



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