From Chapter 4 of THE PROPAGATION OF FIRE

        Before dinner, Elisabeth de Richelieu and I visited the stable at Montjeu in order to inspect the mares available for an excursion the next day. We stopped near the open door, and the groom at the entrance ducked his head and disappeared inside.

        Four grooms led out horses for us to look at. We had been riding in the forest with Voltaire the day before and the mare I rode had gone lame, for which I was secretly glad, as I liked a mount with more spirit and stamina. Examining these, I had the odd impression of being as much on show as the horses, for while the creatures were led around, they jerked their heads so that their big dark eyes—and the furtive eyes of the grooms—were directed towards us. On that clear spring day the scene was colourful, as one tallish woman in blue with unpowdered dark hair (myself) turned slowly around, as in a dance, alongside a woman as tall but with darker eyes (Voltaire calls them “the eyes of Venus”) and powdered hair, who teetered on wooden pattens designed to keep her cream-coloured petticoats out of the manure and straw that lay about the yard. The stamp and swish of the mares’ hooves echoed off the stone walls as they circled us, huffing with curiosity and mock impatience. They were high-bred and handsome, and I was most attracted to a supple black creature whose ears were pricked as though she were waiting for me to impart something.
        In fact the mare was listening to quite another sound, which we did not hear until a strange horse and rider pounded into the yard and made us all jump. The intruder reined in his mount and we fetched up standing at strange angles to one another, the symmetry destroyed.
        The horse’s sides were streaming with sweat and there was foam around the bit and on its neck. The rider, thickly clad, wore a cocked hat that he pulled off at once when he saw me. He bobbed his head, his hair swinging around his face, then leaped from the saddle and stepped forward. No one bothered to snatch his mount’s bridle: its sides were heaving, its head hung and it looked incapable of another step.
        The man was the servant I had left on watch in Paris to carry messages from the Comte d’Argental, counsellor in the Parlement, friend of Voltaire, our ally, our herald of catastrophe. The messenger bowed, faltering as he did so, for he was stiff from the journey, which he had taken alone; I could not trust such a letter to the post or other couriers.
        I did not speak; I held out my hand. Everything inside me and around me altered. My eyes would not focus, and smells surged up at me: the dung on the cobbles, the sweat of horse and man, and a sharp odour like that of wet fleece—the scent of my own fear.
        The servant took a folded and sealed wad of paper from his breast and put it on my palm. I looked down and read the handwriting, the addressee.
        I found my voice. “You were given this when?”
        “At midday on Monday, madame.”
        I calculated mechanically. He must have had only the briefest snatches of rest on the way to Burgundy, while changing horses. “You’ve done well. Do you know what’s in it?”
        He started and said, “No, madame!” The offence on his tired face was genuine.
        I turned away, and behind me I heard …lisabeth say to her people, “Take him in, please, and care for the horse.” I set off, out of the yard and over the exercise lawn, back towards the house, followed by Elisabeth, who had to run to catch me. My skirts flapped around my legs and I kicked them forward with long strides, one fist bunching my skirts together and the other clutching the paper.
        “Won’t you read it first?” Elisabeth panted behind me.
        “It’s to Voltaire.” In truth, I was not ready to confront what it contained.
        The quickest way into the chateau from the stables is along the front path outside the moat, then across the bridge into the courtyard. At the corner of the parapet I stopped and bent over with my hand pressed to my side, to control my breathing. Three ranks of windows loomed above the courtyard like boxes looking down on a stage. Those in the mansard roof looked dirty and blind, but from the narrow casements below one often saw well-coiffed observers looking out. I must walk calmly across and into the house, find an empty room and have Voltaire summoned to me.
        Elisabeth said, “There’s a morning room in the east wing where no one sets foot. We’ll be alone there. Take my arm. Come.”
        We entered, the summons was sent and we waited in silence, I in the middle of the room and Elisabeth on a sofa by the window. The disasters that the letter might reveal numbered far more than I had stomach to pronounce, and Elisabeth needed no confidences from me to be aware of what all France knew: Voltaire attracted criticism for his ideas with every work he wrote, whether history, poetry or drama, and the risk associated with this book was greater than that of all the rest put together, because it was philosophical, his first to be proclaimed so.
        He was quite unsuspicious when he reached the door and smiled at us both, but when he registered my expression his gaze dropped to my hands and he stepped in and shut the door behind him.
        I held the letter out. “From d’Argental.”
        He set his lips. He walked forward and with a quick glance into my eyes took the letter, snapped the seal and opened it out in his long fingers, which were quite steady. “Excuse me,” he said to Elisabeth, then turned away from us to walk up and down the inner part of the room, his shoes rapping on the parquet floor, his chin thrust over the letter so that he read it looking down his nose. There were two sheets, and by the time he got to the second he was swearing, though not loudly enough to be heard by our friend and hostess, who was still on the sofa, looking from him to me.
        V’s face is pale across the forehead and around the eyes but there is colour on his cheekbones, sometimes of a hectic tone, for he is prone to fevers. If he is upset or angry, that colour comes and goes in a frightening way. When after the quick perusal his voice stopped, and red flags began to furl and unfurl beneath his eyes, I thought It’s all over, and turned my back on him.
