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History of Friedrich II of Prussia — Volume 16

by Thomas Carlyle · English · Gutenberg #2116 · 546,660 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: History of Friedrich II of Prussia — Volume 16

Author: Thomas Carlyle


        
Release date: June 16, 2008 [eBook #2116]
                Most recently updated: July 14, 2008

Language: English

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Credits: Produced by D.R. Thompson and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF FRIEDRICH II OF PRUSSIA — VOLUME 16 ***




Produced by D.R. Thompson





HISTORY OF FRIEDRICH II. OF PRUSSIA

FREDERICK THE GREAT

By Thomas Carlyle




BOOK XVI.--THE TEN YEARS OF PEACE.--1746-1756.




Chapter I.--SANS-SOUCI.

Friedrich has now climbed the heights, and sees himself on the upper
table-land of Victory and Success; his desperate life-and-death
struggles triumphantly ended. What may be ahead, nobody knows; but here
is fair outlook that his enemies and Austria itself have had enough of
him. No wringing of his Silesia from this "bad Man." Not to be overset,
this one, by never such exertions; oversets US, on the contrary, plunges
us heels-over-head into the ditch, so often as we like to apply to him;
nothing but heavy beatings, disastrous breaking of crowns, to be had
on trying there! "Five Victories!" as Voltaire keeps counting on his
fingers, with upturned eyes,--Mollwitz, Chotusitz, Striegau, Sohr,
Kesselsdorf (the last done by Anhalt; but omitting Hennersdorf, and
that sudden slitting of the big Saxon-Austrian Projects into a cloud of
feathers, as fine a feat as any),--"Five Victories!" counts Voltaire;
calling on everybody (or everybody but Friedrich himself, who is easily
sated with that kind of thing) to admire. In the world are many opinions
about Friedrich. In Austria, for instance, what an opinion; sinister,
gloomy in the extreme: or in England, which derives from Austria,--only
with additional dimness, and with gloomy new provocations of its own
before long! Many opinions about Friedrich, all dim enough: but this,
that he is a very demon for fighting, and the stoutest King walking the
Earth just now, may well be a universal one. A man better not be meddled
with, if he will be at peace, as he professes to wish being.

Friedrich accordingly is not meddled with, or not openly meddled with;
and has, for the Ten or Eleven Years coming, a time of perfect external
Peace. He himself is decided "not to fight with a cat," if he can get
the peace kept; and for about eight years hopes confidently that this,
by good management, will continue possible;--till, in the last three
years, electric symptoms did again disclose themselves, and such hope
more and more died away. It is well known there lay in the fates a Third
Silesian War for him, worse than both the others; which is now the
main segment of his History still lying ahead for us, were this
Halcyon Period done. Halcyon Period counts from Christmas-day,
Dresden, 1745,--"from this day, Peace to the end of my life!" had been
Friedrich's fond hope. But on the 9th day of September, 1756, Friedrich
was again entering Dresden (Saxony some twelve days before); and the
Crowning Struggle of his Life was, beyond all expectation, found to be
still lying ahead for him, awfully dubious for Seven Years thereafter!--

Friedrich's History during this intervening Halcyon or Peace Period
must, in some way, be made known to readers: but for a great many
reasons, especially at present, it behooves to be given in compressed
form; riddled down, to an immense extent, out of those sad Prussian
Repositories, where the grain of perennial, of significant and still
memorable, lies overwhelmed under rubbish-mountains of the fairly
extinct, the poisonously dusty and forgettable;--ACH HIMMEL! Which
indispensable preliminary process, how can an English Editor, at this
time, do it; no Prussian, at any time, having thought of trying it! From
a painful Predecessor of mine, I collect, rummaging among his dismal
Paper-masses, the following Three Fragments, worth reading here:--

1. "Friedrich was as busy, in those Years, as in the generality of his
life; and his actions, and salutary conquests over difficulties, were
many, profitable to Prussia and to himself. Very well worth keeping in
mind. But not fit for History; or at least only fit in the summary form;
to be delineated in little, with large generic strokes,--if we had the
means;--such details belonging to the Prussian Antiquary, rather than
to the English Historian of Friedrich in our day. A happy Ten Years of
time. Perhaps the time for Montesquieu's aphorism, 'Happy the People
whose Annals are blank in History-Books!' The Prussian Antiquary, had
he once got any image formed to himself of Friedrich, and of Friedrich's
History in its human lineaments and organic sequences, will glean many
memorabilia in those Years: which his readers then (and not till then)
will be able to intercalate in their places, and get human good of. But
alas, while there is no intelligible human image, nothing of lineaments
or organic sequences, or other than a jumbled mass of Historical
Marine-Stores, presided over by Dryasdust and Human Stupor (unsorted,
unlabelled, tied up in blind sacks), the very Antiquary will have uphill
work of it, and his readers will often turn round on him with a gloomy
expression of countenance!"

