Voltaire restores the Château de Cirey    

To tempt Émilie to Cirey in the upper Champagne, Voltaire repaired and refurnished the château and constructed a new wing, shown here (at left) in a photograph I took in 2007.

Voltaire created a little theatre in the attic under the steeply sloping roof of the main building (right). Visitors to Cirey attended (and often acted in) plays by Voltaire and others. They also enjoyed superlative music: Madame du Châtelet liked to sing her favourite opera by Destouches, Issé, accompanying herself on the harpsichord.





A 1740s concept for the château, depicting the new wing as Voltaire built it, with a flat roof. Only when I visited Cirey did I learn that the mansard roof was added in the nineteenth century. This is the kind of fact that biographers may well neglect, but that the novelist needs to know.

  

Chateâu de Breteuil    
Émilie’s father, Louis-Nicolas de Breteuil, receiver of the ambassadors at Versailles, was not the eldest son of his line, and Émilie’s childhood home was not the family château but a townhouse that stood near the Tuileries Palace in Paris. The Breteuil family is nonetheless one of the most illustrious in France and the château is its greatest treasure. Beautifully maintained, frequently a setting for movies, a splendid reception centre, and with two rooms devoted to Émilie, it is a captivating place to visit for glimpses of her world and her time.  
Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis    
Maupertuis was Émilie’s tutor in mathematics and one of her mentors in physics. Most of her principal biographers agree that he was also more than a friend. Celebrated for an expedition that proved Newton’s theory that the earth is flatter at the poles than at the equator, Maupertuis was at once a prominent and controversial member of France’s Académie des Sciences. Émilie was never admitted to this body, but she was elected in 1746 to the Academy of Sciences of Bologna, a distinction of which she was very proud. She considered it “an encouragement to persons of my sex”.  

Louis-François-Armand de Vignerot du Plessis, Duc de Richelieu

    
Great-nephew by marriage of the redoubtable Cardinal, Richelieu pursued a career at court and on the battlefields that resulted in his being named Marshal of France, but higher office under Louis XV eluded him because of the unease aroused by his amorous and political intrigues. Notorious for his wit and his conquests, Richelieu was a lifelong friend of Voltaire and Émilie, and prior to their liaison was also Émilie’s lover. An unregenerate libertine, he is believed to have been the model for Valmont in Choderlos de Laclos’ novel, Les Liaisons Dangereuses.  
Views of Cirey    
For many years, the Comte and Comtesse de Salignac-Fénelon have been creating reflections of Voltaire’s and Émilie’s residence at Cirey, and opening the château to the public. The countess (seen here in the dining room) has received some uncommon visitors, including President Mittérand. Once, a medium insisted that Voltaire’s and Émilie’s long-vanished letters were hidden on the premises, but despite a professional search, they were not found. I was given a generous welcome at Cirey, where one of the most delightful discoveries is the countess’s sincere passion for the past.  

http://www.visitvoltaire.com/
http://www.breteuil.fr/control2/intro.php