adame du Chatelet long prevented him from executing his purpose. Her
death set him at liberty; and he determined to take refuge at Berlin.

To Berlin he was invited by a series of letters, couched in terms of the
most enthusiastic friendship and admiration. For once the rigid
parsimony of Frederic seemed to have relaxed. Orders, honorable offices,
a liberal pension, a well-served table, stately apartments under a royal
roof, were offered in return for the pleasure and honor which were
expected from the society of the first wit of the age. A thousand louis
were remitted for the charges of the journey. No ambassador setting out
from Berlin for a court of the first rank had ever been more amply
supplied. But Voltaire was not satisfied. At a later period, when he
possessed an ample fortune, he was one of the most liberal of men; but
till his means had become equal to his wishes, his greediness for lucre
was unrestrained either by justice or by shame. He had the effrontery to
ask for a thousand louis more, in order to enable him to bring his
niece, Madame Denis, the ugliest of coquettes, in his company. The
indelicate rapacity of the poet produced its natural effect on the
severe and frugal King. The answer was a dry refusal. "I did not," said
his Majesty, "solicit the honor of the lady's society." On this,
Voltaire went off into a paroxysm of childish rage. "Was there ever such
avarice? He has hundreds of tubs full of dollars in his vaults, and
haggles with me about a poor thousand louis." It seemed that the
negotiation would be broken off; but Frederic, with great dexterity,
affected indifference, and seemed inclined to transfer his idolatry to
Baculard d'Arnaud. His Majesty even wrote some bad verses, of which the
sense was, that Voltaire was a setting sun, and that Arnaud was rising.
Good-natured friends soon carried the lines to Voltaire. He was in his
bed. He jumped out in his shirt, danced about the room with rage, and
sent for his passport and his post-horses. It was not difficult to
foresee the end of a connection which had such a beginning.

It was in the year 1750 that Voltaire left the great capital, which he
was not to see again till, after the lapse of near thirty years, he
returned, bowed down by extreme old age, to die in the midst of a
splendid and ghastly triumph. His reception in Prussia was such as might
well have elated a less vain and excitable mind. He wrote to his friends
at Paris that the kindness an