of Diderot; but other philosophes of less note entered from time
to time; [1064] Marmontel was elected in 1763; and when in 1764
the Academy's prize for poetry was given to Chamfort for a piece
which savoured of what were then called "the detestable principles
of Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Helvétius," and in 1768 its prize for
eloquence went to the same writer, the society as a whole had acquired
a certain character for impiety. [1065] In 1767 there had occurred
the famous ecclesiastical explosion over Marmontel's philosophic
romance Bélisaire, a performance in which it is somewhat difficult
to-day to detect any exciting quality. It was by a chapter in praise
of toleration that the "universal and mediocre Marmontel" [1066]
secured from the Sorbonne the finest advertisement ever given to a
work of fiction, the ecclesiastics of the old school being still too
thoroughly steeped in the past to realize that a gospel of persecution
was a bad warcry for a religion that was being more and more put on the
defensive. Only an angry fear before the rising flood of unlicensed
literature, combining with the long-baffled desire to strike some
blow at freethinking, could have moved the Sorbonne to select for
censure the duly licensed work [1067] of a popular academician and
novelist; and it should be remembered that it was at a time of great
activity in the unlicensed production of freethinking literature
that the attack was made. The blow recoiled signally. The book
was of course promptly translated into all the languages of Europe,
selling by tens of thousands; [1068] and two sovereigns took occasion
to give it their express approval. These were the Empress Catherine
(who caused the book to be translated by members of her court while
she was making a tour of her empire, she herself taking a chapter),
and the Empress Maria-Theresa. From Catherine, herself a freethinker,
the approbation might have been expected; but the known orthodoxy
and austerity of Maria-Theresa made her support the more telling. In
France a small literary tempest raged for a year. Marmontel published
his correspondence with the syndic of the Sorbonne and with Voltaire;
and in all there appeared some dozen documents pro and con, among
them an anonymous satire by Turgot, Les xxxvii verités opposées aux
xxxvii impiétés de Bélisaire, "Par un Bachelier Ubiquiste," [1069]
which, with the contributions of Voltaire, gave the victim very much
the best of the battle.