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The divine Emilie’s forte was science and mathematics–and on these themes she wrote much, competing for prizes and winning the recognition of various learned societies. It will be seen that the man and the woman were not in competition with each other, which, perhaps, accounts, in degree, for their firm friendship.

Yet they did quarrel, too, as true lovers will, I am told. But their quarreling was all done in English, so the servants and His Inertia, the Marquis, did not know the purpose of it. It is probable that the accounts of their misunderstandings are considerably exaggerated, as the rehearsal of a tragedy by this pair of histrions would be taken by the servants for a sure-enough fight.

And they were always acting–often beginning breakfast with a “stunt.” The Madame sang well, and her little impromptu arias pleased her thin little lover immensely and he would improvise and answer in kind, and then take the part of an audience and applaud, calling loudly, “Bravo! Bravo!”

Mornings they would ride horseback through the winding woods, or else hunt for geological and botanical specimens. About all of Voltaire’s science he got from the lady and this was true of languages as well.

To a nervous, irritable and intense thinker a certain amount of solitude seems necessary. Voltaire occasionally grew weary of the delicious quiet of Civey, and the indictment against him having been quashed, he would go away to Paris or elsewhere. On these trips if he did not take Madame along she would grow furious, then lacrimose and finally submissive–with a weepy protest. If he failed to write her daily she grew hysterical. Two winters they spent together in Paris and another at Brussels.

A lawsuit involving the estate of the Marquis du Chatelet, that had been in the courts for eighty years, was pushed to a successful issue by Voltaire and Madame. Four hundred fifty thousand dollars were secured, but of this Voltaire, strangely enough, took nothing.

That the bond between Emilie and Voltaire was very firm is shown by the fact that, after they had been together ten years, he declined to leave her to accept an invitation to visit Frederick the Great at Berlin. Frederick was a married man, but his was a strictly bachelor court–for prudential reasons. Frederick and Emilie had carried on a spirited correspondence, but this was as close as he cared for her to come to him. All of his communications with females were limited to letters, and Voltaire once said that that was the reason he was called Frederick the Great.

Madame du Chatelet died when she was forty-two; Voltaire was fifty-five. For fifteen years this strange and most romantic friendship had continued, and to a degree it had worn itself out. Toward the last the lady had been exacting and dictatorial, and thinking that Voltaire had slighted her by not taking her more into his confidence, she had accepted another lover, a man ten years her junior. If she had thought to make Voltaire jealous, she had reckoned without her host–he was relieved to find her fierce supervision relaxed.

When she passed away he worked his woe up into a pretty panegyric, closed up his affairs at Civey, and left there forever.

* * * * *

So far as the government was concerned, Voltaire seems to have passed his days in accepting rewards and receiving punishments. Interdict, exile, ostracism were followed by honors, pension and office.

His one lasting love was the drama. About every two years a swirl of excitement was caused at Paris by the announcement of a new play by Voltaire. These plays seemed to appeal mostly to the nobility, the clergy and those in public office. And the object in every instance was to get even with somebody, and place some one in a ridiculous light. Innocent historical dramas were passed by the censor, and afterward it was found that in them some local bigwig was flayed without mercy. Then the play had to be withdrawn, and all printed copies were burned in public, and Voltaire would flee to Brussels or Geneva to escape summary punishment.