that was wanted was a little expert advice;
and obviously Voltaire was the man to supply it--Voltaire, the one true
heir of the Great Age, the dramatist who had revived the glories of
Racine (did not Frederick's tears flow almost as copiously over
_Mahomet_ as over _Britannicus_?), the epic poet who had eclipsed Homer
and Virgil (had not Frederick every right to judge, since he had read
the 'Iliad' in French prose and the 'Aeneid' in French verse?), the
lyric master whose odes and whose epistles occasionally even surpassed
(Frederick Confessed it with amazement) those of the Marquis de la Fare.
Voltaire, there could be no doubt, would do just what was needed; he
would know how to squeeze in a little further the waist of the German
Calliope, to apply with his deft fingers precisely the right dab of
rouge to her cheeks, to instil into her movements the last _nuances_ of
correct deportment. And, if he did that, of what consequence were the
blemishes of his personal character? 'On peut apprendre de bonnes choses
d'un scelerat.'

And, besides, though Voltaire might be a rogue, Frederick felt quite
convinced that he could keep him in order. A crack or two of the
master's whip--a coldness in the royal demeanour, a hint at a stoppage
of the pension--and the monkey would put an end to his tricks soon
enough. It never seems to have occurred to Frederick that the possession
of genius might imply a quality of spirit which was not that of an
ordinary man. This was his great, his fundamental error. It was the
ingenuous error of a cynic. He knew that he was under no delusion as to
Voltaire's faults, and so he supposed that he could be under no delusion
as to his merits. He innocently imagined that the capacity for great
writing was something that could be as easily separated from the owner
of it as a hat or a glove. 'C'est bien dommage qu'une ame aussi lache
soit unie a un aussi beau genie.' _C'est bien dommage_!--as if there was
nothing more extraordinary in such a combination than that of a pretty
woman and an ugly dress. And so Frederick held his whip a little
tighter, and reminded himself once more that, in spite of that _beau
genie_, it was a monkey that he had to deal with. But he was wrong: it
was not a monkey; it was a devil, which is a very different thing.

A devil--or perhaps an angel? One cannot be quite sure. For, amid the
complexities of that extraordinary spirit, where good and evil were so
mysteriously interwoven, whe