



Produced by Andrea Ball, Christine Bell & Marc D'Hooghe
at http://www.freeliterature.org (From images generously
made available by Internet Archive.)





VOLTAIRE'S ROMANCES

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH.

_A NEW EDITION_,

WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS.



[Illustration: M. de VOLTAIRE.]


     I choose that a story should be founded on probability, and not
     always resemble a dream. I desire to find nothing in it trivial or
     extravagant; and I desire above all, that under the appearance of
     fable there may appear some latent truth, obvious to the discerning
     eye, though it escape the observation of the vulgar.--_Voltaire._

COMPLETE IN ONE VOLUME.


NEW YORK:

PUBLISHED BY PETER ECKLER,

35 FULTON STREET.

1889.



[Illustration: Ancient writing implements, Pompeii.]


PUBLISHER'S PREFACE


Voltaire wrote what the people thought, and consequently his writings
were universally read. He wittily ridiculed established abuses, and
keenly satirized venerable absurdities. For this he was consigned to the
Bastile, and this distinction served to increase his popularity and
extend his influence. He was thus enabled to cope successfully with the
papal hierarchy, and laugh at the murmurs of the Vatican. The struggle
commenced in his youth, and continued till his death. It was a struggle
of light against darkness--of freedom against tyranny; and it ended in
the triumph of truth over error and of toleration over bigotry.

Educated by the Jesuits, he early learned their methods, and his great
ability enabled him to circumvent their wiles. The ceremonious
presentation of his tragedy of _Mahomet_[1] to Pope Benedict XIV., is an
example of his daring audacity;--his success with the "head of the
church" shows his intellectual superiority--whilst the gracious reply of
"his Holiness" fitly illustrates the pontiff's vanity. From priest to
bishop, from cardinal to pope, all felt his intellectual power and all
dreaded his merciless satire.

[Illustration: Voltaire at seventy.]

He was famous as poet, dramatist, historian, and philosopher. An
experienced courtier and polished writer, he gracefully and politely
conquered his clerical opponents, and with courteous irony overthrew his
literary critics. From his demeanor you could not judge of his thoughts
or intentions, and while listening to his compliments, you instinctively
dreaded his sarcasms. But venture to approach this grand seigneur, this
keen man of the world, this intellectual giant, and plead in favor of
human justice--appeal to his magnanimity and love of toleration--and you
then had no cause to question his earnestness, no reason to doubt his
sincerity. His blood boiled, says Macaulay,[2] at the sight of cruelty
and injustice, and in an age of religious persecution, judicial torture,
and arbitrary imprisonment, he made manful war, with every faculty he
possessed, on what he considered as abuses; and on many signal
occasions, placed himself gallantly between the powerful and the
oppressed. "When an innocent man was broken on the wheel at Toulouse,
when a youth, guilty only of an indiscretion, was beheaded at Abbeville,
when a brave officer, borne down by public injustice, was dragged, with
a gag in his mouth, to die on the Place de Greve, a voice instantly went
forth from the banks of Lake Leman, which made itself heard from Moscow
to Cadiz, and which sentenced the unjust judges to the contempt and
detestation of all Europe."

"None can read these stories of the horrible religious bigotry of the
day," says Alex. A. Knox, in _The Nineteenth Century_,[3] "without
feeling for Voltaire reverence and respect."

The following extract from the above named Review will explain the
religious cruelty to which Macaulay refers:

