"No, sir," said she, looking at the king, who rubbed the palms of her hands in a terrified manner.
"She has perhaps a rush of blood to the head. Have you ever observed that she was epileptic?"
"Oh, sire, never! This would be terrible," said Porporino, wounded at the rude manner in which the king spoke of so interesting a person.
"Wait; do not bleed her," said the king, who saw the doctor open his lancet. "I do not like to see blood spilled anywhere but on the battle-field. You people are not soldiers, but assassins. Let her alone. Give her air. Porporino, do not suffer them to bleed her. That, you see, may kill her. These people suspect nothing. I confide her to you. Take her home in your carriage, Poelnitz. You do not answer me. She is the greatest singer we have seen, and we will not find another soon. Apropos—What will you sing to me to-morrow, Conciolini?"
The king went down the stairway with the tenor, speaking of other things, and sate soon after at the table with Voltaire, La Mettrie, D'Argens, Algarotti, and General Quintus Icilius.
Frederick was stern, violent, and an intense egotist. In other respects, he was generous and good, ever tender and affectionate at times. Every one knows the terrible, yet seductive and multiple-faced character of this man, the organization of whom was so complicated and full of contrasts—like all other powerful natures, especially when they are invested with supreme power, and an agitated career develops their senses.
While eating, jesting, and chatting with graceful bitterness and coarse wit, amid dear friends he did not love, and men of mind he did not admire, Frederick became at once meditative, and after a few moments arose, saying to his friends, "Talk away, I shall hear you." He then went into the next room, took his hat and sword, bade a page follow him, and passed into the dark galleries and mysterious passages of his old palace, his guests yet fancying him near and measuring their words—not daring to think he did not hear them. Besides, they (and for good cause) so distrusted each other, that, whenever they chanced to be in Prussia, they ever saw soaring over them the fearful and malicious phantom of Frederick.
La Mettrie, a physician rarely consulted and a reader scarcely listened to by the king, was the only person present who feared, and was feared, by no one. He was esteemed altogether inoffensive, and had discovered the means of keeping any one from hurting him. This consisted in committing so many mad, foolish, and impertinent acts in the king's presence, that no informer could charge him with aught he had not done face to face with Frederick. He seemed to take the philosophic equality the king professed, as a fixed fact (for seven or eight persons were honored by this familiarity.) At this period, though he had reigned eighteen years, Frederick had not entirely abandoned the popular familiarity of the Prince Royal and hardy philosopher of Remunsberg. Those who knew him, had not forborne to confide in him. Voltaire, the most spoiled and the newest, began to be alarmed, and to see the tyrant appear beneath the good prince—a Dionysius in Marcus Aurelius. La Mettrie, however, whether from innate candor or deep calculation, treated the king carelessly, or affected to do so. He took off his cravat and wig in the royal rooms, sometimes he took off even his shoes, lolled on the sofas, and had his little chat with him, pottered about the small esteem he had for earthly greatness, of royalty as of religion, and other prejudices in which a breach had been made by the Reason of the day. In a word, he was a true cynic, and did so much to justify disgrace and dismissal, that it was impossible to see how he maintained himself, when so many others had been dismissed for trifling peccadillos.
The reason is, that in the minds of moody, distrustful persons like Frederick, an insidious word reported by espionage, an appearance of hypocrisy, or a slight doubt, make more impression than a thousand imprudences. Frederick looked on La Mettrie as a madman, and often seemed petrified by surprise at his conduct, saying, "That creature is scandalously impudent." He would, however, say to himself, "But he is sincere, and has no two opinions about me. He cannot treat me behind my back worse than he does to my face. The others who are at my feet, what do they not say and think when my back is turned, and when they leave the table? La Mettrie is, then, the most honest man I have, and I must put up with him, because no one else does." Thenceforth, all was decided. La Mettrie could not make the king angry, and contrived to please him with what would have disgusted in another. While Voltaire at first forced himself into a system of adulation which it was impossible to maintain, and which began to fatigue and disgust himself strangely, the cynic La Mettrie went on amusing himself as frankly with Frederick as with any stranger, and never felt inclined to reverse or overturn an idol to which he had never made either sacrifice or promise. The consequence was, that, when the king began to weary sadly of Voltaire, he was highly amused by La Mettrie, whom he could not dispense with, simply because he never seemed to wish to amuse him.
The Marquis d'Argens, a chamberlain, with 6,000 francs (the first chamberlain, Voltaire, had 20,000f.) was a volatile thinker, a rapid and superficial writer; a very impersonation of the Frenchman of his day,—kind, blundering, gay, and, at the same time, brave and effeminate, intelligent, generous and satirical. He was a man between two eras, for he had the romance of youth and the skepticism of age. Having passed all his youth with actresses, successively deceiving and deceived, and always in love with the last one, he had married Mademoiselle Cochois, first lady of the French theatre at Berlin, a very ugly but sensible woman, whom he took a pleasure in instructing. Frederick was ignorant of this secret marriage, and d'Argens took care not to tell any one who could betray him of it. Voltaire was in his confidence. D'Argens really was attached to the king, who was not fonder of him than he was of others. Frederick had no faith in the sincerity of any one, and poor d'Argens was sometimes the accomplice and sometimes the butt of his cruelest jests.