2. "Friedrich's Life--little as he expected it, that day when he started
up from his ague-fit at Reinsberg, and grasped the fiery Opportunity
that was shooting past--is a Life of War. The chief memory that will
remain of him is that of a King and man who fought consummately well.
Not Peace and the Muses; no, that is denied him,--though he was so
unwilling, always, to think it denied! But his Life-Task turned out to
be a Battle for Silesia. It consists of Three grand Struggles of War.
And not for Silesia only;--unconsciously, for what far greater things to
his Nation and to him!

"Deeply unconscious of it, they were passing their 'Trials,' his Nation
and he, in the great Civil-Service-Examination Hall of this Universe:
'Are you able to defend yourselves, then; and to hang together coherent,
against the whole world and its incoherencies and rages?' A question
which has to be asked of Nations, before they can be recognized as such,
and be baptized into the general commonwealth; they are mere Hordes
or accidental Aggregates, till that Question come. Question which this
Nation had long been getting ready for; which now, under this King, it
answered to the satisfaction of gods and men: 'Yes, Heaven assisting, we
can stand on our defence; and in the long-run (as with air when you
try to annihilate it, or crush it to NOTHING) there is even an infinite
force in us; and the whole world does not succeed in annihilating us!'
Upon which has followed what we term National Baptism;--or rather this
was the National Baptism, this furious one in torrent whirlwinds of
fire; done three times over, till in gods or men there was no doubt
left. That was Friedrich's function in the world; and a great and
memorable one;--not to his own Prussian Nation only, but to Teutschland
at large, forever memorable.

"'Is Teutschland a Nation; is there in Teutschland still a Nation?'
Austria, not dishonestly, but much sunk in superstitions and involuntary
mendacities, and liable to sink much farther, answers always, in gloomy
proud tone, 'Yes, I am the Nation of Teutschland!'--but is mistaken,
as turns out. For it is not mendacities, conscious or other, but
veracities, that the Divine Powers will patronize, or even in the end
will put up with at all. Which you ought to understand better than you
do, my friend. For, on the great scale and on the small, and in all
seasons, circumstances, scenes and situations where a Son of Adam finds
himself, that is true, and even a sovereign truth. And whoever does not
know it,--human charity to him (were such always possible) would be,
that HE were furnished with handcuffs as a part of his outfit in this
world, and put under guidance of those who do. Yes; to him, I
should say, a private pair of handcuffs were much usefuler than a
ballot-box,--were the times once settled again, which they are far from
being!"...

"So that, if there be only Austria for Nation, Teutschland is in ominous
case. Truly so. But there is in Teutschland withal, very irrecognizable
to Teutschland, yet authentically present, a Man of the properly
unconquerable type; there is also a select Population drilled for him:
these two together will prove to you that there is a Nation. Conquest
of Silesia, Three Silesian Wars; labors and valors as of Alcides, in
vindication of oneself and one's Silesia:--secretly, how unconsciously,
that other and higher Question of Teutschland, and of its having in it
a Nation, was Friedrich's sore task and his Prussia's at that time. As
Teutschland may be perhaps now, in our day, beginning to recognize; with
hope, with astonishment, poor Teutschland!"...

