IS ON LEAVE OF ABSENCE, NEAR BY; WISHES TO BE CALLED AGAIN (No date).—"Sire, if you like free criticism, if you tolerate sincere praises, if you wish to perfect a Work [ART DE LA GUERRE, or some other as sublime], which you alone in Europe are capable of doing, you have only to bid a Hermit come upstairs. At your orders for all his life." [Ib. 261.]
IN BERLIN PALACE: PLEASE DON'T TURN ME OUT! (No date)—... "Next to you, I love work and retirement. Nobody whatever complains of me. I ask of your Majesty, in order to keep unaltered the happiness I owe to you, this favor, Not to turn me out of the Apartment you deigned to give me at Berlin, till I go for Paris [always talking of that]. If I were to leave it, they would put in the Gazettes that I"—Oh, what would n't they put in, of one that, belonging to King Friedrich, lives as it were in the Disc of the Sun, conspicuous to everybody!—"I will go out [of the Apartment] when some Prince, with a Suite needing it to lodge in, comes; and then the thing will be honorable. Chasot [gone to Paris] has been talking"—unguarded things of me!"I have not uttered the least complaint of Chasot: I never will of Chasot, nor of those who have set him on [Maupertuis belike]: I forgive everything, I!" [Ib. 270.]
ROTHENBURG IS ILL; VOLTAIRE HAS BEEN TO SEE HIM ("Berlin, 14th," no month; year, too surely, 1751, as we shall find! Letter is IN VERSE).—"Lieberkuhn was going to kill poor Rothenburg; to send him off to Pluto,—for liking his dish a little;—monster Lieberkuhn! But Doctor Joyous," your reader, La Mettrie,—led by, need I say whom?—"has brought him back to us:—think of Lieberkuhn's solemn stare! Pretty contrasts, those, of sublime Quacksalverism, with Sense under the mask of Folly. May the haemorrhoidal vein"—follows HERE, note it, exquisite reader, that of "CUL DE MON HEROS," cited above!—...
And then (a day or two after; King too haemorrhoidal to come twenty miles, but anxious to know): "Sire, no doubt Doctor Joyous (LE MEDECIN JOYEUX) has informed your Majesty that when we arrived, the Patient was sleeping tranquil; and Cothenius assured us, in Latin, that there was no danger. I know not what has passed since, but I am persuaded your Majesty approves my journey" (of a street or two),—MUST you speak of it, then!
GOES TO AN EVENING-PARTY NOW AND THEN (To Niece Denis).—... "Madame Tyrconnel [French Excellency's Wife] has plenty of fine people at her house on an evening; perhaps too many" (one of the first houses in Berlin, this of my Lord Tyrcannel's, which we frequent a good deal).... "Madame got very well through her part of ANDROMAQUE [in those old play-acting times of ours]: never saw actresses with finer eyes,"—how should you!
"As to Milord Tyrconnel, he is an Anglais of dignity,"—Irish in reality, and a thought blusterous. "He has a condensed (SERRE) caustic way of talk; and I know not what of frank which one finds in the English, and does not usually find in persons of his trade. French Tragedies played at Berlin, I myself taking part; an Englishman Envoy of France there: strange circumstances these, are n't they?" [To D'Argental this (—OEuvres de Voltaire,—lxxiv. 289).] Yes, that latter especially; and Milord Marischal our Prussian Envoy with you! Which the English note, sulkily, as a weather-symptom.
AT POTSDAM, BIG DEVILS OF GRENADIERS (No date).—... "But, Sire, one is n't always perched on the summit of Parnassus; one is a man. There are sicknesses about; I did not bring an athlete's health to these parts; and the scorbutic humor which is eating my life renders me truly, of all that are sick, the sickest. I am absolutely alone from morning till night. My one solace is the necessary pleasure of taking the air, I bethink me of walking, and clearing my head a little, in your Gardens at Potsdam. I fancy it is a permitted thing; I present myself, musing;—I find huge devils of Grenadiers, who clap bayonets in my belly, who cry FURT, SACRAMENT, and DER KONIG [OFF, SACKERMENT, THE KING, quite tolerably spelt]! And I take to my heels, as Austrians and Saxons would do before them. Have you ever read, that in Titus's or Marcus-Aurelius's Gardens, a poor devil of a Gaulish Poet"—In short, it shall be mended. [—OEuvres de Frederic,—xxii. 273.]
HAVE BEEN LAYING IT ON TOO THICK (No date; IN VERSE).—"Marcus Aurelius was wont to"—(Well, we know who that is: What of Marcus, then?)—"A certain lover of his glory [STILL IN VERSE] spoke once, at Supper, of a magnanimity of Marcus's;—at which Marcus [flattery too thick] rather gloomed, and sat quite silent,—which was another fine saying of his [ENDS VERSE, STARTS PROSE]:—
"Pardon, Sire, some hearts that are full of you! To justify myself, I dare supplicate your Majesty to give one glance at this Letter (lines pencil-marked), which has just come from M. de Chauvelin, Nephew of the famous GARDE-DES-SCEAUX. Your Majesty cannot gloom at him, writing these from the fulness of his heart; nor at me, who"—Pooh; no, then! Perhaps do you a NICHE again,—poor restless fellow! [Ib. 280.]
POTSDAM PALACE (No date): SIRE, NZAY I CHANGE MY ROOM?... "I ascend to your antechambers, to find some one by whom I may ask permission to speak with you. I find nobody: I have to return:" and what I wanted was this, "your protection for my SIECLE DE LOUIS QUATORZE, which I am about to print in Berlin." Surely,—but also this:—