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: Maupertuis,
Voltaire, Algarotti, Keyserling;--Rasfeld, Rambonet can sit as simulacra
or mute accompaniment. Voltaire arrived on Sunday evening; stayed till
Wednesday. Wednesday morning, 14th of the month, the Party broke up:
Voltaire rolling off to left hand, towards Brussels, or the Hague; King
to right, on inspection business, and circuitously homewards. Three
Suppers there had been, two busy Days intervening; discussions about
Fate and the Androgynoi of Plato by no means the one thing done by
Voltaire and the rest, on this occasion. We shall find elsewhere, "he
declaimed his MAHOMET" (sublime new Tragedy, not yet come out), in the
course of these three evenings, to the "speechless admiration" of his
Royal Host, for one; and, in the daytime, that he even drew his pen
about the Herstal Business, which is now getting to its crisis, and
wrote one of the Manifestoes, still discoverable. And we need not doubt,
in spite of his now sneering tone, that things ran high and grand here,
in this paltry little Schloss of Moyland; and that those three were
actually Suppers of the Gods, for the time being.

"Councillor Rambonet," with the holed hat and unsymmetric wig,
continues Voltaire in the satirical vein, "had meanwhile mounted a hired
hack (CHEVAL DE LOUAGE;" mischievous Voltaire, I have no doubt he went
on wheels, probably of his own): "he rode all night; and next morning
arrived at the gates of Liege; where he took Act in the name of the
King his Master, whilst 2,000 men of the Wesel Troops laid Liege under
contribution. The pretext of this fine Marching of Troops,"--not a
pretext at all, but the assertion, correct in all points, of just claims
long trodden down, and now made good with more spirit than had been
expected,--"was certain rights which the King pretended to, over a
suburb of Liege. He even charged me to work at a Manifesto; and I made
one, good or bad; not doubting but a King with whom I supped, and who
called me his friend, must be in the right. The affair soon settled
itself by means of a million of ducats,"--nothing like the sum, as we
shall see,--"which he exacted by weight, to clear the costs of the Tour
to Strasburg, which, according to his complaint in that Poetic Letter
[Doggerel above given], were so heavy."

That is Voltaire's