Berlin and Sans-Souci Part 75

"Farewell, Barbarina!"

He took again her hands in his, and looked long into her fair, enchanting face, now glowing with enthusiasm. Neither spoke one word; they took leave of each other with soft glances and melancholy sighs.

"Farewell, sire!" said Barbarina, after a long pause, withdrawing her hands from the king's and stepping toward the door. The king followed her.

"Give me your hand," said he, "I will go with you!"

Frederick led her into the adjoining room, in which there were two doors. One led to a small stairway, which opened upon a side-door of the castle; the other to the great saloon, in which the cavaliers and followers of the king were wont to a.s.semble.

Barbarina had entered by the small stairway, and now turned her steps in that direction. "No, not that way," said Frederick. "My staff await me in the saloon. It is the hour for parade. I will show you my court."

Barbarina thanked him, and followed silently to the other door. The generals, in their glittering uniforms, and the cavaliers, with their embroidered vests and brilliant orders, bowed profoundly, and no one dared to manifest the surprise he felt as the king and Barbarina entered.

Frederick led Barbarina into the middle of the saloon, and letting go her hand, he said aloud: "Madame, I have the honor to commend myself to you. Your wish shall be fulfilled. Your husband shall be President of Glogau! it shall be arranged to-day." The king cast a proud and searching glance around the circle of his cavaliers, until they rested upon the master of ceremonies. "Baron Pollnitz, conduct Madame Presidentess Coceeji to her carriage."

Pollnitz stumbled forward and placed himself with a profound salutation at Barbarina's side.

Frederick bowed once more to Barbarina; she took the arm of Baron Pollnitz. Silence reigned in the saloon as Barbarina withdrew.

The king gazed after her till she had entirely disappeared; then, breathing heavily, he turned to his generals and said: "Messieurs, it is time for parade."

CHAPTER XII.

INTRIGUES.

Voltaire was faithful to his purpose: he made use of his residence in Prussia and the favor of the king to increase his fortune, and to injure and degrade, as far as possible, all those for whom the king manifested the slightest partiality. He not only added to his riches by the most abject n.i.g.g.ardliness in his mode of life, thereby adding his pension to his capital, but by speculation in Saxon bonds, for which, in the beginning, he employed the aid of the Jew Hirsch. We have seen that he sent him to Dresden to purchase eighteen thousand thalers' worth of bonds, and gave him three drafts for that purpose.

One of these was drawn upon the banker Ephraim. He thus learned of Voltaire's speculation, and, as a cunning trafficker, he resolved to turn this knowledge to his own advantage. He went to Voltaire, and proposed to give him twenty thousand thalers' worth of Saxon bonds, and demand no payment for them till Voltaire should receive their full value from Dresden. The only profit he desired was Voltaire's good word and influence for him with the king.

This was a most profitable investment, and the great French writer could not resist it. He took the bonds; promised his protection and favor, and immediately sent to Paris to protest the draft he had given the Jew Hirsch.

Poor Hirsch had already bought the bonds in Dresden, and he was now placed in the most extreme embarra.s.sment, not only by the protested draft, but by Voltaire's refusing to receive the bonds and to pay for them.

Voltaire tried to appease him; promised to repair his loss, and yet further to indemnify him. He declared he would purchase some of the diamonds left in his care by Hirsch, and he really did this; he bought three thousand thalers' worth of diamonds and returned the rest to Hirsch. A few days after he sent to him for a diamond cross and a few rings which he proposed to buy. Hirsch sent them, and not hearing from either the diamonds or the money, he went to Voltaire to get either the one or the other.

Voltaire received him furiously; declared that the diamonds which he had purchased were false, and in order to reimburse himself he had retained the others and would never return them! In wild rage he continued to raise his doubled fist to heaven in condemnation, or held it under the nose of the poor terrified Jew; and to crown all, he tore from his finger another diamond ring, and pushed him from the door.

And now the Jew indeed was to be pitied. He demanded of the courts the restoration of his diamonds, and payment for the Saxon bonds.

A wearisome and vexatious process was the result. Voltaire's plots and intrigues involved the case more and more, and he brought the judges themselves almost to despair. Voltaire declared that the Jew had sold him false diamonds. The Jew a.s.serted that the false diamonds exhibited by Voltaire were not those Voltaire had purchased of him, and which the jeweller Reclam had valued. No one was present at this trade, so there were no witnesses. The judges were, therefore, obliged to confine themselves to administering the oath to Voltaire, as he would not consent to any compromise. But he resisted the taking of the oath also.

