"She has scarcely the necessaries of life allowed her,"--spends regularly two-thirds of her income in charitable objects;translates French-Calvinist Devotional Works, for benefit of the German mind; and complains to no Small Devil, of never so sympathizing nature. "At Court she is lodged on the second floor [scandalous]. Schonhausen her Country House, with the exception of the Garden which is pretty enough,--our Shopkeepers of the Rue St.
Honore would sniff at such a lodging.
"Princess Amelia is rather amiable [thank you for nothing, Small Devil]; often out of temper because--this is so shocking a place for Ladies, especially for maiden Ladies. Lives with her Mother;special income very small;--Coadjutress of Quedlinburg; will be actual Abbess" in a year or two. [11th April, 1756: Preuss, xxvii.
p. xxxiv (of PREFACE).]
"Eldest Prince, Heir-Apparent,"--do not speak of him, Small Devil, for you are misinformed in every feature and particular:--enough, "he is fac-simile of his Brother. He has only 18,000 pounds a year, for self, Wife, Household and Children [two, both Boys];--and is said [falsely] to hoard, and to follow Trade, extensive Trade with his Brother's Woods.
"Prince Henri, who is just going to be married,"--thank you, Demon, for reminding us of that. Bride is Wilhelmina, Princess of Hessen-Cassel. Marriage, 25th June, 1752;--did not prove, in the end, very happy. A small contemporary event; which would concern Voltaire and others that concern us. Three months ago, April 14th, 1752, the Berlin Powder-Magazine flew aloft with horrible crash; [In
Helden-Geschichte (iii. 531) the details.]--and would be audible to Voltaire, in this his Second Act. Events, audible or not, never cease.
"Prince Henri," in Demon's opinion, "is the amiablest of the House.
He is polite, generous, and loves good company. Has 12,000 pounds a year left him by Papa." Not enough, as it proved. "If, on this Marriage, his Brother, who detests him [witness Reinsberg and other evidences, now and onward], gives him nothing, he won't be well off. They are furnishing a House for him, where he will lodge after wedding. Is reported to be--POTZDAMISTE [says the scandalous Small Devil, whom we are weary of contradicting],--Potsdamite, in certain respects. Poor Princess, what a destiny for you!
"Prince Ferdinand, little scraping of a creature (PETIT CHAFOUIN), crapulous to excess, niggardly in the extreme, whom everybody avoids,"--much more whose Portrait, by a Magic-lantern of this kind: which let us hastily shut, and fling into the cellar!--"Little Ferdinand, besides his 15,000 pounds a year, Papa's bequest, gets considerable sums given him. Has lodging in the King's House; goes shifting and visiting about, wherever he can live gratis; and strives all he can to amass money. Has to be in boots and uniform every three days. Three months of the year practically with his regiment: but the shifts he has for avoiding expense are astonishing." ...
What an illuminative "Idea" are the Walpole-Selwyn Circles picking up for their money!--Chapter XI.
THIRD ACT AND CATASTROPHE OF THE VOLTAIRE VISIT.
Meantime there has a fine Controversy risen, of mathematical, philosophical and at length of very miscellaneous nature, concerning that Konig-Maupertuis dissentience on the LAW OF THRIFT.
Wonderful Controversy, much occupying the so-called Philosophic or Scientific world; especially the idler population that inhabit there. Upon this item of the Infinitely Little,--which has in our time sunk into Nothing-at-all, and but for Voltaire, and the accident of his living near it, would be forgotten altogether,--we must not enter into details; but a few words to render Voltaire's share in it intelligible will be, in the highest degree, necessary.
Here, in brief form, rough and ready, are the successive stages of the Business; the origin and first stage of which have been known to us for some time past:--"SEPTEMBER, 1750, Konig, his well-meant visit to Berlin proving so futile, had left Maupertuis in the humor we saw;--pirouetting round his Apartment, in tempests of rage at such contradiction of sinners on his sublime Law of Thrift; and fulminating permission to Konig:
'No time to read your Paper of Contradictions; publish it in Leipzig, in Jericho; anywhere in the Earth, in Heaven, in the Other Place, where you have the opportunity!' Konig, returning on these terms, had nothing for it but to publish his Paper; and did publish it, in the Leipzig Acta Eruditorum for March, 1751. There it stands, legible to this day: and if any of the human species should again think of reading it, I believe it will be found a reasonable, solid and decisive Paper; of steadfast, openly articulate, by no means insolent, tone; considerably modifying Maupertuis's Law of Thrift, or Minimum of Action;--fatal to the claim of its being a 'Sublime Discovery,' or indeed, so far as TRUE, any discovery at all. [In Acta Eruditorum (Lipsiae, 1751): "De universali Principio AEquilibrii et Motus." By no means uncivil to Maupertuis; though obliged to controvert him. For example:
"Quoe itaque de Minima Actionis in modificationibus modum obtinente in genere proferuntur vehementer laudo;" "continent nempe facundum longeque pulcherrimum Dynamices sublimioris principium, cujus vim in difficillimis quoestionibus soepe expertus fui." ]
