"Alas! your majesty says that you honor me, but you no longer say that you love me," cried Voltaire, who had listened to this eloquent and heart-felt speech of the king with eager impatience and lowering frowns. "Yes, yes, I feel it; I know it too well! Your majesty has already limited me to your consideration, your regard; but your love, your friendship, these are costly treasures from which I have been disinherited. But I know these hypocritical legacy-hunters, who have robbed me of that most beautiful portion of my inheritance. I know these poor, beggarly cousins, these D'Argens, these Algarottis, these La Mettries, this vainglorious peacock Maupertius. I—"
"Voltaire," said the king, interrupting him, "you forget that you speak of my friends, and I do not allow any one to speak evil of them. I will never be partial, never unjust! My heart is capable of valuing and treasuring all my friends, but my friends must aim to deserve it; and if I give them my heart, I expect one in return."
"Friendship is a bill of exchange, by which you give just so much as you are entitled to demand in return."
"Give me, then, your whole heart, Voltaire, and I will restore mine to you! But I fear you have no longer a heart; Nature gave you but a small dose of this fleeting essence called love. She had much to do with your brain, and worked at that so long that no time remained to make the heart perfect; just as she was about to pour a few drops of this wonderful love-essence into your heart, the cock crew three times for your birth, and betrayed you into the world. You have long since used up the poor pair of drops which fell into your heart. Your brain was armed for centuries, with power to work, to be useful, to rejoice the souls of others. but I fear your heart was exhausted in your youthful years."
"Ah, I wish your majesty were right!" cried Voltaire; "I should not then feel the anguish which now martyrs me, the torture of being misunderstood by the most amiable, the most intellectual, the most exalted of monarchs. Oh, sire, sire! I have a heart, and it bleeds because you doubt of its existence!"
"I would believe you if you were a little less pathetic," said the king. "You not only assert, but you declaim. There is too little of nature and truth in your tone; you remind me a little of the stilted French tragedies, in which design and premeditation obscure all true passion; in which love is only a phrase, that no one believes in, dressed up with the tawdry gilding of sentiment and pathos."
"Your majesty will crush me with your scorn and mockery!" cried Voltaire, whose eyes now flamed with anger. "You wish to make me feel how powerless, how pitiful I am. Where shall I find the strength to strive with you? I have won no battles. I have no hundred thousand men to oppose to you and no courts-martial to condemn those who sin against me!"
"It is true you have not a hundred thousand soldiers," said the king, "but you have four-and-twenty, and with these four-and-twenty soldiers you have conquered the whole realm of spirits; with this little army you have brought the whole of educated Europe to your feet. You are, therefore, a much more powerful king than I am. I have, it is true, a hundred thousand men, but I dare not say that they will not run when it comes to the first battle. You, Voltaire, have your four-and-twenty soldiers of the alphabet, and so well have you exercised them, that you must win every battle, even if all the kings of the earth were allied against you. Let us make peace, then, my 'invincible!' do not turn this terrible army of the four-and- twenty, with their deadly weapons, against me, but graciously allow me to seize upon the hem of your purple robe, to sun myself in your dazzling rays, to be your humble scholar, and from you and your army of heroes to learn the secret art of winning battles with invisible troops!"
"Your majesty makes me feel more and more how poor I am; even my four-and-twenty, of whom you speak, have gone over to you, and you understand, as well as I do, how to exercise them."
"No, no!" said Frederick, changing suddenly his jesting tone for one of grave earnestness. "No, I will learn of you. I am not satisfied to be a poor-souled dilettante in poetry, though assured I can. never be a Virgil or a Voltaire. I know that the study of poetry demands the life, the undivided heart and mind. I am but a poor galley-slave, chained to the ship of state; or, if you will, a pilot, who does not dare to leave the rudder, or even to sleep, lest the fate of the unhappy Palinurus might overtake him. The Muses demand solitude and rest for the soul, and that I can never consecrate to them. Often, when I have written three verses, I am interrupted, my muse is chilled, and my spirit cannot rise again into the heights of inspiration. I know there are privileged souls, who can make verses everywhere—in the tumult of court life, in the loneliness of Cirey, in the prisons of the Bastile, and in the stage-coach. My poor soul does not enjoy this freedom. It resembles an anana, which bears fruit only in the green-house, but fades and withers in the fresh air." [Footnote: The king's own words.—Oeuvres Posthumes.]