"What!" said he, "I must swear upon the Bible; upon this book written in such wretched Latin! If it were Homer or Virgil, I would have nothing against it."

When the judge a.s.sured him, that if he refused the oath, they would administer it to the Jew, he exclaimed: "What! you will allow the oath of this miserable creature, who crucified the Saviour, to decide this question?"

He took the oath at last, and as the Jew Ephraim swore at the same time that Voltaire had shown him the diamonds, and he had at once declared them to be false, the Jew Hirsch lost his case, and Voltaire triumphed. He wrote the following letter to Algarotti:

"If one had listened to my envious enemies, they would have heard that I was about to lose a great process, and that I had defrauded an honest Jewish banker. The king, who naturally takes the part of the Old Testament, would have looked upon me with disfavor. I should have been lost, and Freron would have derisively declared that I sickened and died of rage. Instead of this, I still live; and during my last illness the king manifested such warm and affectionate interest in me, that I should be the most ungrateful of men if I do not remain a few months longer with him! I am the only animal of my race whom he has ever lodged in his castle in Berlin; and when he left for Potsdam, and I could not follow him, his equipage, cooks, etc., remained for my use. He had my furniture and other effects removed to a beautiful country-seat near Sans-Souci, which was, for the time being, mine. Besides this, a lodging was reserved for me at Potsdam, where I slept a part of every week. In short, if I were not three hundred leagues away from you, whom I love so tenderly, and if I were in good health, I would be the happiest of men! I ask pardon, therefore, of my enemies; these men of small wit; these sly foxes, who cry out because I have a pension of twenty thousand francs, and they have nothing! I wear a golden cross on my breast, while they have not even a handkerchief in their pockets. I wear a great blue cross, set round with diamonds, around my neck; for this they would strangle me. These miserable creatures ought to know that I would cheerfully give up the cross, the key, the pension; these things would cost me no regret, but I am bound and attached to this great man, who in all things strives to promote my welfare." [Footnote: Voltaire, Oeuvres, p. 442.]

But this paradise of bliss, so extravagantly praised by Voltaire, was not entirely without clouds, and some fierce storms had been necessary to clear the atmosphere.

The king was very angry with Voltaire, and wrote the following letter to him from Potsdam:

"I knew how to maintain peace in my house till your arrival; and I must confess to you, that if you continue to intrigue and cabal, you will be no longer welcome. I prefer kind and gentle people, who are not pa.s.sionate and tragic in their daily life. In case you should resolve to live as a philosopher, I will rejoice to see you! But if you give full sway to your pa.s.sion and are hot-brained with everybody, you will do better to remain in Berlin. Your arrival in Potsdam will give me no pleasure." [Footnote: Oeuvres Posthumes, p.

338.]

Only after Voltaire had solemnly sworn to preserve the peace, was he allowed to return to Potsdam. Keeping the peace was not, however, in harmony with Voltaire's character; plotting was a necessity with him; he could not resist it.

After he had succeeded in setting Arnaud aside and compelling him to leave Berlin, he turned his rage and sarcasm against the other friends of the king. One of them was removed by death. This was La Mettrie; he partook immoderately of a truffle-pie at the house of the French amba.s.sador, Lord Tyrconnel, and died in consequence of a blood-letting, which he ordered himself, in opposition to the opinion of his physician. He laughingly said, "I will accustom my indigestion to blood-letting." He died at the first experiment. His death was in harmony with his life and his principles. He dismissed the priest rudely who came to him uncalled, and entreated him to be reconciled to G.o.d. Convulsed by his last agonies, he called out, "O my G.o.d! O Jesus Maria!"

"He repents!" cried the delighted priest; "he calls upon G.o.d and His blessed Son."

"No, no, no, father!" stammered La Mettrie, with dying lips; "that was only a form of speech." [Footnote: Nicolai, p. 20.]

Voltaire's envy and jealousy were now turned against the Marquis d'Argens, who was indeed the dearest friend of the king. At first he tried to prejudice the king against him; he betrayed to him that the marquis had privately married the actress Barbe Cochois.

The king was at the moment very angry, but the prayers of Algarotti, and the regret of the poor marquis, reconciled him at last; he not only forgave, but he allowed the marquise to dwell at Sans-Souci with her husband.

