‘So you actually write to that dog,’ asked the capitaine, smothering a sneeze. ‘You know there are respectable people in Paris who would horse-whip him on sight? What on earth do you write about?’
‘Yes, my dear Claude, I do write to him, even though I know his reputation,’ said James, who could still remember from his own days in Paris the dichotomy of opinion regarding his old coffee house friend. ‘But there are others who would welcome him at their table,’ added James. ‘We write to each other about ideas. The world of the mind. And better ways to govern ourselves.’
‘And that interests you? How fascinating. How have you, a simple soldier, come to be so embroiled?’
‘I was not always a soldier, Claude. There was a time when my ambitions lay in an entirely different direction,’ said James. And then he told his friend of his time at Glasgow’s university, and how he and his friend there, a lad his own age called David Hume, had aspired to an academic life; and of their teachers, inspirational men who were becoming famous thinkers in certain circles across Europe. He rehearsed that whole heady time for Claude, and then he abruptly wound up his lyrical waxing, by saying simply, ‘and then Jacobite politics intruded and stole it all from me.’
The capitaine’s countenance was a picture of concentration. Eventually he said, ‘No. I cannot see you in a scholar’s robes, choosing dry debate above adventure and another purse of gold for all your adoring women to spend for you. The man I see before me, wigless, waistcoat unbuttoned, contented, cradling his brandy, it would sit ill on him if he was condemned to be behind a pile of books. But enough of such drole notions, my brother James. To your correspondent, the celebrated M’sieur Voltaire … what bon mots from the world of his mind has he sent to stimulate you to further thought? Has he offered guidance, or sent your reeling brain reaching for the decanter?’
James smiled at his friend’s amused mocking, too full from his table to take offence. ‘Sadly, M’sieur Voltaire’s grasp of my affairs is wildly astray, I fear … for a man who claims his drama reflects the state of man as he really is.’
‘How so?’ said the capitaine, taking a gulp from his balloon, eager to hear of the follies of the famous.
‘We have been discussing a book, M’sieur Voltaire and I, a book that my friend Davy is to publish this year and that I had ventured to predict must become significant to the way we view our world, my friend being such an original thinker and great mind for one so young. And M’sieur Voltaire was remarking in this letter why such works, far from being original, are become so commonplace in our current age. He wrote, I believe …,’ and James furrowed his brow to recall the actual words, ‘… such mental meanderings are possible in this modern century because to its credit, in it we see none of the barbarity and cruelty that has disfigured earlier ages. Nowadays we have less trickery and fanaticism, and more humanity and good manners, which allows our society to indulge such flights of … and so on. There. I think that is a fair rendition I have given him. In other words, he pooh-poohed the entire idea of a man from Edinburgh having an original thought. Which, in other circumstances, would not have sat well with me.’
The capitaine laughed. ‘I can hear the sneer in his every word!’
James laughed too. ‘Quite. I was particularly fond of his general observation that there is less trickery and more humanity in our modern world. He has obviously not been here before Danzig came under siege. But that is not where I fear his error lies. There was more. Our poet then turned his peregrinations onto me. While he could see no utility in my friend’s work, he foresaw much potential for my role in our new renaissance age. It was the mood in Paris that James Stuart would soon regain all that divine right decreed should be his, and when that happened, a man like me, in his service, must be of far greater influence when it comes to advancing knowledge and virtue in the world. And again, I will seek to repeat M’sieur Voltaire’s very words … you will be on hand to guide him to the path of the philosopher prince. With a man like you at his side, a man who thinks, who loves truth and detests persecution and superstition, who can show his prince how to penetrate deep into the true nature of man so that as prince, he can better know how to justly rule … such a man must be seen as invaluable. If he is wise, and people say he is, James Stuart must know that no king can be truly sanguine in his power unless he binds a man like you to his cause with bands of steel! There! Again, I believe!’
The capitaine nodded sagely. ‘He flatters you, James. How can you say M’sieur Voltaire is in error if all your joint philosophising is supposed to be bent towards the very enlightenment of absolutism he defines? I do not understand, why do his words amuse you?’
‘Because,’ said James, with a mischievous smile on his lips, ‘the other letter your ships brought to me was from the court of the said king in waiting, James Francis Edward Stuart, dismissing me entirely from his service, declaring me unworthy of the House of Stuart’s patronage,
