The Heart of Voltaire

An expedition through Paris to find the blackest heart in France

Strolling along the River Seine, it’s easy to get sucked into the Parisian quality of life. The used booksellers, the whizzing rollerbladers, the naked gay sunbathers. People sit in brassieres, enjoying a traditional breakfast of coffee and 37 cigarettes. The joie de vivre is nice and all, but I’m on the trail of something else. The heart of Voltaire. 

I’ve just discovered that after the death of France’s foremost social critic, François-Marie Arouet de Voltaire, his heart was removed from his body, and since 1864 has sat in the national library. The blackest of hearts, on public display. How cool is that? Wouldn’t you want to see it?

Voltaire was a great ironic wit, but the targets of his ridicule, the government and the church, didn’t think he was very funny, and made sure he was imprisoned twice in the Bastille. Paris eventually gave him a hero’s welcome just before his death in 1778. His last words, upon seeing a burning candle, were supposedly: “What, already in hell?” 

But Paris wasn’t done with him yet. In 1814, right-wing religious zealots broke into his tomb and stole his bones, then dumped them in a pit and covered them with lime. That’s when writing actually made a difference. Hard to imagine that happening with that lady who cranks out the Harry Potter books.

Voltaire’s legacy includes a museum, boulevard, and Métro stop in Paris, the French fashion brand Zadig & Voltaire, the ’80s electronic band Cabaret Voltaire, and a town in North Dakota named Voltaire, population 51. (The original Cabaret Voltaire, a Dadaist nightclub in Zurich which opened and closed in 1916, has reopened since this piece was published.)

We can also thank Voltaire for his writings, including over 2,000 books, with many timeless quotes such as the classic: “If God did not exist, he would have to be invented.” I wish someone had invented signs pointing to the Bibliotèque nationale, because the scenery is getting more and more unfamiliar. I pass by the Notre Dame Cathedral, with its crazy growling-weasel gargoyles, then a series of cafés, industrial buildings, and now workmen in green chartreuse vests, tearing up an empty lot. And pools of standing water. A train roars overhead. After asking directions twice, I finally come upon the four glass towers of the Bibliotèque.

Inside the sparse main lobby, my companion, who speaks remedial French, asks a clerk if we can see “la coeur de Voltaire” (the heart of Voltaire). The woman looks sickened. An older clerk overhears the conversation, and explains flatly that we’re in the wrong library. This is the newer François-Mitterrand branch. We want the original Bibliotèque nationale, and that’s back across the river in the middle of the city.

I walk through the same streets once strolled by Voltaire. Except now they’re filled with beeping taxis, tiny electric smart cars, necking couples, scruffy dogs. Did Voltaire have a dog? Was it as mangy as these mutts? What happened to the poodles?

The food and wine are magnificent at Chez Paul in the Bastille district, but I can’t get the heart out of my mind. In the 17th century it was a common tribute to remove the heart of a great person, from Keats to Byron and Chopin. The brains of Stalin and Einstein have also been saved. But does Voltaire belong in this organ-removal club? That’s like the Smithsonian displaying the pancreas of Lenny Bruce.

After dinner, we waddle around the Marais district, and end up in a bar/bookstore called La Belle Hortense. The place is smoky and packed with locals and ex-patriates: painters, a gallery owner, filmmakers, a psychologist. Everyone knows about Voltaire. But not one person has heard about his heart. This is what journalists call a “scoop.”

The next morning, I finally find the stone-grey Bibliotèque nationale. A security guard doesn’t even blink when asked about the heart. As though the Voltaire Heart Tour Bus had just left an hour before. He points across a cobblestone courtyard to an information desk. We approach the desk and ask the clerk, who puts his hand on his chest and sighs dramatically: “Ah oui, la coeur!”

I imagine what it must look like. A 400-year-old shriveled black truffle, lying on folds of crushed green velvet. And now he’s telling us it’s—closed to the public? He gestures out the courtyard to a wall of windows.

It can’t be. I’ve tromped the entire city to find this thing. I’ve overdosed on beautiful architecture, eaten snails, nearly been killed by curb-hopping scooter freaks. I’m not leaving Paris without the heart. I storm across the courtyard and peer in the windows. The elegant room sits empty except for a chandelier, a table and chairs, and a statue of a balding old Voltaire, sitting in a chair with a sly smirk on his face. But no heart.

A man polishes a black Renault in the courtyard. He smiles and asks what’s going on. My companion explains our mission. The man jabs at the statue and says that the heart is there, inside the base. He whips out a fat bunch of keys and ushers us into the sanctum de Voltaire. We take pictures, and I touch the statue, trembling. The blackest heart in France, inches from my fingers. This was worth missing the Louvre.

This piece appeared originally in the early 2000s in Travelocity magazine.