Berlin and Sans-Souci Part 68

said she, laying her hand upon the arm of Madame Cocceji, "you have called this love shameful. You have said that an alliance with me would disgrace your family. Take back your words, I pray you!"

"I retract nothing. I said but the truth," cried Madame Cocceji, freeing herself from Barbarina.

"Take back your words, madame, for your own sake!" said Barbarina, threateningly.

"I cannot, and will not!" she replied, imperiously, "and if your pride and arrogance has not completely blinded you, in your heart you will confess that I am right. The dancer Barbarina can never be the daughter of the Coccejis. That would be a mockery of all honorable customs, would cast contempt upon the graves of our ancestors, and bring shame upon our n.o.bility. And yet my unhappy son dares think of this dishonor. In his insane folly, he rushed madly from my presence, uttering words of rage and bitter reproach, because I tried to show him that this marriage was impossible."

"Ah, I love him for this!" cried Barbarina, with a genial smile.

Without regarding her, Madame Cocceji went on: "Even against his father, he has dared to oppose himself. He defies the anger of his king. Oh, signora, in the anguish of my soul I turn to you; have pity with me and with my most unhappy son! He is lost; he will go down to the grave dishonored, if you do not come to my help! If, indeed, you love him, your love will teach you to make the offering of self-sacrifice, and I will bless you, and forgive you all the anguish you have caused me. If you love him not, you will not be so cruel as to bury the happiness and honor of a whole family because of your lofty ambition and your relentless will. Hear my prayer-- leave this city, and go so far away that my son can never follow, never reach you!"

"Then I must go into my grave," said Barbarina; "there is no other refuge to which, if he truly loves, he cannot follow me. I, dear madame, cannot, like yourself, move unknown and unregarded through the world. My fame is the herald which announces my presence in every land, and every city offers me, with bended knee, the keys of her gates and the keys of her heart. I cannot hide myself. Nothing is known of the proud and n.o.ble family of Cocceji outside of Prussia; but the wide, wide world knows of the Barbarina, and the laurel-wreaths with which I have been crowned in every land have never been desecrated by an unworthy act or an impure thought. There is nothing in my life of which I repent, nothing for which I blush or am ashamed! And yet you have dared to reproach me--you have had the audacity to seek to humiliate me in my own house."

"You forget with whom you have the honor to speak."

"You, madame, were the first to forget yourself; I follow your example. I suppose Madame Cocceji knows and does ever that which is great and right. I said you had vilified me in my own house, and yet you ask of me an act of magnanimity! Why should I relinquish your son's love?"

"Why? Because there remains even yet, perhaps, a spark of honorable feeling in your bosom. Because you know that my family will never receive you, but will curse and abhor you, if you dare to entice my son into a marriage. Because you know that the Prussian n.o.bles, the king himself, are on my side. The king, signora, no longer favors you; the king has promised us his a.s.sistance. The king will use every means of grace and power to prevent a marriage, which he himself has written to me will cover my son with dishonor!"

[Footnote: Schneider, "History of the Opera in Berlin."]

"That is false!" cried Barbarina.

"It is true! and it is true that the king, in order to protect the house of Cocceji from this shame, has given my husband authority to arrest my son and cast him into prison, provided my prayers and tears and menaces should be of no avail! If we fail, we will make use of this authority, and give him over to General Hake. [Footnote: Ibid.] Think well what you do--do not drive us to this extremity. I say there is a point at which even a mother's love will fail, and the head of our house will act with all the sternness which the law and the king permit. Go, then, Signora Barbarina--bow your proud head--leave Berlin. Return to your own land. I repeat to you, do not drive us to extremity!"

Barbarina listened to this with cool and mocking composure. Not a muscle of her face moved--she was indeed striking in her majesty and her beauty. Her imposing bearing, her pallid but clear complexion, her crimson, tightly-compressed lips, her great, fiery eyes, which spoke the scorn and contempt her proud lips disdained to utter, made a picture never to be forgotten.

"Madame," said she, slowly, emphasizing every word, "you have, indeed, driven ME to extremity. It was not my intention to marry your son. But your conduct has now made that a point of honor. Now, madame, I will graciously yield to the pa.s.sionate entreaties of your son, and I will wed him."

"That is to say, you will force my husband to make use of the power the king has given him?"

Barbarina shrugged her shoulders contemptuously. "Arrest your son, and cast him into prison, you will thereby add a new celebrity to your name, and quench the last spark of piety and obedience in his heart. Love has wings, and will follow him everywhere, and will waft him to the altar, where he will wed Barbarina. Neither your curse, nor your arrest, nor the will of the king, will now protect him.

Before six months are over, will Barbarina the dancer be the wife of Cocceji."

"Never, never shall that be!" cried Madame Cocceji, trembling with rage.

"That will be!" said Barbarina, smiling sadly, and bending low. "And now, madame, I think you have attained the object of your visit, and we have nothing more to say to each other. It only remains for me to commend myself to your grace and courtesy, and to thank you for the honor of your visit. Allow me to call my servant, to conduct you to your carriage."

