Permission to return to France was granted to Voltaire in 172S. 1 Mil 1732 he resided in Paris, and it is not too much to say that all that he did during this period bears witness to the deep in fluence exerted upon him by his stay in England. His chief works during these active years were dramatic. The tragedies of Brutus (1730), Zaire 117321, and 8e'miramis I 174S) show the influence of Shakespeare. Zaire beim', to a certain ex tent. an adaptation of the theme of Othello to the French stage. Voltaire wrote also a series of letters, very likely based upon actual letters sent by him to his friend Tiariot dur ing hi- stay in England. and tending to make the intellectual life of England known to the French public, and he composed a llistoire (lc Cho s eoi do Suille, the elements of which were received by Voltaire from the Swedish Ambassador to England. The publication of the letters just mentioned forms one of the most curi ous in Voltaire's career. After having had them printed, he feared the effect of their pub lication. l le therefor decided to defer the pub lication of the work, at least in French. and it appeared first in England, in ;in English transla tion entitled Li tio-s Concerning the English Ya lion (1731). A spurious edition of the French version. however, due to the purloining of some of the volumes printed by order of Voltaire, soon found its way to the publie, and brought about a wrangle between the author and his intended publisher. dore. There was eV danger of Voltaire's icing sent for the third time to the Bastille. This was averted only by his elearlv demonstrating that lie had had nothing., to do with the publient ion of the work. It is now known as Let tres pbilosopiliqurs, and is considered not far from the first of what may be called Volta ire's revolnt iona ry works. They t ouch upon various subjects as to which he thought the French sorely needed enlightenment: the system of religious toleration followed in England; the guarantees for individual freedom enjoyed by British subjects; liberty of speech and of the press; the political life manifested in the exist ence of a free Parliament ; the esteem in which literary men were held; a literature unknown to France and one which gloried in the names of Shakespeare and Atilton; the scientific and philo sophic labors of Newton and Locke, destined soon to supplant in the minds of Frenchmen the the ories of the illustrious Descartes; the practice of inoculation against smallpox, etc. 'Few works ever published contain so much matter as these letters, which led every Frenchman who read them to think about the conditions under which Ile was compelled to live and to question whether the French political and social system was as perfect as it had been held to be by the mem of the preceding century.
A new period now began in Voltaire's life, owing to his peculiar association with a woman of high aristocratic rank, Madame du Chatelet, with whom, by the strange moral code then ac cepted ill high French society, he was permitted to live in the closest intimacy until her death in 1749, without even bringing about a break be tween her and her husband. These years were spent mostly at Madame du Chatelet's château at Cirey on the boundaries between Champagne and Lorraine. Voltaire was then wealthy, having been enriched by several speculations, some of them of a rather dubious character, during the years just preceding, and this improvement in his fortune was manifested by the style of the life thenceforth led by him. His years in Cirey
in companionship with a woman of high intel lectual gifts and scientific attainments, to whom the French were indebted for the first translation in their language of Newton's Princi pia, were years of prodigious intellectual activity. Play upon play was sent by him from the Chateau de Cirey to be performed in Paris. He worked on his history of Louis X1V. and on a still more ambitious historical work, the composition of which was undertaken at Madame du Chritelet's request, a universal history from the death of Charlemagne to the accession of Louis XIV. He published the Elements de la philosophic de New ton, intended to acquaint the French public more thoroughly with the system, only a glimpse of which had been given them in the Lettrcs /Mao sophiques. His lighter productions, tales, novels, satires, light poetry, are almost numberless; one, belonging to the latter class, the poem Le mon dain (17361, a defense of retitled and luxurious life. brought him into serious trouble. as he was aeeused of having enst ridicule upon religion by the way in which he had spoken of Adam and Eve. To the same period belongs in part the com position of another and longer poem which Vol taire's admirers wish he had never written, the celebrated La pacclle (1739; first pub. 1755) the mnek heroine of which is no other than the purest incarnation of French patriotism, Joan of re. In truth Voltaire never intended in this poem to cast ridicule upon the historical tigure of the Maid of Orleans, as is shown by the pages devoted to her in his historical writings. Ms satire is directed only against the absurdly mystical idea of her career presented in Chapc lain's Puerile (1730 or 1731). Voltaire's stay in Cirey was not continuous. He often went from there to Paris, and to Versailles, where through the hillueneo of Louis XV.'s famous ntistrese.•,\lailame de Pompadour, lie even became a Court character. His first step in this direc tion was his appointment as historiographer of Franey and then as One of the gentlemen of the King's bedehamber, which NV1.1'1. S0011 1011011'M by his election to the French Academy (I716). 11 is Poem c de Fontcnoy ( 1745 ) , describing a battle won by the French over the Eng lish luring the War 14 the ustrian cession, and his Pn'cis du smile dc Louis XV., as well as his two dramatic Court entertainments, La princesse dr 1Vararre and Le triomplic de Trojan, NVPrt. the outcome of the Con nection of Voltaire with the Court 14 Louis XV. The performance of the Triomphe de 'Trojan marked the end of Voltaire's favor at Court. While still holding his Court offices, Voltaire re turned to Cirey, meaning to spend there the re mainder of his life. There should also be men tioned the comedy' /4'en fu of prod i uc and the tragedies Mahomct (174:2) and I/erope (1743). All his plans were upset in 1749 by the death of Madame (In Chatelet, who had formed a new and secret connection with the poet Saint-Lambert; and he rl'Innied to Paris, where he tried to make himself a home, kept by one of his nieces, a youngwidow, Madame Denis. He found the French public somewhat estranged; rivals had arisen during his absence from Paris, and he determined to fight them upon their own ground and to put on the stage dramas written on themes already treated by them.