"All that is fashionable now in your house, my dear Pantagruel," said La Mettrie. "I do not see how women can submit to your exacting goddess, Reason. Women were made to amuse themselves and us. When they become wise, we must be fools. Madam Von Kleist is charming, with all those wild ghost-stories. With them she amuses Soror Amalia."
"What does that Soror Amalia mean?" asked Frederick, with amazement.
"Eh! your charming sister, the Abbess of Quedlimburg, who, we all know, devotes herself to magic."
"Be silent, Panurge!" said the king, in a voice of thunder, throwing his snuff-box on the table.
[1]It is well known Frederick used to give abbeys, canonicates, and episcopates to his officers, favorites, and relations, even when they were Protestants. The Princess Amelia, having refused to marry, had been made Abbess of Quedlimburgh, a prebend, with an income of a hundred thousand livres. She was addressed as the Catholic canonesses were.
[2]It is scarcely necessary to say that Pantagruel and Gargantua are two of the creations of the very great and very French Rabelais.—TRANSLATOR.
[CHAPTER III]
There was a moment of silence, during which the clock struck twelve.[3] Ordinarily, Voltaire was able to restore the tone of conversation, when a cloud passed over Trajan's brow, and to efface the bad impression of the other guests. On this evening, however, Voltaire was sad and suffering, and felt all the effects of the king's Prussian spleen. On that very morning La Mettrie had told him of the fatal remark of Frederick, which replaced a feigned friendship by a real animosity, which each of these great men felt for each other. Though he said nothing, he thought—
"He may throw the skin[4] of La Mettrie away when he chooses. Let him be ill tempered and suffer as he will, but I have the cholic, and all his flatteries will not cure it."