She rang and commanded the servant to open the folding doors, and carry the large m.u.f.f of the countess to the carriage. Madame Cocceji was pale with rage. She wished to remain incognito, and now her name had been called before the servant. All Berlin would know before night that she had visited Barbarina!

"Give me my m.u.f.f," she said impatiently to the servant; "it is not necessary you should carry it. I came on foot."

"On foot?" said Barbarina, laughing merrily. "Truly, you wished to remain incognito, and you would not leave your equipage with its coat of arms, standing before my door! I thank you once more for the honor of your visit, and commend myself to you with the glad wish that we may meet again."

"Never more!" said Madame Cocceji, casting a withering look upon the gay dancer, and hastening from the room.

CHAPTER VIII.

VOLTAIRE.

Voltaire was now a continuous guest of King Frederick. The latter had written a letter to Louis the Fifteenth, and begged him to relinquish his subject and historian, and this request was supposed to be acceded to. Besides this, the king, who was ever thoughtful of the happiness and comfort of his friends, had proposed to Madame Denis, Voltaire's beloved niece, to follow her uncle to Berlin, dwell in the royal castle at Potsdam, and accept from him an annuity of four thousand francs.

Voltaire himself besought her to come. He wrote to her that, as she had lived contentedly with her husband in Landau, she could surely be happy in Berlin and Potsdam. Berlin was certainly a much more beautiful city than Landau, and at Potsdam they could lead an agreeable and unceremonious life. "In Potsdam there are no tumultuous feasts. My soul rests, dreams, and works. I am content to find myself with a king who has neither a court nor a ministry.

Truly, Potsdam is infested by many whiskered grenadiers, but, thank Heaven, I see little of them. I work peacefully in my room, while the drums beat without. I have withdrawn from the dinners of the king; there were too many princes and generals there. I could not accustom myself to be always vis-a-vis with a king and en ceremonie.

But I sup with him--the suppers are shorter, gayer, and healthier. I would die with indigestion in three months if I dined every day in public with a king." [Footnote: OEuvres Completes, p. 360]

Madame Denis, however, seemed to doubt the happy life of Berlin and Potsdam. She wrote, declining the proposition, and expressing her fears that Voltaire would himself soon repent that he had left beautiful, glittering Paris, the capital of luxury and good taste, and taken refuge in a barbaric land, to be the slave of a king, while, in Paris, he had been the king of poetry.

Voltaire had the audacity to bring this letter to the king--perhaps to wound him, perhaps to draw from him further promises and a.s.surances.

Frederick read the letter; his brow did not become clouded, and the friendly smile did not vanish from his lips. When he had read it to the end, he returned it, and his eyes met the distrustful, lowering glance of Voltaire with an expression of such goodness and candor that the latter cast his eyes ashamed to the ground.

"If I were Madame Denis," said Frederick, "I would think as she does; but, being myself, I view these things differently. I would be in despair if I had occasioned the unhappiness of a friend; and it will not be possible for me to allow trouble or sorrow to fall upon a man whom I esteem, whom I love, and who has sacrificed for me his fatherland and all that men hold most dear. If I could believe that your residence here could be to your disadvantage, I would be the first to counsel you to give it up. I know I would think more of your happiness than I would of the joy of having you with me. We are philosophers. What is more natural, more simple, than that two philosophers, who seem made for each other--who have the same studies, the same tastes, the same mode of thinking--should grant themselves the satisfaction of living together? I honor you as my teacher of eloquence and poetry; I love you as a virtuous and sympathetic friend. What sort of bondage, what misfortunes, what changes have you to fear in a realm where you are as highly honored as in your fatherland--where you have a powerful friend who advances to meet you with a thankful heart? I am not so prejudiced and foolish as to consider Berlin as handsome as Paris. If good taste has found a home in the world, I confess it is in Paris. But you, Voltaire, will you not inaugurate good taste wherever you are? We have organs sufficiently developed to applaud you; and, as to love, we will not allow any other land superiority in that respect. I yielded to the friendship which bound you to the Marquise du Chatelet, but I was, next to her, your oldest friend. How, when you have sought an asylum in my house, can it ever be THOUGHT it will become your prison? How, being your friend, can I ever become your tyrant? I do not understand this. I am convinced that, as long as I live, you will be happy here. You will be honored as the father of literature, and you will ever find in me that a.s.sistance and sympathy which a man of your worth has a right to demand of all who honor and appreciate him." [Footnote: The king's own words.--Oeuvres Posthumes.]

"Alas! your majesty says that you honor me, but you no longer say that you love me," cried Voltaire, who had listened to this eloquent and heart-felt speech of the king with eager impatience and lowering frowns. "Yes, yes, I feel it; I know it too well! Your majesty has already limited me to your consideration, your regard; but your love, your friendship, these are costly treasures from which I have been disinherited. But I know these hypocritical legacy-hunters, who have robbed me of that most beautiful portion of my inheritance. I know these poor, beggarly cousins, these D'Argens, these Algarottis, these La Mettries, this vainglorious peac.o.c.k Maupertius. I--"

"Voltaire," said the king, interrupting him, "you forget that you speak of my friends, and I do not allow any one to speak evil of them. I will never be partial, never unjust! My heart is capable of valuing and treasuring all my friends, but my friends must aim to deserve it; and if I give them my heart, I expect one in return."

