serious, you see!--Prussian Minister at the Hague delivers, and dockets
accordingly. To Konig's astonishment; who is in a scene of deep trouble
at this time; Royal Highness the Stadtholder suddenly dead, or dying:
'died October 22d; leaving a very young Heir, and a very sorrowful Widow
and Country.' Much to think of, that lies apart from the Maupertuis
matter! Which latter, however, is so very serious too, his Prussian
Majesty's Minister at Berne is now charged to make new perquisition for
the Leibnitz Original there: In short, within one month that Document is
peremptorily wanted at Berlin."

High proceedings these;--and calculated to have one result, if no other.
Namely, that, at this point, as readers can fancy, the idler Public,
seeing a street-quarrel in progress, began to take interest in the
Question of MINIMUM; and quasi-scientific gentlemen to gather round, and
express, with cheery capable look, their opinions,--still legible in the
vanished JUGEMENS LIBRES (of Hamburg), GAZETTE DE SAVANS (Leipzig),
and other poor Shadows of JOURNALS, if you daringly evoke them from the
other side of Styx. Which, the whole matter being now so indisputably
extinct, shadowy, Stygian, we will not here be guilty of doing; but
hasten to the catastrophes, that have still a memorability.

"Konig, having in fact nothing more to say about the Leibnitz Excerpt,
was in no breathless haste to obey his summons; he sat almost two months
before answering anything. Did then write however, in a friendly strain
to Maupertuis (December 10th, 1751). [--Maupertuisiana,--No. iv. 132.]
Almost on which same day, as it chanced, the ACADEMIE, after two months'
dignified waiting, had in brief terms repeated its order on Konig.
[December 11th, 1751 (Ib. 137). To which Konig makes no special answer
(having as good as answered the day before);--but does silently send
off to Switzerland to make inquiries; and does write once or twice more,
when there is occasion for explaining;--always in a clear, sonorous,
manfully firm and respectful tone: 'That he himself had, or has, no
kind of reason to doubt the authenticity of the Leibnitz Letter; that to
himself (and, so far as he can judge, to Maupertuis) the question of its
authenticity is without special interest;--he, Konig, having thrown it
in as a mere marginal illustration, which decides nothing, either for
or against the Law of Thrift. That he has, in obedience to the Academy,
caused search to be made in Swit