        His ironical voice reached into the corners of the room. “Permit me to give you a prècis, my dears. Half Paris has bought the book but denies having seen it. The other half wouldn’t taint their hands with it but can quote line after line, each as filthy as the next. D’Argental has a copy and it’s plain to see it was printed in France.”
        I turned to see his face, and his anger. “So it’s Jore who released it!”
        “For certain. Josse too, maybe. God damn him, he could be hawking them around the back streets under his greatcoat for all I know. The police will be after both, and when they lay hands on them, they’ll find and confiscate the stocks.”
        “Where are Jore’s? In Rouen, still?”
        “God knows, but there are some in Passy.”
        “Not far to seek,” I said.
“That’s not the point. The point is the confounded thing has my name on it.” He threw the letter on the floor and stood looking at it, his eyes blazing as though to burn a hole through the floor.
        Elisabeth spoke at last, her voice trembling. “Is there anything we can do?”
        Voltaire lifted his head, not looking at either her or me. “But of course. This enthralling episode has only just begun. I may have weeks of busy activity before …” Despite himself, he could not finish that sentence with “before my arrest”. A second later he said, “I’ll now write to everyone, to say how hard I worked to suppress the book. It may be rather too ludicrous to deny that I wrote it, though for a while that was an option …” He began to pace again. “No one shall lay its release at my door.”
        Elisabeth said, “If you’ll permit me to write in my own name, to anyone you think fit, I beg you to tell me.”
        He went to her side and sat on the sofa. “Knowing you, I should have expected to hear just this sort of kindness from your lips. But you surpass even my idea of you.” He took her hand. “You humble me.” He leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek.
        As I looked at them, my heart thumped so loudly in my ears that I did not hear whatever else he murmured. He turned to her! I could do nothing but take a few steps, bend down and snatch the two pages up from the floor. I scanned them, my eyes smarting. D’Argental wrote in such businesslike detail that I resented him more with each line.
        “Your friend is very obliging,” I said in a carrying voice. “He is good enough to tell you some gentleman’s exact words over dinner: ‘I wouldn’t like to be the printer of this book, and if the man’s discovered I can’t see how he and Voltaire are going to get away with it, since the Chancellor threatened him outright with the Bastille if the Letters appeared in any form whatsoever.’”
        Voltaire did not reply. He released Elisabeth and stared at me with a preoccupied look that told me he was compiling in his head the list of influential people to whom he was getting ready to crawl.
        I continued, “You’re held to be mildly entertaining—though not especially original—about the Quakers in England, but when it comes to France, your contempt is shocking. You equally despise the nation, our government, our ministers, and everything that deserves the utmost respect—in a word, religion.”
        “Emilie.” He rose and came towards me, his hand outstretched. “Give me that.” He took the letter out of my fingers, folded it and slid it into his waistcoat. “We should be grateful d’Argental wrote it. I’m grateful it arrived.”
        Elisabeth slipped by us with a whisper of silk. She touched my shoulder as she passed. “I’ll say nothing to anyone. Later, you’ll tell me how I can help.” She left and closed the door behind her.
        I would have stepped forward and held him tight, and forced him to take me in his arms, but his face was not tender; it was sharp and intent. I burst out, “I don’t know why you think there is anything to be done!”
        “Reflect,” he said, and walked away again. “Nothing has happened yet; it’s all smoke and fury. No one’s been arrested, nothing’s been seized. I inform everyone in authority that the book has come out against my orders, that I paid the booksellers a fortune not to release it, that I earn nothing from its publication and in short I wash my hands of it and hereby consign it to the devil! Let them try bringing an accusation against me after that.”
        “But Jore and Josse are being hunted down. If you say such things, you put all the blame on them.”
        “Where it belongs!” cried the author.
        “God!” I said and walked to the window. “We should have stayed in Paris. We were mad to come to Montjeu. Why did we come all this way?”
        “Eighty leagues to get Richelieu into bed with …lisabeth de Guise? I wonder myself.”
        I turned. “Eighty? No. It’s further than that.”
        “Jesus, if you’re going to argue with me, pick something with a point to it.”
        “I am not arguing with you!”
        “You’d rather be in Paris. Say it. I’d rather know.”
        I felt my face go as cold and white as his, and I had trouble breathing. My voice sounded as it does in dreams, when you try to shriek and the words come out like a moan. “That is what you think of me? At the first sign of trouble, I’ll run away and abandon you? Simpering little girls are to write letters for you, but I’m not to lift a finger. What do you think I’ve done for months but agonise over you? And this is my thanks.” I approached him and said into his face, “Very well, think what you like. No, I won’t stand by you. No, you mean nothing to me.”
        His expression altered so radically I thought for a second that he believed me. I began to sob, and he clamped his hands about my waist and shook me. “…milie,” he whispered in my ear, “stop. I was frightened before; now I’m terrified.”
        I threw my arms around his neck. “I can’t lose you!”
        I tried to stop crying but could not, so he locked the door, took me to the sofa and lay down with me. We stayed there for some time. He made love to me, and told me afterwards that the pink flush on my bosom matched my eyes, which made me laugh. Eventually, at supper, he made everyone else laugh as well, about other matters, until late. After which we spent all night in my room—because my escritoire was larger than his, and he claimed I had more candles (which was false)—and wrote letters to Paris and Versailles.