Darget was a good-natured secretary with too many love
affairs; La Mettrie was a doctor who had been exiled from France for
atheism and bad manners; and Poellnitz was a decaying baron who, under
stress of circumstances, had unfortunately been obliged to change his
religion six times.

These were the boon companions among whom Frederick chose to spend his
leisure hours. Whenever he had nothing better to do, he would exchange
rhymed epigrams with Algarotti, or discuss the Jewish religion with
d'Argens, or write long improper poems about Darget, in the style of _La
Pucelle_. Or else he would summon La Mettrie, who would forthwith prove
the irrefutability of materialism in a series of wild paradoxes, shout
with laughter, suddenly shudder and cross himself on upsetting the salt,
and eventually pursue his majesty with his buffooneries into a place
where even royal persons are wont to be left alone. At other times
Frederick would amuse himself by first cutting down the pension of
Poellnitz, who was at the moment a Lutheran, and then writing long and
serious letters to him suggesting that if he would only become a
Catholic again he might be made a Silesian Abbot. Strangely enough,
Frederick was not popular, and one or other of the inmates of his little
menagerie was constantly escaping and running away. Darget and Chasot
both succeeded in getting through the wires; they obtained leave to
visit Paris, and stayed there. Poor d'Argens often tried to follow their
example; more than once he set off for France, secretly vowing never to
return; but he had no money, Frederick was blandishing, and the wretch
was always lured back to captivity. As for La Mettrie, he made his
escape in a different manner--by dying after supper one evening of a
surfeit of pheasant pie. 'Jesus! Marie!' he gasped, as he felt the pains
of death upon him. 'Ah!' said a priest who had been sent for, 'vous
voila enfin retourne a ces noms consolateurs.' La Mettrie, with an oath,
expired; and Frederick, on hearing of this unorthodox conclusion,
remarked, 'J'en suis bien aise, pour le repos de son ame.'

Among this circle of down-at-heel eccentrics there was a single figure
whose distinction and respectability stood out in striking contrast from
the rest--that of Maupertuis, who had been, since 1745, the President of
the Academy of Sciences at Berlin. Maupertuis has had an unfortunate
fate: he was first annihilated by the ridicule of Voltaire, and then
recreated by