     "Jean Calas, a Protestant, kept a small shop in Toulouse. He had a
     scape-grace of a son, Marc Antoine by name, who hanged himself in
     his father's shop. The poor father and mother were up stairs at the
     time, at supper, in company with the second son. The evidence was
     so clear that a coroner's jury at a public-house would not have
     turned round upon it. The priests and the priest party got hold of
     it, and turned it into a religious crime. The Protestant, or
     Huguenot parents were charged with murdering their son for fear he
     should turn Catholic. The body was taken to the Hotel de Ville, and
     then escorted by priests to the cathedral. The religious
     orders--White Penitents and others--held solemn ceremonies for the
     repose of Marc Antoine's soul. The churches resounded with the
     exhortations of the priests, informing the people what evidence was
     required to procure the condemnation of the Calas, and directing
     them to come forward as witnesses. Upon such assumptions as these
     horrible people could devise, the poor old man was stretched till
     his limbs were torn out of the sockets. He was then submitted to
     the _question extraordinaire_. This consisted in pouring water into
     his mouth from a horn till his body was swollen to twice its size.
     The man had been drowned a hundred times over, but he was still
     alive. He was then carried to the scaffold and his limbs were
     broken with an iron bar, and he was left for two hours to die. He
     did not then die, and so the executioner strangled him at last; but
     he died without confessing his crime. The man was innocent; he had
     no confession to make. The poor creature by his unutterable agony
     thus saved the lives of his wife and family, all as innocent as
     himself. Two daughters were thrust into a convent: a son shammed
     conversion to Catholicism and was released. The servant escaped
     into a convent. The property of the family was confiscated. The
     poor mother slipped away unseen. Finally, another son, who had been
     apprenticed to a watchmaker of Nismes, escaped to Geneva. This is a
     picture of France in the eighteenth century.

     "Voltaire took poor young Calas into his family. He tried at once
     to interest the Cardinal de Bernis, the Duc de Choiseul, and others
     in this horrible story. He found for the widow a comfortable
     retreat at Paris; he employed the best lawyers he could find to
     give practical form to the business; he sent the daughters to join
     the mother. He paid all the expenses out of his own pocket. He
     reached the Chancellor; he made his appeal to Europe. He employed a
     clever young advocate M. Elie de Beaumont, to conduct the cast. The
     Queen of England, Frederick the Great, Catharine of Russia, were
     induced by Voltaire to help the Calas.

     "The case of the Sirvens was well-nigh as bad as that of the Calas.
     Sirven lived with his wife and three daughters, all Protestants,
     near Toulouse. The story is so illustrative of the France of the
     eighteenth century, and of what Voltaire was about, that it
     deserves a few lines. Sirven's housekeeper, a Roman Catholic, with
     the assent of the Bishop of Castres, spirited away the youngest
     daughter, and placed her in a convent of the Black Ladies with a
     view to her conversion. She returned to her parents in a state of
     insanity, her body covered with the marks of the whip. She never
     recovered from the cruelties she had endured at the convent. One
     day, when her father was absent on his professional duties, she
     threw herself into a well, at the bottom of which she was found
     drowned. It was obvious to the authorities that the parents had
     murdered their child because she wished to become a Roman Catholic.
     They most wisely did not appear, and were sentenced to be hanged
     when they could be caught. In their flight the married daughter
     gave premature birth to a child; and Madame Sirven died in despair.
     It took Voltaire ten years to get this abominable sentence
     reversed, and to turn wrong into right.

     "A Protestant gentleman, M. Espinasse, had been condemned to the
     galleys for life and his estate confiscated because he had given
     supper and lodging to a Protestant clergyman. He served
     twenty-three years; but in 1763 Voltaire obtained his release, and
     ultimately obtained back for the family a portion of their
     property.

     "The Chevalier de la Barre was another victim. Some person or
     persons unknown had hacked with a knife a wooden crucifix which
     stood on a bridge at Abbeville over the Somme. The same night a
     crucifix on one of the cemeteries was bespattered with mud. The
     bishop of the place set to work to stir up excitement, praying for
     punishment 'on those who had rendered themselves worthy of the
     severest punishment known to the world's law.' Young De la Barre
     was arrested. The evidence against him was that he, with certain
     companions, had been known to pass within thirty yards of a
     procession bearing the Sacrament without taking off their hats. It
     was further proved in evidence that he and his friends had sung
     certain objectionable songs, and that not only some novels had been
     found in his rooms, but also two small volumes of Voltaire's
     _Dictionnaire Philosophique_. On this evidence he was sentenced to
     be subjected to the torture, ordinary and extraordinary; to have
     his tongue torn out by the roots with pincers of iron, to have his
     right hand cut off at the door of the principal church at
     Abbeville, to be drawn in a cart to the market-place, and there to
     be burned to death by a slow fire. The sentence was mitigated so
     far that he was allowed to be beheaded before he was burned. This
     sentence was carried out on the 1st of July, 1766. These are
     samples of what was occurring in France. Was there not enough to
     rouse indignation to fever-heat?