3. "And in fine, leaving all that, there is one thing undeniable: In all
human Narrative, it is the battle only, and not the victory, that can
be dwelt upon with advantage. Friedrich has now, by his Second
Silesian War, achieved Greatness: 'Friedrich the Great;' expressly
so denominated, by his People and others. The struggle upwards is the
Romance; your hero once wedded,--to GLORY, or whoever the Bride may
be,--the Romance ends. Precise critics do object, That there may
still lie difficulties, new perils and adventures ahead:--which proves
conspicuously true in this case of ours. And accordingly, our Book not
being a Romance but a History, let us, with all fidelity, look out
what these are, and how they modify our Royal Gentleman who has got his
wedding done. With all fidelity; but with all brevity, no less. For,
inasmuch as"--

Well, brevity in most cases is desirable. And, privately, it must be
owned there is another consideration of no small weight: That,
our Prussian resources falling altogether into bankruptcy during
Peace-Periods, Nature herself has so ordered it, in this instance!
Partly it is our Books (the Prussian Dryasdust reaching his acme on
those occasions), but in part too it is the Events themselves, that are
small and want importance; that have fallen dead to us, in the huge new
Time and its uproars. Events not of flagrant notability (like battles or
war-passages), to bridle Dryasdust, and guide him in some small measure.
Events rather which, except as characteristic of one memorable Man
and King, are mostly now of no memorability whatever. Crowd all these
indiscriminately into sacks, and shake them out pell-mell on us: that is
Dryasdust's sweet way. As if the largest Marine-Stores Establishment in
all the world had suddenly, on hest of some Necromancer or maleficent
person, taken wing upon you; and were dancing, in boundless mad whirl,
round your devoted head;--simmering and dancing, very much at its ease;
no-whither; asking YOU cheerfully, "What is your candid opinion, then?"
"Opinion," Heavens!--

You have to retire many yards, and gaze with a desperate steadiness;
assuring yourself: "Well, it does, right indisputably, shadow forth
SOMEthing. This was a Thing Alive, and did at one time stick together,
as an organic Fact on the Earth, though it now dances in Dryasdust at
such a rate!" It is only by self-help of this sort, and long survey,
with rigorous selection, and extremely extensive exclusion and oblivion,
that you gain the least light in such an element. "Brevity"--little
said, when little has been got to be known--is an evident rule!
Courage, reader; by good eyesight, you will still catch some features
of Friedrich as we go along. To SAY our little in a not unintelligible
manner, and keep the rest well hidden, it is all we can do for you!--




FRIEDRICH DECLINES THE CAREER OF CONQUERING HERO; GOES INTO LAW-REFORM;
AND GETS READY A COTTAGE RESIDENCE FOR HIMSELF.

Friedrich's Journey to Pyrmont is the first thing recorded of him by
the Newspapers. Gone to take the waters; as he did after his former War.
Here is what I had noted of that small Occurrence, and of one or
two others contiguous in date, which prove to be of significance in
Friedrich's History.

"MAY 12-17th, 1746," say the old Books, "his Majesty sets out for
Pyrmont, taking Brunswick by the way; arrives at Pyrmont May 17th; stays
till June 8th;" three weeks good. "Is busy corresponding with the King
of France about a General Peace; but, owing to the embitterment of both
parties, it was not possible at this time." Taking the waters at least,
and amusing himself. From Brunswick, in passing, he had brought with him
his Brother-in-law the reigning Duke; Rothenburg was there, and Brother
Henri; D'Arget expressly; Flute-player Quanz withal, and various musical
people: "in all, a train of above sixty persons." I notice also that
Prince Wilhelm of Hessen was in Pyrmont at the time. With whom, one
fancies, what speculations there might be: About the late and present
War-passages, about the poor Peace Prospects; your Hessian "Siege" so
called "of Blair in Athol" (CULLODEN now comfortably done), and other
cognate topics. That is the Pyrmont Journey.

It is no surprise to us to hear, in these months, of new and continual
attention to Army matters, to Husbandry matters; and to making good, on
all sides, the ruins left by War. Of rebuilding (at the royal expense)
"the town of Schmiedeberg, which had been burnt;" of rebuilding, and
repairing from their damage, all Silesian villages and dwellings; and
still more satisfactory, How, "in May, 1746, there was, in every Circle
of the Country, by exact liquidation of Accounts [so rapidly got done],
exact payment made to the individuals concerned, 1. of all the hay,
straw and corn that had been delivered to his Majesty's Armies; 2.
of all the horses that had perished in the King's work; 3. of all the
horses stolen by the Enemy, and of all the money-contributions exacted
by the Enemy: payment in ready cash, and according to the rules of
justice (BAAR UND BILLIGMASSIG), by his Majesty." [Seyfarth, ii. 22,
23.]

