In La Beaumelle's—Vie de Maupertuis—(printed at last, Paris, 1856, after lying nearly a century in manuscript, an obtuse worthless leaden little Book), there is much loud droning and detailing, about this COSMOLOGIE, this sublime "Discovery," and the other sublime Discoveries, Insights and Apocalyptic Utterances of Maupertuis; though in so confused a fashion, it is seldom you can have the poor pleasure of learning exactly when, or except by your own severe scrutiny, exactly what. For reasons that will appear, certain of those Apocalyptic Utterances by Perpetual President Maupertuis have since got a new interest, and one has actually a kind of wish to read the IPSISSIMA VERBA of them, at this date! But in La Beaumelle (his modern Editor lying fast asleep throughout) there is no vestige of help. Nay Maupertuis's own Book, [—OEuvres de Maupertuis,—Lyon, 1756, 4 vols. 4to.] luxurious cream-paper Quartos, or Octaves made four-square by margin,—which you buy for these and the cognate objects,—proves altogether worthless to you. The Maupertuis Quartos are not readable for their own sake (solemnly emphatic statement of what you already know; concentrated struggle to get on wing, and failure by so narrow a miss; struggle which gets only on tiptoe, and won't cease wriggling and flapping); and then (to your horror) they prove to be carefully cleaned of all the Maupertuis-VOLTAIRE matter;—edition being SUBSEQUENT to that world-famous explosion. CAVEAT EMPTOR.—Our Excerpt proceeds:—
"Industrious Konig, like other mathematical people, has been listening to these Oracles on the 'Law of Minimum,' by the Perpetual President; and grieves to find, after study, That said Law does not quite hold; that in fact it is, like Descartes's old key or general door, worth little or nothing; as Leibnitz long ago seems to have transiently recognized. Konig has put his strictures on paper: but will not dream of publishing, till the Perpetual President have examined them and satisfied himself; and that is Konig's business at present, as he knocks on Maupertuis, while Sol is crossing the Line. Maupertuis has a House of the due style: Wife a daughter of Minister Borck's (high Borcks, 'old as the DIUVEL'); no children;—his back courts always a good deal dirty with pelicans, bustards, perhaps snakes and other zoological wretches, which sometimes intrude into the drawing-rooms, otherwise very fine. A man of some whims, some habits; arbitrary by nature, but really honest, though rather sublimish in his interior, with red Wig and yellow bottom.
"Konig, all filial gladness, is received gladly;—though, by degrees, with some surprise, on the paternal part, to find Konig ripened out of son, client and pupil, into independent posture of a grown man. Frankly certain enough about himself, and about the axioms of mathematics. Standing, evidently, on his own legs; kindly as ever, but on these new terms,—in fact rather an outspoken free-and-easy fellow (I should guess), not thinking that offence can be taken among friends. Formey confesses, this was uncomfortable to Maupertuis; in fact, a shock which he could not recover from. They had various meetings, over dinner aud otherwise, at the Perpetual President's, for perhaps two weeks at this time (dates all to be had in Formey's Note-book, if anybody would consult); in the whole course of which the shock to the Perpetual President increased, instead of diminishing. Republican freedom and equality is evidently Konig's method; Konig heeds not a whit the oracular talent or majestic position of Maupertuis; argues with the frankest logic, when he feels dissent;—drives a majestic Perpetual President, especially in the presence of third parties, much out of patience. Thus, one evening, replying to some argument of the Perpetual President's, he begins: 'My poor friend, MON PAUVRE AMI, don't you perceive, then'—Upon which Maupertuis sprang from his chair, violently stamping, and pirouetted round the room, 'Poor friend, poor friend? are you so rich: then!' frank Konig merely grinning till the paroxysm passed. [Formey, i. 177.] Konig went home again, RE INFECTA about the end of the month."
