Voltaire in Love by Nancy Mitford Page A

saw a good profit to be made. He had no wish for money troubles in addition to all hisothers and used to say that a man should live to work but not work to live. On one occasion, by a simple calculation which others had overlooked, he discovered that whoever bought up a certain percentage of a public lottery would win, in prizes, much more than the money laid out. He raised enough cash to do this. The minister of finance was furious when he realized what had happened, and tried to bring a law-suit, but he had no case against Voltaire who was perfectly in order. On another occasion he went the whole way to Lorraine from Paris to subscribe to a State loan which seemed very advantageous. When he arrived in Nancy, ill and shaken by the journey, he discovered that only native Lorrainers were eligible. He made such a song and dance that the authorities allowed his subscription on the tenuous grounds that his name, Arouet, was the same as that of the Prince de Beauvau’s castle near Nancy, Haroué. This investment trebled in a few months. Voltaire never kept all his eggs in one basket and had interests in every sort of commodity and enterprise: house property, army supplies, the Barbary trade, and so on. The Paris brothers, most powerful of all the financiers, were his friends and often put him in the way of a good thing. He had a talent for high finance and, almost as valuable, a devoted man of affairs: the Abbé Moussinot. Now that Voltaire was living in the country he wrote to Moussinot for everything he wanted from Paris. Oranges, books, diamond shoe-buckles, a carpet ten feet by ten, an enormous pot of face-cream from Provost au signe des parfums, a thermometer that will not burst in boiling water (Fahrenheit’s is better than M. de Réaumur’s), a silver watch – quick, quick, for Mme du Châtelet’s little boy, he’s ten years old, he’ll certainly break it, but he wants it – two or three fine sponges, 300 louis well packed up, no need to declare them; all these things and many more were put on the bi-weekly coach from Paris to Bar-sur-Aube, the post town for Cirey. The Abbé distributed the countless sums of money which Voltaire gave away to friends, acquaintances, and even to people he had never seen but of whom he had heard some sad story. He collected the interest due to Voltaire from his debtors; Richelieu and Guise were two very tough nuts and a great deal of persuasion had to be used on them when it was time for payment. Moussinot performed allsorts of other jobs. He was told to find some clever young man who could write all the Paris gossip once a week. He also looked out for pictures to add to Voltaire’s collection which included, at this time, works by Teniers, Tiepolo, Watteau, Lancret, Albani, Marot, and a pair of Galloches. Voltaire sometimes bought pictures purely as an investment, telling the Abbé that he had a certain sum to place and leaving the choice to him. Moussinot never let Voltaire down. He was much more than an agent, a loving and beloved friend, who could hardly be made to accept suitable remuneration for all the trouble he took.
    Mme du Champbonin now had her own room at Cirey, and came and went as it suited her. The first guest from the outside world to stay there for any length of time was a twenty-three-year-old Venetian, Algarotti. He had decided that he wished to live among eminent folk and to this end had wisely acquired a knowledge of science which opened doors to him all over Europe. His attraction for both sexes did the rest. He was now on his way to England, to study philosophy, and was writing a simplification of Newton’s theories intended for Italian women. Carlyle sees him as ‘not supremely beautiful, though much the gentleman in manners as in ruffles and ingeniously logical; rather yellow, to me, in mind as in skin and with a taint of obsolete Venetian macassar’. Anyhow, he was tenderly loved, almost regarded as a son of