"I serve you, Monsieur, sooner than I promised; and that is the way you ought to be served. I send you the answer of M. Smith,"—probably some German or Dutch SCHMIDT, spelt here in English, connected with the Sciences, say with water-carriage, the typographies, or one need not know what; "you will see where the question stands.
"When we both left Cleve,"—14th of the month, Wednesday last; 18th is Sunday, in this old cobwebby Palace, where I am correcting ANTI-MACHIAVEL,—"and you took to the right,"—King, homewards, got to HAM that evening,—"I could have thought I was at the Last Judgment, where the Bon Dieu separates the elect from the damned. DIVUS FREDERICUS said to you, 'Sit down at my right hand in the Paradise of Berlin;' and to me, 'Depart, thou accursed, into Holland.'
"Here I am accordingly in this phlegmatic place of punishment, far from the divine fire which animates the Friedrichs, the Maupertuis, the Algarottis. For God's love, do me the charity of some sparks in these stagnant waters where I am,"—stiffening, cooling,—"stupefying to death. Instruct me of your pleasures, of your designs. You will doubtless see M. de Valori,"—readers know de Valori; his Book has been published; edited, as too usual, by a Human Nightmare, ignorant of his subject and indeed of almost all other things, and liable to mistakes in every page; yet partly readable, if you carry lanterns, and love "MON GROS VALORI:"—"offer him, I pray you, my respects. If I do not write to him, the reason is, I have no news to send: I should be as exact as I am devoted, if my correspondence could be useful or agreeable to him.
"Won't you have me send you some Books? If I be still in Holland when your orders come, I will obey in a moment. I pray you do not forget me to M. de Keyserling,"—Caesarion whom we once had at Cirey; a headlong dusky little man of wit (library turned topsy-turvy, as Wilhelmina called him), whom we have seen.
"Tell me, I beg, if the enormous monad of Volfius—[Wolf, would the reader like to hear about him? If so, he has only to speak!] is arguing at Marburg, at Berlin, or at Hall [HALLE, which is a very different place].
"Adieu, Monsieur: you can address your orders to me 'At the Hague:' they will be forwarded wherever I am; and I shall be, anywhere on earth,—Yours forever (A VOUS POUR JAMAIS)." [Voltaire, lxxii. 252.]
Letter Second, of which a fragment may be given, is to one Cideville, a month later; all the more genuine as there was no chance of the King's hearing about this one. Cideville, some kind of literary Advocate at Rouen (who is wearisomely known to the reader of Voltaire's Letters), had done, what is rather an endemical disorder at this time, some Verses for the King of Prussia, which he wished to be presented to his Majesty. The presentation, owing to accidents, did not take place; hear how Voltaire, from his cobweb Palace at the Hague, busy with ANTI-MACHIAVEL, Van Duren and many other things,—18th October, 1740, on which day we find him writing many Letters,—explains the sad accident:—
VOLTAIRE TO M. DE CIDEVILLE (at Rouen).
"AT THE HAGUE, KING OF PRUSSIA'S PALACE, 18th October, 1740.
"... This is my case, dear Cideville. When you sent me, enclosed in your Letter, those Verses (among which there are some of charming and inimitable turn) for our Marcus Aurelius of the North, I did well design to pay my court to him with them. He was at that time to have come to Brussels incognito: we expected him there; but the Quartan Fever, which unhappily he still has, deranged all his projects. He sent me a courier to Brussels,"—mark that point, my Cideville;—"and so I set out to find him in the neighborhood of Cleve.