Books: The Sages of Cirey

VOLTAIRE IN LOVE (320 pp.)—Nancy Mitford—Harper ($5).

Visitors to the chateau of Cirey came away so dumfounded that they could scarcely summon the strength to repeat everything they had seen and heard. One of them, arriving in broad daylight. claimed that he was led by a servant carrying a lantern through a succession of cavernous, shuttered rooms until a door opened into a brilliant drawing room lit by 20 candles. Here sat Emilie, Marquise du Chatelet, surrounded by scientific instruments and glittering "with diamonds like an operatic Venus." Above, "weaving spells" at the head of a secret staircase, sat "the Magician" who was Emilie's lover, the notorious M. de Voltaire. When a bell announced suppertime, the company gathered in a dining room devoid of servants, ate "exquisite" food and wine that was pushed into the room through a hatch. At the ringing of another bell, "moral and philosophical readings" began, continuing until another bell sent everyone to bed. Peace reigned until, at 4 a.m. sharp, the remorseless bell tolled anew—to announce "a poetry reading." Voltaire and his Emilie lived together with only occasional breaks for 16 astonishing years. Their uninhibited quarrels and their nonstop intellectual creativity made one of the spectacles of the 18th century—and only now has their menage had the brilliant attention it deserves. Voltaire in Love is Nancy Mitford's most searching book. On the surface it is all polish and wit; underneath it is solid history.

Triangle Squared. When François Marie Arouet (Voltaire) fled to England in 1726 (he was in trouble with the police over a challenge to a duel), he discovered a new world—Pope, Swift and the Duchess of Marlborough. He was at home in the universe of Newtonian mathematics and adored everything English. Three years later he went back to France a dedicated Newtonian ("It is he." says Author Mitford, "who preserved for us the story of Newton and the apple") and a respectful admirer of "an English author who lived 150 years ago called Shakespeare ... He was quite mad, but wrote some admirable things." Back in Paris, Voltaire fell plump into the arms of the most remarkable woman in France.

At 27, Emilie du Chatelet was soft-eyed, handsome, highly sexed—and the mother of three children. She had a fluent knowledge of Latin, Italian and English —not Spanish, because someone had told her that "the only book in that language was frivolous," i.e., Don Quixote. Her scientific and mathematical knowledge surpassed Voltaire's. Together, they were destined to change intellectual history, Voltaire by championing Newton in France, Emilie by helping to open the border to the philosophy of Germany's Leibnitz. Voltaire was high-strung, always ailing, always in hot water with the authorities; Emilie was "strong as an ox" and influential at court: the powerful Due de Richelieu had been her lover. She and Voltaire wrote to each other nearly every day, even when they were in the same house, and though Emilie took other lovers—strong passions, she said, were good for her health—Voltaire was the fixed sun of her life, and she of his.