loor in Madame du Chatelet's here. He
assures me of his favor, of the perfect freedom I should have;--and I am
running to Paris [did not just yet run] to my slavery and persecution.
I could fancy myself a small Athenian, refusing the bounties of the King
of Persia. With this difference, however, one had liberty [not slavery]
at Athens; and I am sure there were many Cidevilles there, instead of
one,"--HELAS, my Cideville!

2. TO MARQUIS D'ARGENSON (worthy official Gentleman, not War-Minister
now or afterwards; War-Minister's senior brother,--Voltaire's old
school-fellows, both these brothers, in the College of Louis le
Grand).... "I have just been to see the King of Prussia in these late
days [in fact, quitted him only yesterday; both of us, after a week
together, leaving Aix yesterday]: I have seen him as one seldom sees
Kings,--much at my ease, in my own room, in the chimney-nook, whither
the same man who has gained two Battles would come and talk familiarly,
as Scipio did with Terence. You will tell me, I am not Terence; true,
but neither is he altogether Scipio.

"I learned some extraordinary things,"--things not from Friedrich at
all: mere dinner-table rumors; about the 16,000 English landing here
("18,000" he calls them, and farther on, "20,000") with the other 16,000
PLUS 6,000 of Hanoverian-Hessian sort, expecting 20,000 Dutch to join
them,--who perhaps will not? "M. de Neipperg [Governor of Luxemburg now]
is come hither to Brussels; but brings no Dutch troops with him, as
he had hoped,"--Dutch perhaps won't rise, after all this flogging and
hoisting?" Perhaps we may soon get a useful and glorious Peace, in
spite of my Lord Stair, and of M. van Haren, the Tyrtaeus of the
States-General [famed Van Haren, eyes in a fine Dutch frenzy rolling,
whose Cause-of-Liberty verses let no man inquire after]: Stair prints
Memoirs, Van Haren makes Odes; and with so much prose and so much verse,
perhaps their High and Slow Mightinesses [Excellency Fenelon sleeplessly
busy persuading them, and native Gravitation SLEEPILY ditto] will sit
quiet. God grant it!

"The English want to attack us on our own soil [actually Stair's plan];
and we cannot pay them in that kind. The match is too unfair! If we kill
the whole 20,000 of them, we merely send 20,000 Heretics to--What shall
I say?--A L'ENFER, and gain nothing; if they kill us, they even feed
at our expense in doing it. Better have no quarrels except on Locke and
Newton! The quarr