llection the cunning and mischievous pranks by
which Voltaire had provoked him, some expression of contempt and
displeasure broke forth in the midst of eulogy. It was much worse when
anything recalled to the mind of Voltaire the outrages which he and his
kinswoman had suffered at Frankfort. All at once his flowing panegyric
was turned into invective. "Remember how you behaved to me. For your
sake I have lost the favor of my native king. For your sake I am an
exile from my country. I loved you. I trusted myself to you. I had no
wish but to end my life in your service. And what was my reward?
Stripped of all that you had bestowed on me, the key, the order, the
pension, I was forced to fly from your territories. I was hunted as if I
had been a deserter from your grenadiers. I was arrested, insulted,
plundered. My niece was dragged through the mud of Frankfort by your
soldiers, as if she had been some wretched follower of your camp. You
have great talents. You have good qualities. But you have one odious
vice. You delight in the abasement of your fellow creatures. You have
brought disgrace on the name of philosopher. You have given some color
to the slanders of the bigots, who say that no confidence can be placed
in the justice or humanity of those who reject the Christian faith."
Then the King answers, with less heat but equal severity: "You know that
you behaved shamefully in Prussia. It was well for you that you had to
deal with a man so indulgent to the infirmities of genius as I am. You
richly deserved to see the inside of a dungeon. Your talents are not
more widely known than your faithlessness and your malevolence. The
grave itself is no asylum from your spite. Maupertuis is dead; but you
still go on calumniating and deriding him, as if you had not made him
miserable enough while he was living. Let us have no more of this. And,
above all, let me hear no more of your niece. I am sick to death of her
name. I can bear with your faults for the sake of your merits; but she
has not written Mahomet or Merope."

An explosion of this kind, it might be supposed, would necessarily put
an end to all amicable communication. But it was not so. After every
outbreak of ill humor this extraordinary pair became more loving than
before, and exchanged compliments and assurances of mutual regard with a
wonderful air of sincerity.

It may well be supposed that men who wrote thus to each other were not
very guarded in what they said of ea