It was from Pyrmont, May, 1746,--or more definitely, it was "at Potsdam
early in the morning, 15th September," following,--that Friedrich
launched, or shot forth from its moorings, after much previous
attempting and preparing, a very great Enterprise; which he has never
lost sight of since the day he began reigning, nor will till his reign
and life end: the actual Reform of Law in Prussia. "May 12th, 1746,"
Friedrich, on the road to Pyrmont, answers his Chief Law-Minister
Cocceji's REPORT OF PRACTICAL PLAN on this matter: "Yes; looks very
hopeful!"--and took it with him to consider at Pyrmont, during his
leisure. Much considering of it, then and afterwards, there was. And
finally, September 15th, early in the morning, Cocceji had an Interview
with Friedrich; and the decisive fiat was given: "Yes; start on it, in
God's name! Pommern, which they call the PROVINCIA LITIGIOSA; try it
there first!" [Ranke, ii. 392.] And Cocceji, a vigorous old man of
sixty-seven, one of the most learned of Lawyers, and a very Hercules in
cleaning Law-Stables, has, on Friedrich's urgencies,--which have been
repeated on every breathing-time of Peace there has been, and even
sometimes in the middle of War (last January, 1745, for example;
and again, express Order, January, 1746, a fortnight after Peace was
signed),--actually got himself girt for this salutary work. "Wash me out
that horror of accumulation, let us see the old Pavements of the place
again. Every Lawsuit to be finished within the Year!"

Cocceji, who had been meditating such matters for a great while, ["1st
March, 1738," Friedrich Wilhelm's "Edict" on Law Reform: Cocceji ready,
at that time;--but his then Majesty forbore.] and was himself eager
to proceed, in spite of considerable wigged oppositions and secret
reluctances that there were, did now, on that fiat of September 15th,
get his Select Commission of Six riddled together and adjoined to
him,--the likeliest Six that Prussia, in her different Provinces,
could yield;--and got the STANDE of Pommern, after due committeeing and
deliberating, to consent and promise help. December 31st, 1746, was the
day the STANDE consented: and January 10th, 1747, Cocceji and his Six
set out for Pommern. On a longish Enterprise, in that Province and the
others;--of which we shall have to take notice, and give at least the
dates as they occur.

To sweep out pettifogging Attorneys, cancel improper Advocates, to
regulate Fees; to war, in a calm but deadly manner, against pedantries,
circumlocutions and the multiplied forms of stupidity, cupidity and
human owlery in this department;--and, on the whole, to realize from
every Court, now and onwards, "A decision to all Lawsuits within a
Year after their beginning." This latter result, Friedrich thinks,
will itself be highly beneficial; and be the sign of all manner of
improvements. And Cocceji, scanning it with those potent law-eyes of
his, ventures to assure him that it will be possible. As, in fact,
it proved;--honor to Cocceji and his King, and King's Father withal.
"Samuel von Cocceji [says an old Note], son of a Law Professor, and
himself once such,--was picked up by Friedrich Wilhelm, for the
Official career, many years ago. A man of wholesome, by no means weakly
aspect,--to judge by his Portrait, which is the chief 'Biography' I
have of him. Potent eyes and eyebrows, ditto blunt nose; honest, almost
careless lips, and deep chin well dewlapped: extensive penetrative face,
not pincered together, but potently fallen closed;--comfortable to see,
in a wig of such magnitude. Friedrich, a judge of men, calls him 'a
man of sterling character (CARACTERE INTEGRE ET DROIT), whose
qualities would have suited the noble times of the Roman Republic.'"
[--OEuvres,--iv. 2.] He has his Herculean battle, his Master and he
have, with the Owleries and the vulturous Law-Pedantries,--which I
always love Friedrich for detesting as he does:--and, during the next
five years, the world will hear often of Cocceji, and of this Prussian
Law-Reform by Friedrich and him.

