n of Maupertuis; argues with the
frankest logic, when he feels dissent;--drives a majestic Perpetual
President, especially in the presence of third parties, much out of
patience. Thus, one evening, replying to some argument of the Perpetual
President's, he begins: 'My poor friend, MON PAUVRE AMI, don't you
perceive, then'--Upon which Maupertuis sprang from his chair, violently
stamping, and pirouetted round the room, 'Poor friend, poor friend?
are you so rich: then!' frank Konig merely grinning till the paroxysm
passed. [Formey, i. 177.] Konig went home again, RE INFECTA about the
end of the month."

Such a Konig--had better not have come! As to his strictures on the LAW
OF THRIFT, the arguings on them, alone together, or with friends by,
merely set Maupertuis pirouetting: and as to the Konig Manuscripts
on them "to be published in the Leipzig ACTA, after your remarks and
permission," Maupertuis absolutely refused to look at said Manuscripts:
"Publish them there, here, everywhere, in the Devil and his
Grandmother's name; and then there is an end, Monsieur!" Konig went his
ways therefore, finding nothing else for it; published his strictures,
in the Leipzig ACTA in March next,--and never saw Maupertuis again, for
one result, out of several that followed! I have no doubt he was out to
Voltaire, more than once, in this fortnight; and eat "the King's roast"
pleasantly with that eminent old friend. Voltaire always thought him
a BON GARCON (justly, by all the evidence I have); and finds his talk
agreeable, and his Berlin news--especially that of Maupertuis and his
explosive pirouettings. Adieu, Herr Professor; you know not, with
your Leipzig ACTA and Fragment of Leibnitz, what an explosion you are
preparing!

Chapter VII.--M. DE VOLTAIRE HAS A PAINFUL JEW-LAWSUIT.

Voltaire's Terrestrial Paradise at Berlin did not long continue perfect.
Scarcely had that grand Carrousel vanished in the azure firmaments,
when little clouds began rising in its stead; and before long, black
thunder-storms of a very strange and even dangerous character.

It must have been a painful surprise to Friedrich to hear from his
Voltaire, some few weeks after those munificences, That he, Voltaire,
was in very considerable distress of mind, from the bad, not to call it
the felonious and traitorous, conduct of M. D'Arnaud,--once Friedrich's
shoeing-horn and "rising-sun" for Voltaire's behoof; now a vague
flaunting creature, without significance to