ot write to
him, the reason is, I have no news to send: I should be as exact as I am
devoted, if my correspondence could be useful or agreeable to him.

"Won't you have me send you some Books? If I be still in Holland when
your orders come, I will obey in a moment. I pray you do not forget me
to M. de Keyserling,"--Caesarion whom we once had at Cirey; a headlong
dusky little man of wit (library turned topsy-turvy, as Wilhelmina
called him), whom we have seen.

"Tell me, I beg, if the enormous monad of Volfius--[Wolf, would the
reader like to hear about him? If so, he has only to speak!] is arguing
at Marburg, at Berlin, or at Hall [HALLE, which is a very different
place].

"Adieu, Monsieur: you can address your orders to me 'At the Hague:'
they will be forwarded wherever I am; and I shall be, anywhere on
earth,--Yours forever (A VOUS POUR JAMAIS)." [Voltaire, lxxii. 252.]

Letter Second, of which a fragment may be given, is to one Cideville, a
month later; all the more genuine as there was no chance of the King's
hearing about this one. Cideville, some kind of literary Advocate at
Rouen (who is wearisomely known to the reader of Voltaire's Letters),
had done, what is rather an endemical disorder at this time, some Verses
for the King of Prussia, which he wished to be presented to his Majesty.
The presentation, owing to accidents, did not take place; hear how
Voltaire, from his cobweb Palace at the Hague, busy with ANTI-MACHIAVEL,
Van Duren and many other things,--18th October, 1740, on which day we
find him writing many Letters,--explains the sad accident:--

VOLTAIRE TO M. DE CIDEVILLE (at Rouen).

"AT THE HAGUE, KING OF PRUSSIA'S PALACE, 18th October, 1740.

"... This is my case, dear Cideville. When you sent me, enclosed in
your Letter, those Verses (among which there are some of charming and
inimitable turn) for our Marcus Aurelius of the North, I did well design
to pay my court to him with them. He was at that time to have come to
Brussels incognito: we expected him there; but the Quartan Fever, which
unhappily he still has, deranged all his projects. He sent me a courier
to Brussels,"--mark that point, my Cideville;--"and so I set out to find
him in the neighborhood of Cleve.

"It was there I saw one of the amiablest men in the world, who forms the
charm of society, who would be everywhere sought after if he were not
King; a philosopher without austerity; full of sweetness, complaisance
and obliging ways