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, I could 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