His Majesty's exertions to make Peace were not successful; what does lie
in his power is, to keep out of the quarrel himself. It appears great
hopes were entertained, by some in England, of gaining Friedrich over;
of making him Supreme Captain to the Cause of Liberty. And prospects
were held out to him, quasi-offers made, of a really magnificent
nature,--undeniable, though obscure. Herr Ranke has been among the
Archives again; and comes out with fractional snatches of a very strange
"Paper from England;" capriciously hiding all details about it, all
intelligible explanation: so that you in vain ask, "Where, When, How, By
whom?"--and can only guess to yourself that Carteret was somehow at
the bottom of the thing; AUT CARTERETUS AUT DIABOLUS. "What would
your Majesty think to be elected Stadtholder of Holland? Without a
Stadtholder, these Dutch are worth nothing; not hoistable, nor of use
when hoisted, all palavering and pulling different ways. Must have
a Stadtholder; and one that stands firm on some basis of his own.
Stadtholder of Holland, King of Prussia,--you then, in such position,
take the reins of this poor floundering English-Dutch Germanic
Anti-French War, you; and drive it in the style you have. Conquer back
the Netherlands to us; French Netherlands as well. French and Austrian
Netherlands together, yours in perpetuity; Dutch Stadtholderate as good
as ditto: this, with Prussia and its fighting capabilities, will be a
pleasant Protestant thing. Austria cares little about the Netherlands,
in comparison. Austria, getting back its Lorraine and Alsace, will be
content, will be strong on its feet. What if it should even lose Italy?
France, Spain, Sardinia, the Italian Petty Principalities and Anarchies:
suppose they tug and tussle, and collapse there as they can? But let
France try to look across the Rhine again; and to threaten Teutschland,
England, and the Cause of Human Liberty temporal or spiritual!"

This is authentically the purport of Herr Ranke's extraordinary
Document; [Ranke, iii. 359.] guessable as due to CARTERETUS or DIABOLUS.
Here is an outlook; here is a career as Conquering Hero, if that were
one's line! A very magnificent ground-plan; hung up to kindle the fancy
of a young King,--who is far too prudent to go into it at all. More
definite quasi-official offers, it seems, were made him from the same
quarter: Subsidies to begin with, such subsidies as nobody ever had
before; say 1,000,000 pounds sterling by the Year. To which Friedrich
answered, "Subsidies, your Excellency?" (Are We a Hackney-Coachman,
then?)--and, with much contempt, turned his back on that offer. No
fighting to be had, by purchase or seduction, out of this young man.
Will not play the Conquering Hero at all, nor the Hackney-Coachman
at all; has decided "not to fight a cat" if let alone; but to do and
endeavor a quite other set of things, for the rest of his life.

Friedrich, readers can observe, is not uplifted with his greatness.
He has been too much beaten and bruised to be anything but modestly
thankful for getting out of such a deadly clash of chaotic swords. Seems
to have little pride even in his "Five Victories;" or hides it well.
Talks not overmuch about these things; talks of them, so far as we can
hear, with his old comrades only, in praise of THEIR prowesses; as
a simple human being, not as a supreme of captains; and at times
acknowledges, in a fine sincere way, the omnipotence of Luck in matters
of War.

One of the most characteristic traits, extensively symbolical of
Friedrich's intentions and outlooks at this Epoch, is his installing
of himself in the little Dwelling-House, which has since become so
celebrated under the name of Sans-Souci. The plan of Sans-Souci--an
elegant commodious little "Country Box," quite of modest pretensions,
one story high; on the pleasant Hill-top near Potsdam, with other little
green Hills, and pleasant views of land and water, all round--had been
sketched in part by Friedrich himself; and the diggings and terracings
of the Hill-side were just beginning, when he quitted for the Last
War. "April 14th, 1745," while he lay in those perilous enigmatic
circumstances at Neisse with Pandours and devouring bugbears round him,
"the foundation-stone was laid" (Knobelsdorf being architect, once more,
as in the old Reinsberg case): and the work, which had been steadily
proceeding while the Master struggled in those dangerous battles and
adventures far away from it, was in good forwardness at his return. An
object of cheerful interest to him; prophetic of calmer years ahead.

It was not till May, 1747, that the formal occupation took place:
"Mayday, 1747," he had a grand House-heating, or "First Dinner, of 200
covers: and May 19th-20th was the first night of his sleeping there."
For the next Forty Years, especially as years advanced, he spent the
most of his days and nights in this little Mansion; which became more
and more his favorite retreat, whenever the noises and scenic etiquettes
were not inexorable. "SANS-SOUCI;" which we may translate "No-Bother." A
busy place this too, but of the quiet kind; and more a home to him
than any of the Three fine Palaces (ultimately Four), which lay always
waiting for him in the neighborhood. Berlin and Charlottenburg are
about twenty miles off; Potsdam, which, like the other two, is rather
consummate among Palaces, lies leftwise in front of him within a short
mile. And at length, to RIGHT hand, in a similar distance and direction,
came the "NEUE SCHLOSS" (New Palace of Potsdam), called also the "PALACE
of Sans-Souci," in distinction from the Dwelling-House, or as it were
Garden-House, which made that name so famous.