"Friendship is a bill of exchange, by which you give just so much as you are ent.i.tled to demand in return."

"Give me, then, your whole heart, Voltaire, and I will restore mine to you! But I fear you have no longer a heart; Nature gave you but a small dose of this fleeting essence called love. She had much to do with your brain, and worked at that so long that no time remained to make the heart perfect; just as she was about to pour a few drops of this wonderful love-essence into your heart, the c.o.c.k crew three times for your birth, and betrayed you into the world. You have long since used up the poor pair of drops which fell into your heart.

Your brain was armed for centuries, with power to work, to be useful, to rejoice the souls of others. but I fear your heart was exhausted in your youthful years."

"Ah, I wish your majesty were right!" cried Voltaire; "I should not then feel the anguish which now martyrs me, the torture of being misunderstood by the most amiable, the most intellectual, the most exalted of monarchs. Oh, sire, sire! I have a heart, and it bleeds because you doubt of its existence!"

"I would believe you if you were a little less pathetic," said the king. "You not only a.s.sert, but you declaim. There is too little of nature and truth in your tone; you remind me a little of the stilted French tragedies, in which design and premeditation obscure all true pa.s.sion; in which love is only a phrase, that no one believes in, dressed up with the tawdry gilding of sentiment and pathos."

"Your majesty will crush me with your scorn and mockery!" cried Voltaire, whose eyes now flamed with anger. "You wish to make me feel how powerless, how pitiful I am. Where shall I find the strength to strive with you? I have won no battles. I have no hundred thousand men to oppose to you and no courts-martial to condemn those who sin against me!"

"It is true you have not a hundred thousand soldiers," said the king, "but you have four-and-twenty, and with these four-and-twenty soldiers you have conquered the whole realm of spirits; with this little army you have brought the whole of educated Europe to your feet. You are, therefore, a much more powerful king than I am. I have, it is true, a hundred thousand men, but I dare not say that they will not run when it comes to the first battle. You, Voltaire, have your four-and-twenty soldiers of the alphabet, and so well have you exercised them, that you must win every battle, even if all the kings of the earth were allied against you. Let us make peace, then, my 'invincible!' do not turn this terrible army of the four-and- twenty, with their deadly weapons, against me, but graciously allow me to seize upon the hem of your purple robe, to sun myself in your dazzling rays, to be your humble scholar, and from you and your army of heroes to learn the secret art of winning battles with invisible troops!"

"Your majesty makes me feel more and more how poor I am; even my four-and-twenty, of whom you speak, have gone over to you, and you understand, as well as I do, how to exercise them."

"No, no!" said Frederick, changing suddenly his jesting tone for one of grave earnestness. "No, I will learn of you. I am not satisfied to be a poor-souled dilettante in poetry, though a.s.sured I can.

never be a Virgil or a Voltaire. I know that the study of poetry demands the life, the undivided heart and mind. I am but a poor galley-slave, chained to the ship of state; or, if you will, a pilot, who does not dare to leave the rudder, or even to sleep, lest the fate of the unhappy Palinurus might overtake him. The Muses demand solitude and rest for the soul, and that I can never consecrate to them. Often, when I have written three verses, I am interrupted, my muse is chilled, and my spirit cannot rise again into the heights of inspiration. I know there are privileged souls, who can make verses everywhere--in the tumult of court life, in the loneliness of Cirey, in the prisons of the Bastile, and in the stage-coach. My poor soul does not enjoy this freedom. It resembles an anana, which bears fruit only in the green-house, but fades and withers in the fresh air." [Footnote: The king's own words.--Oeuvres Posthumes.]

"Ah! this is the first time I have caught the Solomon of the North in an untruth," cried Voltaire, eagerly. "Your soul is not like the anana, but like the wondrous southern tree which generously bears at the same time fruits and flowers; which inspires and sweetly intoxicates us with its fragrance, and at the same time strengthens and refreshes us by its celestial fruits. You, sire, are not the pupil of Apollo, you are Apollo himself!"

The king smiled, and, raising his arms to heaven, he exclaimed, with the mock pathos of a French tragedian:

"O Dieu! qui douez les poetes De tant de sublime faveure; Ah, rendez vos graces parfaites, Et qu'ils soient un peu moins menteurs."

"In trying to punish me for what you are pleased to call my falsehood, your majesty proves that I have spoken the truth," cried Voltaire, eagerly. "You wish to show me that the fruit of your muse ripens slowly, and you improvise a charming quatrain that Moliere himself would be proud to have composed."

"Rendez vos graces parfaites, Et qu'ils Boient un peu moins menteurs!"