Voltaire, at his leisure in Brussels or the Old Palace and its spider-webs, writes much more expansively; not with insincerity, he either;--with endless airy graciosities, and ingenious twirls, and touches of flattering unction, which latter, he is aware, must not be laid on too thick. As thus:--In regard to the ANTI-MACHIAVEL,--Sire, deign to give me your permissions as to the scoundrel of a Van Duren; well worth while, Sire,--"IT is a monument for the latest posterity; the only Book worthy of a King for these fifteen hundred years."This is a strongish trowelful, thrown on direct, with adroitness;and even this has a kind of sincerity. Safer, however, to do it in the oblique or reflex way,--by Ambassador Cumas, for example:--"I will tell you boldly, Sir [you M. de Camas], I put more value on this Book (ANTI-MACHIAVEL) than on the Emperor Julian's CAESAR, or on the MAXIMS of Marcus Aurelius,"--I do indeed, having a kind of property in it withal! [Voltaire, OEuvres, lxxii. 280 (to Camas, 18th October, 1740).]
In fact, Voltaire too is beautiful, in this part of the Correspondence; but much in a twitter,--the Queen of Sheba, not the sedate Solomon, in prospect of what is coming. He plumes himself a little, we perceive, to his d'Argentals and French Correspondents, on this sublime intercourse he has got into with a Crowned Head, the cynosure of mankind:---Perhaps even you, my best friend, did not quite know me, and what merits I had!
Plumes himself a little; but studies to be modest withal; has not much of the peacock, and of the turkey has nothing, to his old friends. All which is very naive and transparent; natural and even pretty, on the part of M. de Voltaire as the weaker vessel.--For the rest, it is certain Maupertuis is getting under way at Paris towards the Cleve rendezvous. Brussels, too, is so near these Cleve Countries; within two days' good driving:--if only the times and routes would rightly intersect?
Friedrich's intention is by no means for a straight journey towards Cleve: he intends for Baireuth first, then back from Baireuth to Cleve,--making a huge southward elbow on the map, with Baireuth for apex or turning-point:--in this manner he will make the times suit, and have a convergence at Cleve. To Baireuth;--who knows if not farther? All summer there has gone fitfully a rumor, that he wished to see France; perhaps Paris itself incognito?
The rumor, which was heard even at Petersburg, [Raumer's
Beitrage (English Translation, London, 1837), p. 15(Finch's Despatch, 24th June, 1740).] is now sunk dead again;but privately, there is no doubt, a glimpse of the sublime French Nation would be welcome to Friedrich. He could never get to Travelling in his young time; missed his Grand Tour altogether, much as he wished it; and he is capable of pranks!--Enough, on Monday morning, 15th August, 1740, [Rodenbeck, p. 15, slightly in error: see Dickens's Interview, supra, p. 187.] Friedrich and Suite leave Potsdam; early enough; go, by Leipzig, by the route already known to readers, through Coburg and the Voigtland regions; Wilhelmina has got warning, sits eagerly expecting her Brother in the Hermitage at Baireuth, gladdest of shrill sisters;and full of anxieties how her Brother would now be. The travelling party consisted, besides the King, of seven persons: Prince August Wilhelm, King's next Brother, Heir-apparent if there come no children, now a brisk youth of eighteen; Leopold Prince of Anhalt-Dessau, Old Dessauer's eldest, what we may call the "Young Dessauer;" Colonel von Borck, whom we shall hear of again;Colonel von Stille, already heard of (grave men of fifty, these two); milk-beard Munchow, an Adjutant, youngest of the promoted Munchows; Algarotti, indispensable for talk; and Fredersdorf, the House-Steward and domestic Factotum, once Private in Schwerin's Regiment, whom Bielfeld so admired at Reinsberg, foreseeing what he would come to. One of Friedrich's late acts was to give Factotum Fredersdorf an Estate of Land (small enough, I fancy, but with country-house on it) for solace to the leisure of so useful a man,--studious of chemistry too, as I have heard. Seven in all, besides the King. [Rodenbeck, p. 19 (and for Chamberlain Fredersdorf's estate, p. 15).] Direct towards Baireuth, incognito, and at the top of their speed. Wednesday, 17th, they actually arrive. Poor Wilhelmina, she finds her Brother changed; become a King in fact, and sternly solitary; alone in soul, even as a King must be! [Wilhelmina, ii. 322, 323.]--"Algarotti, one of the first BEAUX-ESPRITS of this age," as Wilhelmina defines him,--Friend Algarotti, the young Venetian gentleman of elegance, in dusky skin, in very white linen and frills, with his fervid black eyes, "does the expenses of the conversation." He is full of elegant logic, has speculations on the great world and the little, on Nature, Art, Papistry, Anti-Papistry, and takes up the Opera in an earnest manner, as capable of being a school of virtue and the moral sublime. His respectable Books on the Opera and other topics are now all forgotten, and crave not to be mentioned. To me he is not supremely beautiful, though much the gentleman in manners as in ruffles, and ingeniously logical:--rather yellow to me, in mind as in skin, and with a taint of obsolete Venetian Macassar. But to Friedrich he is thrice-dear; who loves the Sharp faceted cut of the man, and does not object to his yellow or Extinct-Macassar qualities of mind.
