The king, to whom Voltaire had shown his manuscript, felt this; and although he had listened to the "Akakia" with the most lively pleasure, and often interrupted the reading by loud laughter and applause, he asked Voltaire to destroy the manuscript. He was not willing that the man who stood at the head of his academy, and whom he had once called "the light of science," should be held up to the laughter and mockery of the world.
"I ask this sacrifice from you as a proof of your friendship for me, and your self-control," said the king, earnestly. "I am tired of this everlasting disputing and wrangling; I will have peace in my house; I do not know how long we will have peace in the world. It seems to me that on the horizon of politics heavy clouds are beginning to tower up; let us therefore take care that our literary horizon is clear and peaceable."
"Ah, sire!" cried Voltaire, "when you look at me with your great, luminous eyes, I feel capable of plucking my heart from my breast and casting it into the fire for you. How gladly, then, will I offer up these stinging lines to a wish of my Solomon!"
"Will you indeed sacrifice 'Akakia?'" said the king, joyfully.
"Look here! this is my manuscript, you know my hand-writing, you see that the ink is scarcely dry, the work just completed. Well, then, see now, sire, what I make of the 'Akakia.'" He took the manuscript and cast it into the fire before which they were both sitting.
"What are you doing?" cried the king, hastily; and, without regarding the flames, ho stretched out his hand to seize the manuscript.
Voltaire laughed heartily, seized the tongs, and pushed it farther into the flames. "Sire, sire, I am the devil, and I will not allow my victim to be torn from me. My 'Akakia' was only worthy of the lower regions; you condemned it, and therefore it must suffer. I, the devil, command it to burn."
"But I, the angel of mercy, will redeem the poor 'Akakia,'" cried the king, trying to obtain possession of the tongs. "Truly this 'Akakia' is too lusty and witty a boy to be laid, like the Emperor Guatimozin, upon the gridiron. It was enough to deny him a public exhibition—it was not necessary to destroy him."
"Sire, I am a poor, weak man! If I kept the living 'Akakia' by my side, it would be a poisonous weapon, which I would hurl one day surely at the head of Maupertius. It is therefore better it should live only in my remembrance, and be only an imaginary dagger, with which I will sometimes tickle the haughty lord-president."
"And you have really no copy?" said the king, whose distrust was awakened by Voltaire's too ready compliance. "Was this the only manuscript of the 'Akakia?'"