So that all our knowledge reduces itself to this one point:
of finding Moyland in the Map, with DATE, with REMINISCENCE to us, hanging by it henceforth! Good. [Stieler's Deutschland (excellent Map in 25 Pieces), Piece 12.--Till is a mile or two northeast from Moyland; Moyland about 5 or 6 southeast from Cleve.]
Mors--which is near the Town of Ruhrort, about midway between Wesel and Dusseldorf--must be some forty miles from Moyland, forty-five from Cleve; southward of both. So that the place, "A DEUX LIEUES DE CLEVES," is, even by Voltaire's showing, this Moyland; were there otherwise any doubt upon it. "CHATEAU DEMEUSE"--hanging out a prospect of MORS to us--is bad usage to readers. Of an intelligent man, not to say a Trismegistus of men, one expects he will know in what town he is, after three days'
experience, as here. But he does not always; he hangs out a mere "shadow of Mars by moonlight," till we learn better. Duvernet, his Biographer, even calls it "SLEUS-MEUSE;" some wonderful idea of Sluices and a River attached to it, in Duvernet's head! [Duvernet (2d FORM of him,--that is, Vie de Voltaire
par T. J. D. V.), p. 117.]
WHAT VOLTAIRE THOUGHT OF THE INTERVIEW TWENTY YEARS AFTERWARDSOf the Interview itself, with general bird's-eye view of the Visit combined (in a very incorrect state), there is direct testimony by Voltaire himself. Voltaire himself, twenty years after, in far other humor, all jarred into angry sarcasm, for causes we shall see by and by,--Voltaire, at the request of friends, writes down, as his Friedrich Reminiscences, that scandalous VIE PRIVEE above spoken of, a most sad Document; and this is the passage referring to "the little Place in the neighborhood of Cleve," where Friedrich now waited for him: errors corrected by our laborious Friend. After quoting something of that Strasburg Doggerel, the whole of which is now too well known to us, Voltaire proceeds:--"From Strasburg he," King Friedrich, "went to see his Lower German Provinces; he said he would come and see me incognito at Brussels.
We prepared a fine house for him,"--were ready to prepare such hired house as we had for him, with many apologies for its slight degree of perfection (ERROR FIRST),--"but having fallen ill in the little Mansion-Royal of Meuse (CHATEAU DE MEUSE), a couple of leagues from Cleve,"--fell ill at Wesel; and there is no Chateau de MEUSE in the world (ERRORS 2d AND 3d),--"he wrote to me that he expected I would make the advances. I went, accordingly, to present my profound homages. Maupertuis, who already had his views, and was possessed with the rage of being President to an Academy, had of his own accord,"--no, being invited, and at my suggestion (ERROR 4th),--"presented himself there; and was lodged with Algarotti and Keyserling [which latter, I suppose, had come from Berlin, not being of the Strasburg party, he] in a garret of this Palace.
"At the door of the court, I found, by way of guard, one soldier.
Privy-Councillor Rambonet, Minister of State--[very subaltern man;never heard of him except in the Herstal Business, and here] was walking in the court; blowing in his fingers to keep them warm."Sunday night, 11th September, 1740; world all bathed in moonshine;and mortals mostly shrunk into their huts, out of the raw air.
"He" Rambonet "wore big linen ruffles at his wrists, very dirty [visibly so in the moonlight? ERROR 5th extends AD LIBITUM over all the following details]; a holed hat; an old official periwig,"--ruined into a totally unsymmetric state, as would seem,--"one side of which hung down into one of his pockets, and the other scarcely crossed his shoulder. I was told, this man was now intrusted with an affair of importance here; and that proved true,"--the Herstal Affair.
"I was led into his Majesty's apartment. Nothing but four bare walls there. By the light of a candle, I perceived, in a closet, a little truckle-bed two feet and a half broad, on which lay a man muffled up in a dressing-gown of coarse blue duffel: this was the King, sweating and shivering under a wretched blanket there, in a violent fit of fever. I made my reverence, and began the acquaintance by feeling his pulse, as if I had been his chief physician. The fit over, he dressed himself, and took his place at table. Algarotti, Keyserling, Maupertuis, and the King's Envoy to the States-General"--one Rasfeld (skilled in HERSTAL matters, Icould guess),--"we were of this supper, and discussed, naturally in a profound manner, the Immortality of the Soul, Liberty, Fate, the Androgynes of Plato [the ANDROGYNOI, or Men-Women, in Plato's CONVIVIUM; by no means the finest symbolic fancy of the divine Plato],--and other small topics of that nature." [Voltaire, OEuvres, (Piece once called VIE PRIVEE), ii. 26, 27.]
This is Voltaire's account of the Visit,--which included three "Suppers," all huddled into one by him here;--and he says nothing more of it; launching off now into new errors, about HERSTAL, the ANTI-MACHIAVEL, and so forth: new and uglier errors, with much more of mendacity and serious malice in them, than in this harmless half-dozen now put on the score against him.
Of this Supper-Party, I know by face four of the guests:
