Ce diable d'homme — Season 1, Episode 6: Episode 6
Comedy, Family, Drama, Documentary • 55 min • 1 season, 6 episodes
Episode synopsis
Sixth and final episode. Voltaire has taken in the Calas family, but the Parliament of Languedoc threatens to revolt if the case goes to appeal. Voltaire publishes the Treatise on Tolerance, and Louis XV rehabilitates Calas. Voltaire’s fame becomes immense. Years pass, and the lord of Ferney still has no right to return to Paris, the city where he wishes to die. In Ferney, he builds workshops, drains marshes, and rescues a young woman from a convent, providing her with a dowry and marriage — “Belle et Bonne.” He finally returns to Paris in triumph, receiving extraordinary honors. But after this apotheosis comes horror: illness torments him, and worse, Madame Denis and Belle‑et‑Bonne’s husband confine the dying man to ensure he does not change the will in their favor. Voltaire dies alone, on a poor cot, on 30 May 1778.
About Ce diable d'homme
This devil of a man plunges the viewer into the very heart of the Voltaire whirlwind, that incandescent mind who shook his century. The series follows his meteoric rise, his exiles, his battles and flashes of genius, in a Europe still tightly bound by absolutism. We discover an unbowed, charming, formidable man whose pen makes ministers, kings and fanatics tremble. Between glittering salons, damp prisons and passionate loves, Voltaire crosses the Age of Enlightenment like a meteor. Each episode reveals a confrontation, a flight, a victory wrested through the sheer force of intellect. Carried by elegant direction and a sweeping, novelistic energy, the series paints a vibrant portrait of a fighter for freedom. A journey into the life of a man who never stopped thinking, loving and provoking.