l vous est permis de badiner
sur mon sujet comme il vous plaira.' '_La Pucelle! La Pucelle! La
Pucelle!_ et encore _La Pucelle_!' he exclaims. 'Pour l'amour de Dieu,
ou plus encore pour l'amour de vous-meme, envoyez-la-moi.' And at last
Voltaire was softened. He sent off a few fragments of his
_Pucelle_--just enough to whet Frederick's appetite--and he declared
himself reconciled, 'Je vous ai aime tendrement,' he wrote in March
1749; 'j'ai ete fache contre vous, je vous ai pardonne, et actuellement
je vous aime a la folie.' Within a year of this date his situation had
undergone a complete change. Madame du Chatelet was dead; and his
position at Versailles, in spite of the friendship of Madame de
Pompadour, had become almost as impossible as he had pretended it to
have been in 1743. Frederick eagerly repeated his invitation; and this
time Voltaire did not refuse. He was careful to make a very good
bargain; obliged Frederick to pay for his journey; and arrived at Berlin
in July 1750. He was given rooms in the royal palaces both at Berlin and
Potsdam; he was made a Court Chamberlain, and received the Order of
Merit, together with a pension of L800 a year. These arrangements caused
considerable amusement in Paris; and for some days hawkers, carrying
prints of Voltaire dressed in furs, and crying 'Voltaire le prussien!
Six sols le fameux prussien!' were to be seen walking up and down the
Quays.

The curious drama that followed, with its farcical [Greek: peripeteia]
and its tragi-comic _denouement_, can hardly be understood without a
brief consideration of the feelings and intentions of the two chief
actors in it. The position of Frederick is comparatively plain. He had
now completely thrown aside the last lingering remnants of any esteem
which he may once have entertained for the character of Voltaire. He
frankly thought him a scoundrel. In September 1749, less than a year
before Voltaire's arrival, and at the very period of Frederick's most
urgent invitations, we find him using the following language in a letter
to Algarotti: 'Voltaire vient de faire un tour qui est indigne.' (He had
been showing to all his friends a garbled copy of one of Frederick's
letters).

Il meriterait d'etre fleurdelise au Parnasse. C'est bien dommage
qu'une ame aussi lache soit unie a un aussi beau genie. Il a les
gentillesses et les malices d'un singe. Je vous conterai ce que
c'est, lorsque je vous reverrai; cependant je ne f