Books: The Sages of Cirey

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Thorough Consolation. Convinced that she would die in childbirth, Emilie coolly set her affairs in order, devoted most of her pregnancy to finishing her magnum opus, a translation from the Latin of Newton's Principia Mathematica. Haggard of face, soon enormous of body, Emilie worked a solid 16 hours daily: she was at her desk when the baby appeared. The child was "put on a large book'' while the philosopher-mother "arranged some papers and went to bed" ("It is usual to do so," said Voltaire). Several days later, with both Voltaire and Saint-Lambert happy at her bedside, she drank a "large quantity" of iced fluid and next day had difficulty in breathing. Then she was dead.

Voltaire staggered from her room, "fell, rolled down the [terrace] steps and began beating his head on the stone pavement." Saint-Lambert ran after him and lifted him up. Seeing Saint-Lambert through his tears, Voltaire said, gently and sadly: "Ah, my friend, it is you who have killed her for me." Then suddenly he added in a terrible voice: "Eh! Mon Dieu, Monsieur, what gave you the idea of getting her with child?" Voltaire was so stricken that he briefly toyed with the notion of entering a monastery. Generously, he thought about the cuckold husband who had not been on the scene for years. "I am not leaving Monsieur du Chastellet in our mutual sorrow," Voltaire wrote to his niece. "From Cirey I shall come to Paris to embrace you and to seek, in you, my one consolation."

The consolation lasted until Voltaire's death. 29 years later. Of his love for Emilie, he spoke philosophically: "I replaced Richelieu, Saint-Lambert has driven me out. It is the natural order of things, one nail knocks out another, and so it is, in this world."