organize the archives, Wagniere would reassign the task, promising that Voltaire had other plans for me. Where once I had been a part of castle life, I now felt there was no place for me. I became a ghost; no one would even turn to look at me when I came into a room. I sometimes heard my story as if it were another’s. Secretaries, cooks, servants, even the travelers who came to see the genius of Ferney were all commenting on my adventures. These stories were like legends, passed from person to person until distilled. They couldn’t believe that I, an insignificant calligrapher, was the protagonist of such events, and they would listen to me only if I spoke as though it had happened to someone else. I existed in third person.
I wrote the final account of my time in Paris and waited in vain to find Voltaire in his study. Business consumed his afternoons, requiring that he make hasty decisions regarding his clocks, his crops, and his foreign investments. I would slip my reports under his door, never knowing if he read them or burned them.
One morning Voltaire himself came to my room and led me to his study. He began by telling me of his aches and pains, but I wasn’t worried: his suffering had kept him in good health for years. Then he showed me the stack of pages I had sent. He had made notes in the margins, most of them question marks.
“I’ve read and reread your reports, written with incomparable incompetence. Despite all the errors, I was able to come to one conclusion: the Dominicans are preparing to take advantage of the void being left by the Jesuits. They’ve concealed the bishop’s death in order to hold on to power. As long as the comedy of the automaton lasts, their hold will remain firm. They are behind the plague of miracles that’s storming France; poor Jean Calas was just one more of their victims. That’s why I need you to go back to Paris.”
“I’d rather stay here. Your correspondence must be awfully behind…”
“My true correspondence consists of the two messages I’ll send with you. The first is for the printer Hesdin, to be published as soon as possible and without my signature. The second is for the bishop. There is a papal delegation coming, and the bishop will confirm the Dominicans’ power. You must convince Von Knepper to change the text.”
I pleaded not to be sent to Paris. I was afraid; all I wanted was a simple position at Ferney.
“You’ll travel under an alias. In any event, I don’t have anyone else to send. Wagniere is too old; I say a teary good-bye every time he goes to a distant wing of the castle, unsure whether he’ll make it back alive. I’m not asking you to do this for honor or to champion an idea you may not share. I only ask that you obey the universal sense of greed: from now on, you will be official calligrapher of Ferney and your pay will be commensurate.”
I placed money and danger on an imaginary scale that leaned toward precaution. But then I thought of Clarissa, whom I missed so dearly that distance actually brought her closer. I imposed one condition on going: a workshop in which to make inks and the right to sell them.
“That could be quite a profitable business,” Voltaire said. “If we sell clocks to the Turks, why not ink to the French?”
Given Voltaire’s advancing age, failing memory, and proximity to death, I drew up a contract. He signed it with a look of reproach, as if disappointed by my lack of faith in his word, his faculties, and his health. I was to leave for Paris in a week. In the interim, Voltaire would closet himself away to prepare the messages I was to deliver. While I refused to get up in the morning or think about my upcoming trip, he would rise early, leap out of bed, sometimes even do a little jig before sitting down to write, as if, from somewhere, he could hear music playing. It wasn’t the music of planets or the discovery of some hidden harmony in nature, but the sound of the world that made Voltaire dance.
Anonymous Libel
My break ended and I went back to writing, not with quill and ink but with my footsteps and the dust of the road. As soon as I arrived in Paris, I went to find the printer Hesdin, who had worked for Voltaire on previous occasions. His address was on a piece of paper that had been soaked by the rain, and the street name was now nothing but a few faint blue lines. Thankfully, almost all of the printers lived in Les Cordeliers, and Hesdin was well known; I soon found his shop, not far from the Comedie-Francaise.
I didn’t go straight in; there were suspicious-looking people all around, and I wondered whether Abbot Mazy had already heard I was in Paris. But those men with faces obscured, lurking on corners and in doorways, weren’t interested in me. These were playwrights in a city so overrun with them that theaters had barred them from entrance; they already had enough plays to stage until the end of the century. The new tragedians would prowl around, waiting for any opportunity to slip into the theater. Once inside, they would hide until they could leap on the stage manager or director. Some would even threaten suicide if their work wasn’t read immediately. None of this seemed like a problem at the time, but now, looking back, I think it was the ferment for everything that happened later. The Revolution was led, primarily, by frustrated writers, and their literary jealousies and failure to make it onto the stage were what led to the Reign of Terror.
Inside the print shop, an assistant was turning the press. When I asked for Hesdin, I was taken into the back, where a white-haired man was painting gold letters on the cover of a book. Tottering stacks of books were all around.
“Where’ve you come from?” he asked. “It looks like you’re being followed by a cloud of dust.”
“I’ve come from Ferney, sir.”
“Then you’re not only being followed by dust but by problems as well.”
The only chair was covered in books, which Hesdin brushed to the floor. I knelt down to pick up a copy of
“Does that interest you?”
“I’m a calligrapher.”
“Then do me a favor and take it. I only sold thirty-seven copies. I’ve fonder memories of books that have been burned than those that were an absolute failure. At least a banned book doesn’t take up space. Look closely, that’s Baskerville, the print type vaguely reminiscent of human handwriting. Baskerville was a calligrapher before he became a printer and wanted to acknowledge his old profession.”
Hesdin stopped what he was doing to fetch a jug of wine, some bread and cheese. I told myself to eat slowly so as to interject a friendly comment every now and then, but I devoured the food without a word. In the meantime, Hesdin spoke.
“On page one hundred eight, there’s a story about a Chinese calligrapher who was to transcribe a long poem arguing that calligraphy was imperfect. The order came from the palace, and the calligrapher felt a great weight of responsibility. If he used all his skill to perform the task, the contrast between the subject of the poem and its transcription would be obvious, and he’d have sinned by calling attention to the art of calligraphy over poetry. However, if he decided to write with an unsteady hand and create artificial imperfections, he ran the risk of being fired as palace calligrapher. With the blank page in front of him, brush in hand, the calligrapher thought and thought until he came upon the solution. He wrote the most beautiful ideograms ever, but when he reached the complex character for
Hesdin fell silent, waiting for me to finish chewing and explain why I was there. I reached into a bag I had hidden under my shirt and pulled out Voltaire’s manuscript. Hesdin sighed deeply.
“Under what name is it to be published?”
“No name.”
“A name can be an alias and we never know who the author is. The minute it’s anonymous, however, all doubt is erased: we immediately know who wrote it.”
Hesdin read the tale out loud, while I finished off the last of the bread and wine. The story had seemed innocent enough when I transcribed it from Voltaire’s illegible script, and I’d paid little attention: it was just another of his whims, a show of his excessive faith in the power of words. But the printer read it with an air of mystery, as if it were full of questions and secrets. The story was lost over time. Fearful, Hesdin printed only a few copies and not one survived, not even in Kehl’s seventy volumes. I only have a vague recollection of it, which I ineptly write below, for the sole purpose of helping you understand subsequent events.
