h a pleasant supper. . . . Never in any place
in the world was there more freedom of speech touching the superstitions
of men, and never were they treated with more banter and contempt. God
is respected, but all they who have cajoled men in His name are treated
unsparingly."

The coarseness of the Germans and the mocking infidelity of the French
vied with each other in license. Sometimes Voltaire felt that things
were carried rather far. "Here be we, three or four foreigners, like
monks in an abbey," he wrote; "please God the father abbot may content
himself with making fun of us."

Literary or philosophical questions already gave rise sometimes to
disagreements. "I am at present correcting the second edition which the
King of Prussia is going to publish of the history of his country," wrote
Voltaire; "fancy! in order to appear more impartial, he falls tooth and
nail on his grandfather. I have lightened the blows as much as I could.
I rather like this grandfather, because he displayed magnificence, and
has left some fine monuments. I had great trouble about softening down
the terms in which the grandson reproaches his ancestor for his vanity in
having got himself made a king; it is a vanity from which his descendants
derive pretty solid advantages, and the title is not at all a
disagreeable one. At last I said to him, 'It is your grandfather, it is
not mine; do what you please with him,' and I confined myself to weeding
the expressions."

Whilst Voltaire was defending the Great Elector against his successor,
a certain coldness was beginning to slide into his relations with
Maupertuis, president of the Academy founded by the king at Berlin.
"Maupertuis has not easygoing springs," the poet wrote to his niece; "he
takes my dimensions sternly with his quadrant. It is said that a little
envy enters into his calculations." Already Voltaire's touchy vanity was
shying at the rivals he encountered in the king's favor. "So it is
known, then, by this time at Paris, my dear child," he writes to his
niece, "that we have played the Mort de Cesar at Potsdam, that Prince
Henry is a good actor, has no accent, and is very amiable, and that this
is the place for pleasure? All that is true . . . but . . . The
king's supper-parties are delightful; at them people talk reason, wit,
science; freedom prevails thereat; he is the soul of it all; no ill
temper, no clouds, at any rate no storms; my life is free and well
occu