At Breslau during the winter, he was indefatigable in his poetical
labors. The most spirited lines, perhaps, that he ever wrote are to be
found in a bitter lampoon on Louis and Madame de Pompadour, which he
composed at this time, and sent to Voltaire. The verses were, indeed, so
good that Voltaire was afraid that he might himself be suspected of
having written them, or at least of having corrected them; and partly
from fright, partly, we fear, from love of mischief, sent them to the
Duke of Choiseul, then prime minister of France. Choiseul very wisely
determined to encounter Frederic at Frederic's own weapons, and applied
for assistance to Palissot, who had some skill as a versifier, and some
little talent for satire. Palissot produced some very stinging lines on
the moral and literary character of Frederic, and these lines the Duke
sent to Voltaire. This war of couplets, following close on the carnage
of Zorndorf and the conflagration of Dresden, illustrates well the
strangely compounded character of the King of Prussia.

At this moment he was assailed by a new enemy. Benedict the Fourteenth,
the best and wisest of the two hundred and fifty successors of St.
Peter, was no more. During the short interval between his reign and that
of his disciple Ganganelli, the chief seat in the Church of Rome was
filled by Rezzonico, who took the name of Clement the Thirteenth. This
absurd priest determined to try what the weight of his authority could
effect in favor of the orthodox Maria Theresa against a heretic king. At
the high mass on Christmas Day, a sword with a rich belt and scabbard, a
hat of crimson velvet lined with ermine, and a dove of pearls, the
mystic symbol of the Divine Comforter, were solemnly blessed by the
supreme pontiff, and were sent with great ceremony to Marshal Daun, the
conqueror of Kolin and Hochkirchen. This mark of favor had more than
once been bestowed by the Popes on the great champions of the faith.
Similar honors had been paid, more than six centuries earlier, by Urban
the Second to Godfrey of Bouillon. Similar honors had been conferred on
Alba for destroying the liberties of the Low Countries, and on John
Sobiesky after the deliverance of Vienna. But the presents which were
received with profound reverence by the Baron of the Holy Sepulchre in
the eleventh century, and which had not wholly lost their value even in
the seventeenth century, appeared inexpressibly ridiculous to a
generation which read