while, been
left to drop into the gutters forever! To Voltaire and various others
(me and my poor readers included), that was the desirable thing.

Had there but been, among one's resources, a little patience and
practical candor, instead of all that vituperative eloquence and power
of tragi-comic description! Nay, in that case, this wretched street-riot
hubbub need not have been at all. Truly M. de Voltaire had a talent for
speech, but lamentably wanted that of silence!--We have now only the
sad duty of pointing out the principal mendacities contained in M. de
Voltaire's world-famous Account (for the other side has been heard
since that); and so of quitting a painful business. The principal
mendacities--deducting all that about "POE'ShIE" and the like, which we
will define as poetic fiction--are:--

1. That of the considerable files of soldiers (almost a Company of
Musketeers, one would think) stuck up round M. de Voltaire and Party, in
THE BILLY-GOAT; Madame Denis's bed-curtains being a screen of
bayonets, and the like. The exact number of soldiers I cannot learn: "a
SCHILDWACHE of the Town-guard [means one; surely does not mean Four?]
for each prisoner," reports the arithmetical Freytag; which, in the
extreme case, would have been twelve in whole (as Collini gives it); and
"next day we reduced them to two", says Freytag.

2. That of the otherwise frightful night Madame Denis had; "the fellow
Dorn [Freytag's Clerk, a poor, hard-worked frugal creature, with frugal
wife and family not far off] insisting to sit in the Lady's bedroom;
there emptying bottle after bottle; nay at last [as Voltaire bethinks
him, after a few days] threatening to"--Plainly to EXCEL all belief! A
thing not to be spoken of publicly: indeed, what Lady could speak of
it at all, except in hints to an Uncle of advanced years?--Proved fact
being, that Madame Denis, all in a flutter, that first night at THE
BILLY-GOAT, had engaged Dorn, "for a louis-d'or," to sit in her bedroom;
and did actually pay him a louis-d'or for doing so! This is very
bad mendacity; clearly conscious on M. de Voltaire's part, and even
constructed by degrees.

3. Very bad also is that of the moneys stolen from him by those Official
people. M. de Voltaire knows well enough how he failed to get his
moneys, and quitted Frankfurt in a hurry! Here, inexorably certain from
the Documents, and testimonies on both parts, is that final Passage
of the long Fire-work: last crackle of t