Such a Konig—had better not have come! As to his strictures on the LAW OF THRIFT, the arguings on them, alone together, or with friends by, merely set Maupertuis pirouetting: and as to the Konig Manuscripts on them "to be published in the Leipzig ACTA, after your remarks and permission," Maupertuis absolutely refused to look at said Manuscripts: "Publish them there, here, everywhere, in the Devil and his Grandmother's name; and then there is an end, Monsieur!" Konig went his ways therefore, finding nothing else for it; published his strictures, in the Leipzig ACTA in March next,—and never saw Maupertuis again, for one result, out of several that followed! I have no doubt he was out to Voltaire, more than once, in this fortnight; and eat "the King's roast" pleasantly with that eminent old friend. Voltaire always thought him a BON GARCON (justly, by all the evidence I have); and finds his talk agreeable, and his Berlin news—especially that of Maupertuis and his explosive pirouettings. Adieu, Herr Professor; you know not, with your Leipzig ACTA and Fragment of Leibnitz, what an explosion you are preparing!
Chapter VII.—M. DE VOLTAIRE HAS A PAINFUL JEW-LAWSUIT.
Voltaire's Terrestrial Paradise at Berlin did not long continue perfect. Scarcely had that grand Carrousel vanished in the azure firmaments, when little clouds began rising in its stead; and before long, black thunder-storms of a very strange and even dangerous character.
It must have been a painful surprise to Friedrich to hear from his Voltaire, some few weeks after those munificences, That he, Voltaire, was in very considerable distress of mind, from the bad, not to call it the felonious and traitorous, conduct of M. D'Arnaud,—once Friedrich's shoeing-horn and "rising-sun" for Voltaire's behoof; now a vague flaunting creature, without significance to Friedrich or anybody! That D'Arnaud had done this and done that, of an Anti-Voltairian, treasonous nature;—and that, in short, life was impossible in the neighborhood of such a D'Arnaud!"D'Arnaud has corrupted my Clerk (Prince Henri hungering in vain for LA PUCELLE, has got sight of it, in this way); [Clerk was dismissed accordingly (one Tinois, an ingenious creature),—and COLLINI appointed in his stead.] D'Arnaud has been gossiping to Freron and the Paris Newspapers; D'Arnaud has" [Voltaire to Friedrich (—OEuvres de Frederic,—xxii. 257), undated, "November, 1750.">[—Has, in effect, been a flaunting young fool; of dissolute, esurient, slightly profligate turn; occasionally helping in the Theatricals, and much studious to make himself notable, and useful to the Princely kind. A D'Arnaud of nearly no significance, to Friedrich or to anybody. A D'Arnaud whose bits of fooleries and struttings about, in the peacock or jackdaw way, might surely have been below the notice of a Trismegistus!
Friedrich, painfully made sensible what a skinless explosive Trismegistus he has got on hand, answers, I suppose, in words little or nothing,—in Letters, I observe, answers absolutely nothing, to Voltaire repeating and re-repeating;—does simply dismiss D'Arnaud (a "BON DIABLE," as Voltaire, to impartial people, calls him), or accept D'Arnaud's demission, and cut the poor fool adrift. Who sallies out into infinite space, to Paris latterly ("alive there in 1805"); and claims henceforth perpetual oblivion from us and mankind. And now there will be peace in our garden of the gods, and perpetual azure will return?
Alas, D'Arnaud is not well gone, when there has begun brewing in threefold secrecy a mass of galvanic matter, which, in few weeks more, filled the Heavens with miraculous foul gases and the blackness of darkness;—which, in short, exploded about New-year's time, as the world-famous VOLTAIRE-HIRSCH LAWSUIT, still remembered, though only as a portent and mystery, by observant on-lookers. Of which it is now our sad duty to say something; though nowhere, in the Annals of Jurisprudence, is there a more despicable thing, or a deeper involved in lies and deliriums by current reporters of it, about which the sane mind can be called upon accidentally to speak a word. Beaten, riddled, shovelled, washed in many waters, by a patient though disgusted Predecessor in this field, there lies by me a copious but wearisome Narrative of this matter;—the more vivid portions of which, if rightly disengaged, and shown in sequence, may satisfy the curious.