(AGREMENS); not remembering that he is King when he
meets his friends; indeed so completely forgetting it that he made me
too almost forget it, and I needed an effort of memory to recollect that
I here saw sitting at the foot of my bed a Sovereign who had an Army
of 100,000 men. That was the moment to have read your amiable Verses to
him:"--yes; but then?--"Madame du Chatelet, who was to have sent them
to me, did not, NE L'A PA FAIT." Alas, no, they are still at Brussels,
those charming Verses; and I, for a month past, am here in my cobweb
Palace! But I swear to you, the instant I return to Brussels, I, &c. &c.
[Voltaire, lxii. 282.]

Finally, here is what Friedrich thought of it, ten days after parting
with Voltaire. We will read this also (though otherwise ahead of us as
yet); to be certified on all sides, and sated for the rest of our lives,
concerning the Friedrich-Voltaire First Interview.

KING FRIEDRICH TO M. JORDAN (at Berlin).

POTSDAM, 24th September, 1740.

"Most respectable Inspector of the poor, the invalids, orphans, crazy
people and Bedlams,--I have read with mature meditation the very
profound Jordanic Letter which was waiting here;"--and do accept your
learned proposal.

"I have seen that Voltaire whom I was so curious to know; but I saw him
with the Quartan hanging on me, and my mind as unstrung as my body. With
men of his kind one ought not to be sick; one ought even to be specially
well, and in better health than common, if one could.

"He has the eloquence of Cicero, the mildness of Pliny, the wisdom of
Agrippa; he combines, in short, what is to be collected of virtues and
talents from the three greatest men of Antiquity. His intellect is at
work incessantly; every drop of ink is a trait of wit from his pen.
He declaimed his MAHOMET to us, an admirable Tragedy which he has
done,"--which the Official people smelling heresies in it ("toleration,"
"horrors of fanaticism," and the like) will not let him act, as readers
too well know:--"he transported us out of ourselves; I could only admire
and hold my tongue. The Du Chatelet is lucky to have him: for of the
good things he flings out at random, a person who had no faculty but
memory might make a brilliant Book. That Minerva has just published her
Work on PHYSICS: not wholly bad. It was Konig"--whom we know, and whose
late tempest in a certain teapot--"that dictated the theme to her: she
has adjusted, ornamented here and there with some touch picke