And such fame, and other agencies on his behalf, having opened the way home for Voltaire, he took this sum of Thousands Sterling along with him; laid it out judiciously in some city lottery, or profitable scrip then going at Paris, which at once doubled the amount: after which he invested it in Corn-trade, Army Clothing, Barbary-trade, Commissariat Bacon-trade, all manner of well-chosen trades,--being one of the shrewdest financiers on record;--and never from that day wanted abundance of money, for one thing.
Which he judged to be extremely expedient for a literary man, especially in times of Jesuit and other tribulation. 'You have only to watch,' he would say, 'what scrips, public loans, investments in the field of agio, are offered; if you exert any judgment, it is easy to gain there: do not the stupidest of mortals gain there, by intensely attending to it?'
"Voltaire got almost nothing by his Books, which he generally had to disavow, and denounce as surreptitious supposititious scandals, when some sharp-set Book-seller, in whose way he had laid the savory article as bait, chose to risk his ears for the profit of snatching and publishing it. Next to nothing by his Books; but by his fine finance-talent otherwise, he had become possessed of ample moneys. Which were so cunningly disposed, too, that he had resources in every Country; and no conceivable combination of confiscating Jesuits and dark fanatic Official Persons could throw him out of a livelihood, whithersoever he might be forced to run.
A man that looks facts in the face; which is creditable of him.
The vulgar call it avarice and the like, as their way is: but M. de Voltaire is convinced that effects will follow causes;and that it well beseems a lonely Ishmaelite, hunting his way through the howling wildernesses and confused ravenous populations of this world, to have money in his pocket. He died with a revenue of some 7,000 pounds a year, probably as good as 20,000 pounds at present; the richest literary man ever heard of hitherto, as well as the remarkablest in some other respects. But we have to mark the second phasis of his life [in which Friedrich now sees him], and how it grew out of this first one.
"PHASIS SECOND (1728-1733).--Returning home as if quietly triumphant, with such a talent in him, and such a sanction put upon it and him by a neighboring Nation, and by all the world, Voltaire was warmly received, in his old aristocratic circles, by cultivated France generally; and now in 1728, in his thirty-second year, might begin to have definite outlooks of a sufficiently royal kind, in Literature and otherwise. Nor is he slow, far from it, to advance, to conquer and enjoy. He writes successful literature, falls in love with women of quality; encourages the indigent and humble; eclipses, and in case of need tramples down, the too proud. He elegizes poor Adrienne Lecouvreur, the Actress, --our poor friend the Comte de Saxe's female friend; who loyally emptied out her whole purse for him, 30,000 pounds in one sum, that he might try for Courland, and whether he could fall in love with her of the Swollen Cheek there; which proved impossible.
Elegizes Adrienne, we slty, and even buries her under cloud of night: ready to protect unfortunate females of merit. Especially theatrical females; having much to do in the theatre, which we perceive to be the pulpit or real preaching-place of cultivated France in those years. All manner of verse, all manner of prose, he dashes off with surprising speed and grace: showers of light spray for the moment; and always some current of graver enterprise, Siecle de Louis Quatorze or the like, going on beneath it. For he is a most diligent, swift, unresting man; and studies and learns amazingly in such a rackety existence. Victorious enough in some senses; defeat, in Literature, never visited him. His Plays, coming thick on the heels of one another, rapid brilliant pieces, are brilliantly received by the unofficial world; and ought to dethrone dull Crebillon, and the sleepy potentates of Poetry that now are.
Which in fact is their result with the public; but not yet in the highest courtly places;--a defect much to be condemned and lamented.
"Numerous enemies arise, as is natural, of an envious venomous description; this is another ever-widening shadow in the sunshine.
In fact we perceive he has, besides the inner obstacles and griefs, two classes of outward ones: There are Lions on his path and also Dogs. Lions are the Ex-Bishop of Mirepoix, and certain other dark Holy Fathers, or potent orthodox Official Persons.
These, though Voltaire does not yet declare his heterodoxy (which, indeed, is but the orthodoxy of the cultivated private circles), perceive well enough, even by the HENRIADE, and its talk of 'tolerance,' horror of 'fanaticism' and the like, what this one's 'DOXY is; and how dangerous he, not a mere mute man of quality, but a talking spirit with winged words, may be;--and they much annoy and terrify him, by their roaring in the distance.
