prefer the GRATIS method); nursing
his maladies, which are many; writing his LOUIS QUATORZE; "lonely
altogether, your Majesty, and sad of humor,"--yet giving his cosy
little dinners, and running out, pretty often, if well invited, into the
brilliancies and gayeties. No want of brilliant social life here,
which can shine, more or less, and appreciate one's shining. The King's
Supper-parties--Yes, and these, though the brightest, are not the only
bright things in our Potsdam-Berlin world. Take with you, reader, one
or two of the then and there Chief Figures; Voltaire's fellow-players;
strutting and fretting their hour on that Stage of Life. They are mostly
not quite strangers to you.

We know the sublime Perpetual President in his red wig, and sublime
supremacy of Pure Science. A gloomy set figure; affecting the
sententious, the emphatic and a composed impregnability,--like the Jove
of Science. With immensities of gloomy vanity, not compressible at all
times. Friedrich always strove to honor his Perpetual President, and
duly adore the Pure Sciences in him; but inwardly could not quite manage
it, though outwardly he failed in nothing. Impartial witnesses confess,
the King had a great deal of trouble with his gloomings and him. "Who is
this Voltaire?" gloomily thinks the Perpetual President to himself. "A
fellow with a nimble tongue, that is all. Knows nothing whatever of Pure
Sciences, except what fraction or tincture he has begged or stolen from
myself. And here is the King of the world in raptures with him!"

Voltaire from of old had faithfully done his kowtows to this King of
the Sciences; and, with a sort of terror, had suffered with incredible
patience a great deal from him. But there comes an end to all things;
Voltaire's patience not excepted. It lay in the fates that Maupertuis
should steadily accumulate, day after day, and now more than ever
heretofore, upon the sensitive Voltaire. Till, as will be seen, the
sensitive Voltaire could endure it no longer; but had to explode upon
this big Bully (accident lending a spark); to go off like a Vesuvius of
crackers, fire-serpents and sky-rockets; envelop the red wig, and much
else, in delirious conflagration;--and produce the catastrophe of this
Berlin Drama.

D'Argens, poor dissolute creature, is the best of the French lot. He has
married, after so many temporary marriages with Actresses, one Actress
in permanence, Mamsell Cochois, a patient kind being; and settled now,