exchanged lockets; they found they'd read many of the same books— Montaigne and Virgil, Dryden and Hutcheson. At night, when it was safe, they would sometimes hold hands while strolling in the darkened grounds; once this led to her tumbling into a ditch and scraping her leg, which required a quick cover story when she got back—and as a result strengthened their bond.

  She couldn't share the technicalities of her physics, but he'd always loved the night sky, and she no doubt told him what she understood of how the stars worked. Cautiously—for he'd been keeping it private for many years—he confided that he dreamed of writing a great poem on nature, with a series of verses on each season. It was a popular theme, as with Vivaldi's Four Seasons just twenty years before (and would burst into popular attention even more, with Jean-Jacques Rousseau's writings just a few years later). She'd already run into Rousseau in Paris, where he was still just an irritable minor music composer, and she probably sensed that a new, more personally emotive tone was developing. It helped draw her to her young poet here, with his confident reading of the latest cultural moods.

  Saint-Lambert might have felt their time was infinite, but she was older and knew it would be different. Even though Saint-Lambert would have assured her that his affair with Catherine was over, Emilie understood that Catherine was the sort of woman who depended entirely on beauty and sexual attraction to survive. She would always view attractive males in the court as her potential catch, not to be taken without permission.

  My sweet, it's not enough to love each other, and to say it a hundred times a day. We have to be as discreet as possible. Voltaire's only going to be a bit jealous when he finds out about us, but Catherine will be furious. And she will of course: it's just a matter of time.

  Emilie tried to avoid the worst of the future upsets by deciding to break the news to Stanislas before he heard it from anyone else. Once she even got so far as telling him before dinner that there was something very important she wanted to speak to him about, and when he said (as she recounted in a letter that night), “Go ahead, my dear,” she whispered that it was too personal, and she needed to be alone with him after. But when the meal was over she couldn't bring herself to raise it, and just put off the appointment.

  Soon Catherine did work out what was happening, but instead of being angry, as Emilie feared, she seemed only too glad to help. (Voltaire was so busy directing their plays that he still didn't suspect anything.) For Stanislas knew that Catherine had been involved with Saint-Lambert the year before. When Catherine let Emilie go ahead, it was a clear signal to Stanislas that he no longer had to worry about the good-looking young Saint-Lambert threatening to take the affection of his chief mistress.

  As a result, Catherine gave Emilie and Saint-Lambert the keys to a hidden bedroom, reachable from near the main palace, and there the two lovers had an even safer place to meet. Emilie still suspected that Catherine's encouraging mood wouldn't last, but she did have to admit everything so far had been easier than she'd anticipated so far.

  By mid-May the excuses to Voltaire were getting so implausible, however, that Emilie had to give in, and told him it was about time they went to Paris after all. (Everyone expected her to be there to supervise the court case lingering up in Brussels.) Even then the loyal Catherine seemed more than willing to help her new friend, making sure that Voltaire was kept behind in Lunéville on important “theatrical matters” for a while, so that Emilie could spend several days alone with Saint-Lambert in the nearby city of Nancy.

  It was their best time. Saint-Lambert's mother and sister were in the city, and he offended them greatly by not bothering to see them, but he didn't care: he had eyes, heart, only for Emilie. She couldn't resist. “I used to make resolutions that I wouldn't fall in love,” she wrote to him immediately afterward. “But that's finally over now…I had no idea I could love anyone so much.”

  From Nancy she joined Voltaire in Paris, but how could she stay away from Saint-Lambert now? Just eight days after arriving in Paris, the ever-equable Longchamp wrote:

  Madame du Châtelet has convinced M. de Voltaire to return to Lunéville immediately (where I must say she seemed exceptionally happy, during our somewhat extended excursion there previously). I have been engaged to arrange for driving the horses with such rapidity that we shall not have to stop at any point along the way. In consequence of this decision, it will fall to my services to provision the carriage with all the sustenance we shall require for this unexpected journey.