     "When one reads such stories, even at this distance of time, he
     understands the French Revolution and Voltaire."

In all his writings Voltaire claimed to be religious, and was as ready
to oppose with his sarcasms the agnostic or atheist, as the catholic. In
speaking of Tully as a doubter, he makes Pococurante exclaim: "I once
had some liking for his philosophical works; but when I found he
doubted of everything, I thought I knew as much as himself, and had no
need of a guide to learn ignorance."

But while Voltaire was a Theist--as Lord Brougham says,[4] "without any
hesitation or any intermission, a Theist"--and was a firm believer in
the existence of a Creator and ruler of the universe,--he was also an
avowed opponent of Catholicism; and when not engaged in the production
of works which have added dignity to the literature of France, his life
was passed in open warfare with the church of Rome. To this church he
was as sincerely opposed as Martin Luther, and although his methods of
attack and opposition differed entirely from that of the great German
reformer, who shall say that his efforts have not proved even more
successful? Macaulay has shown[5] that no Catholic nation has become
Protestant since the period of the Reformation; while on the other hand,
no nation once Protestant, has returned to Catholicism. Each party has
retained its own territory, and the only gain has been in favor of
religious freedom. The sincere and earnest appeals of Luther, which
convulsed Germany, produced but little or no effect on the versatile
mind of France. But the brilliant writings of Voltaire were welcomed by
his countrymen, and have not been without their influence on French
civilization. And although France has not been claimed as a protestant
nation, yet freethinkers have there attained great power and influence,
whilst Germany, once the stronghold of Protestantism, is now the chosen
and hospitable home of freethought.

Voltaire in his day was an acknowledged leader of public opinion. His
thoughts engrossed the attention of the world. "Whole nations," says
Quinet,[6] "emulously repeat every syllable that falls from his pen:"
and the lapse of time has but confirmed the verdict of his
cotemporaries, that of all the great reformers, his writings are the
most useful to mankind.

"If we judge of men by what they have _done_" says Lamartine,[7] "then
Voltaire is incontestably the greatest writer of modern Europe. No one
has caused, through the powerful influence of his genius alone, and the
perseverance of his will, so great a commotion in the minds of men; his
pen aroused a world, and has shaken a far mightier empire than that of
Charlemagne, the European empire of a theocracy. His genius was not
_force_ but _light_. Heaven had destined him not to destroy but to
illuminate, and wherever he trod light followed him, for reason (which
is _light_) had destined him to be first her poet, then her apostle, and
lastly her idol."

At seventeen years of age Voltaire wrote _Oedipus_, at eighty-three he
wrote _Irene_. During the intervening years he enriched the world of
thought with seventy volumes of irresistible humor--of brilliant and
caustic wit,--in truth, a mine of literary gems undimmed with
mediocrity's prosy dullness. In fact, it was this quality of humor and
mirth that made Voltaire's writings so distasteful to his opponents--so
welcome to mankind. Other writers, who went far beyond Voltaire, were
not considered dangerous, because they were never read. They were
sincere and learned, but tedious and austere. Their disbelief was
condoned by its metaphysical obscurity--their skepticism was redeemed by
its unmitigated dullness. But with Voltaire the case was very different.
His writings were read and appreciated by old or young, grave or gay,
sage or sophist, prince or peasant. To answer him was impossible--to
abuse him was thought commendable.

"Napoleon, during fifteen years