pied . . . but . . . Opera, plays, carousals, suppers at Sans-
Souci, military manoeuvres, concerts, studies, readings . . but . .
The city of Berlin, grand, better laid out than Paris; palaces,
play-houses, affable parish priests, charming princesses, maids of honor
beautiful and well made; the mansion of Madame de Tyrconnel always full,
and sometimes too much so . . . but . . . but. . . . My dear
child, the weather is beginning to settle down into a fine frost."

The "frost" not only affected Voltaire's relations with his brethren in
philosophy, it reached even to the king himself. A far from creditable
lawsuit with a Jew completed Frederick's irritation. He forbade the poet
to appear in his presence before the affair was over. "Brother Voltaire
is doing penance here," wrote the latter to the Margravine of Baireuth,
the King of Prussia's amiable sister he has a beast of a lawsuit with a
Jew, and, according to the law of the Old Testament, there will be
something more to pay for having been robbed. . . ." Frederick, on his
side, writes to his sister, "You ask me what the lawsuit is in which
Voltaire is involved with a Jew. It is a case of a rogue wanting to
cheat a thief. It is intolerable that a man of Voltaire's intellect
should make so unworthy an abuse of it. The affair is in the hands of
justice; and, in a few days, we shall know from the sentence which is the
greater rogue of the two. Voltaire lost his temper, flew in the Jew's
face, and, in fact, behaved like a madman. I am waiting for this affair
to be over to put his head under the pump or reprimand him severely (_lui
laver la tete_), and see whether, at the age of fifty-six, one cannot
make him, if not reasonable, at any rate less of a rogue."

Voltaire settled matters with the Jew, at the same time asking the king's
pardon for what he called his giddiness. "This great poet is always
astride of Parnassus and Rue Quincampoix," said the Marquis of Argenson.
Frederick had written him on the 24th of February, 1751, a severe letter,
the prelude and precursor of the storms which were to break off before
long the intimacy between the king and the philosopher. "I was very glad
to receive you," said the king; "I esteemed your wit, your talents, your
acquirements, and I was bound to suppose that a man of your age, tired of
wrangling with authors and exposing himself to tempests, was coming
hither to take refuge as in a quiet harbor; but you