  Voltaire didn't mind leaving again at such short notice, for he was going through certain difficult times with Marie-Louise. “I will,” he'd been forced to write her after one rather embarrassing evening, “bring you my member, even if it is somewhat flaccid…. I know you won't mind.” He wanted time out to avoid further embarrassment.

  There were adventures along the way, and at one point when they did stop after all, for a simple bowl of soup at a roadside inn, the hostess brought out an elegant tray and a porcelain serving dish, all under a silver cover. It seemed a sign of great politeness, until Longchamp went to pay and was told, abruptly, that it would cost one pure gold louis—the equivalent of several hundred dollars today. Voltaire stepped down from the carriage and began to reason with the landlady, explaining that truly it was shortsighted to try this, for of course he would tell everyone else who took this road, and she would end up losing so much business that her paltry profit from this one encounter would not be worth it. In good innkeeper fashion, she replied to this forensic rebuttal by gesturing for all the other tradesmen in this town, Châlons-sur-Marne, to leave their shops and surround the visitors. Longchamp remembered:

  In but five or six minutes a substantial and most uncivilized group was around us, raising a striking clamor, and in lieu of reasoned discourse, was engaged—if I might summarize the gist—in declaring that the landlady was right. M. de Voltaire saw that he was unlikely to prevail in continued discourse, and expressed to me his opinion that we might find it wise to “fall back,” and indeed, without excessive delay, abandon our position. It fell to me to pay the insufferable innkeeper, before we were again on our way.

  When they arrived in Lunéville, Saint-Lambert had a bad cold. Emilie had spent over a decade dealing with Voltaire's absurd malingering, so this was nirvana: a healthy man who would soon be cured. She sent him tea and broth to sip (“take it very hot, but only small amounts to start”); she found chicken wings for him to eat, and assembled plenty of their favorite books to read. She sat in his room—with others around for propriety—and made sure his pillows were plumped, and the ventilation was right, and the doctors weren't bleeding him too often. Since he couldn't collect her letters from the harp, he brought his trusted valet Antoine in on their secret, to carry the sealed notes.

  On one of Antoine's first missions she sent back: “You know, I could almost fall in love with Antoine, just for carrying me your words. I can't write back now—too many people around—but you've never been more tender, my love. Let's talk more tonight.” While SaintLambert was still ill, she'd often stay and just watch him sleep; but when he got better, they went back to constant, regular lovemaking (“In our love,” she wrote, “there's no such word as enough”). She'd already, quietly in a letter, told him of her plans—“I'd like to spend the rest of my life with you, either
at Lunéville, or at Cirey”—and he'd responded with the affection they both craved.

  By August Voltaire really did have to get back for rehearsals of his new play, Sémiramis. Emilie was at the resort town of Plombières, where she was accompanying an oddly moody Catherine for a few days. When a letter arrived addressed to Catherine—but clearly in SaintLambert's handwriting—Catherine opened it, read it, and then made a point of tearing it into little pieces. She said nothing about what was in it, and Emilie wasn't going to ask—clearly it was innocuous, and Catherine was trying to make her jealous. But a day later, a Thursday in late August, yet another letter for Catherine arrived from SaintLambert. This one, however, wasn't in its own envelope. It was inside a letter that Saint-Lambert had sent to Emilie.

  By itself that wasn't too odd, for postal couriers were so expensive that friends would often share envelopes and use each other to pass on letters. But the note to Catherine wasn't sealed. Emilie couldn't resist, and opened it.

  24

  Collapse

  LUNéVILLE, 1748

  It was a love letter. Saint-Lambert had written to Catherine that he missed her, that he loved her madly, that he'd “never cease to adore her.”

  Emilie was beside herself. “What do you mean by this?” she immediately wrote back to him.

  You took my trust, and yet you wrote Catherine so that I would see it. You've deceived me.

  I'm not going to let myself believe that you love her. If I believed that, I'd have to believe that you're a monster of deception and duplicity. You probably thought you needed to write like that to Catherine to flatter her and keep your friendship. Well, be brave enough to lose that friendship. Lovers don't go around telling other people that they “love them madly,” that they “adore” them. Or at least, my lovers don't.