When Voltaire found that he could not deprive the marquis of the king's favor, he resolved to occasion him some trouble, and to wound his vanity and sensibility. He knew that the marquis was an ardent admirer of the French writer Jean Baptiste Rousseau. One day Voltaire entered the room of the marquis, and said, in a sad, sympathetic tone, that he felt it his duty to undeceive him as to Jean Baptiste Rousseau, to prove to him that his love and respect for the great writer were returned with the blackest ingrat.i.tude. He had just received from his correspondent at Paris an epigram which Rousseau had made upon the marquis. It was true the epigram was only handed about in ma.n.u.script, and Rousseau swore every one who read it not to betray him; he was showing it, however, and it was thought it would be published. He, Voltaire, had commissioned his correspondent to do every thing in his power to prevent the publication of this epigram; or, if this took place, to use every means to excite the public, as well as the friends of the marquis, against Rousseau, because of his shameful treachery.

At all events, this epigram, which Voltaire now read aloud. to the marquis, and which described him as the Wandering Jew, was as malicious as it was mischievous and slanderous. The good marquis was deeply wounded, and swore to take a great revenge on Rousseau.

Voltaire triumphed.

But, after a few days, he suspected that the whole was an artifice of Voltaire. In accordance with his open, n.o.ble character, he wrote immediately to Rousseau, made his complaint, and asked if he had written the epigram.

Rousseau swore that he was not the author, but he was persuaded that Voltaire had written it; he had sent some copies to Paris, and his friends were seeking to spread it abroad. [Footnote: Thiebault.]

The marquis was on his guard, and did not communicate this news to Voltaire. He resolved to escape from these a.s.saults and intrigues quietly; with his young wife he made a journey to Paris, and did not return till Voltaire had left Berlin forever.

The most powerful and therefore the most abhorred of the enemies against whom Voltaire now turned in his rage, was the president of the Berlin Academy, Maupertius. Voltaire could never forgive him for daring to shine in his presence; for being the president of an academy of which he, Voltaire, was only a simple member. Above all this, the king loved him, and praised his extraordinary talent and scholarship. Voltaire only watched for an opportunity to clutch this dangerous enemy, and the occasion soon presented itself.

Maupertius had just published his "Lettres Philosophiques," in which it must be confessed there were pa.s.sages which justified Voltaire's a.s.sertion that Maupertius was at one time insane, and was confined for some years in a madhouse at Montpellier. Maupertius proposed in these letters that a Latin city should be built, and this majestic and beautiful tongue brought to life again. He proposed, also, that a hole should be dug to the centre of the earth, in order to discover its condition and quality; also that the brain of Pythagoras should be searched for and opened, in order to ascertain the nature of the soul.

These ridiculous and fabulous propositions Voltaire replied to under the name of Dr. Akakia; he a.s.serted that he was only anxious to heal the unhappy Maupertius. This publication was written in Voltaire's sharpest wit and his most biting, glittering irony, and was calculated to make Maupertius absurd in the eyes of the whole world.

The king, to whom Voltaire had shown his ma.n.u.script, felt this; and although he had listened to the "Akakia" with the most lively pleasure, and often interrupted the reading by loud laughter and applause, he asked Voltaire to destroy the ma.n.u.script. He was not willing that the man who stood at the head of his academy, and whom he had once called "the light of science," should be held up to the laughter and mockery of the world.

"I ask this sacrifice from you as a proof of your friendship for me, and your self-control," said the king, earnestly. "I am tired of this everlasting disputing and wrangling; I will have peace in my house; I do not know how long we will have peace in the world. It seems to me that on the horizon of politics heavy clouds are beginning to tower up; let us therefore take care that our literary horizon is clear and peaceable."

"Ah, sire!" cried Voltaire, "when you look at me with your great, luminous eyes, I feel capable of plucking my heart from my breast and casting it into the fire for you. How gladly, then, will I offer up these stinging lines to a wish of my Solomon!"

"Will you indeed sacrifice 'Akakia?'" said the king, joyfully.

"Look here! this is my ma.n.u.script, you know my hand-writing, you see that the ink is scarcely dry, the work just completed. Well, then, see now, sire, what I make of the 'Akakia.'" He took the ma.n.u.script and cast it into the fire before which they were both sitting.