Passionate Minds

Once Emilie du Châtelet settled with Voltaire, the two of them rebuilt an isolated chateau to create an extraordinary research center. It became like a berthed spacecraft from the future, and it was there that she began her greatest scientic work. Visitors came to scoff, but then stayed, and became awed by what they saw. (The most voluble of these guests, Mme de Graffigny, wrote many pages of gossipy letters while she was there.) But even more than their scientific work, the poems and love letters that Emilie and Voltaire wrote are the ideal way to trace their entwined lives.