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 INVERSE).--"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 (LEMEDECIN 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 Iam 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 LOUISQUATORZE, which I am about to print in Berlin." Surely,--but also this:--"I am unwell, I am a sick man born. And withal I am obliged to work, almost as much as your Majesty. I pass the whole day alone.
If you would permit that I might shift to the Apartment next the one I have,--to that where General Bredow slept last winter,--I should work more commodiously. My Secretary (Collini) and I could work together there. I should have a little more sun, which is a great point for me.--Only the whim of a sick man, perhaps!
Well, even so, your Majesty will have pity on it. You promised to make me happy." [ OEuvres de Frederic,
xxii. 277.]