Certainly it is a significant feature of Friedrich; and discloses the
inborn proclivity he had to retirement, to study and reflection, as the
chosen element of human life. Why he fell upon so ambitious a title for
his Royal Cottage? "No-Bother" was not practically a thing he, of all
men, could consider possible in this world: at the utmost perhaps, by
good care, "LESS-Bother"! The name, it appears, came by accident. He had
prepared his Tomb, and various Tombs, in the skirts of this new Cottage:
looking at these, as the building of them went on, he was heard to say,
one day (Spring 1746), D'Argens strolling beside him: "OUI, ALORS JE
SERAI SANS SOUCI (Once THERE, one will be out of bother)!" A saying
which was rumored of, and repeated in society, being by such a man. Out
of which rumor in society, and the evident aim of the Cottage Royal,
there was gradually born, as Venus from the froth of the sea, this name,
"Sans-Souci;"--which Friedrich adopted; and, before the Year was out,
had put upon his lintel in gold letters. So that, by "Mayday, 1747," the
name was in all men's memories; and has continued ever since. [Preuss,
i. 268, &c.; Nicolai, iii. 1200.] Tourists know this Cottage Royal:
Friedrich's "Three Rooms in it; one of them a Library; in another, a
little Alcove with an iron Bed" (iron, without curtains; old softened
HAT the usual royal nightcap)--altogether a soldier's lodging:--all this
still stands as it did. Cheerfully looking down on its garden-terraces,
stairs, Greek statues, and against the free sky:--perhaps we may visit
it in time coming, and take a more special view. In the Years now on
hand, Friedrich, I think, did not much practically live there, only
shifted thither now and then. His chief residence is still Potsdam
Palace; and in Carnival time, that of Berlin; with Charlottenburg for
occasional festivities, especially in summer, the gardens there being
fine.

This of Sans-Souci is but portion of a wider Tendency, wider set of
endeavors on Friedrich's part, which returns upon him now that Peace has
returned: That of improving his own Domesticities, while he labors at
so many public improvements. Gazing long on that simmering "Typhoon
of Marine-stores" above mentioned, we do trace Three great Heads of
Endeavor in this Peace Period. FIRST, the Reform of Law; which, as above
hinted, is now earnestly pushed forward again, and was brought to what
was thought completion before long. With much rumor of applause from
contemporary mankind. Concerning which we are to give some indications,
were it only dates in their order: though, as the affair turned out
not to be completed, but had to be taken up again long after, and is an
affair lying wide of British ken,--there need not, and indeed cannot,
be much said of it just now. SECONDLY, there is eager Furthering of the
Husbandries, the Commerces, Practical Arts,--especially at present, that
of Foreign Commerce, and Shipping from the Port of Embden. Which shall
have due notice. And THIRDLY, what must be our main topic here, there
is that of Improving the Domesticities, the Household Enjoyments such
as they were;--especially definable as Renewal of the old Reinsberg
Program; attempt more strenuous than ever to realize that beautiful
ideal. Which, and the total failure of which, and the consequent
quasi-abandonment of it for time coming, are still, intrinsically and by
accident, of considerable interest to modern readers.

Curious, and in some sort touching, to observe how that old original
Life-Program still re-emerges on this King: "Something of melodious
possible in one's poor life, is not there? A Life to the Practical
Duties, yes; but to the Muses as well!"--Of Friedrich's success in
his Law-Reforms, in his Husbandries, Commerces and Furtherances,
conspicuously great as it was, there is no possibility of making
careless readers cognizant at this day. Only by the great results--a
"Prussia QUADRUPLED" in his time, and the like--can studious readers
convince themselves, in a cold and merely statistic way. But in respect
of Life to the Muses, we have happily the means of showing that in
actual vitality; in practical struggle towards fulfillment,--and how
extremely disappointing the result was. In a word, Voltaire pays his
Fifth and final Visit in this Period; the Voltaire matter comes to its
consummation. To that, as to one of the few things which are perfectly
knowable in this Period of TEN-YEARS PEACE, and in which mankind still
take interest, we purpose mostly to devote ourselves here.

Ten years of a great King's life, ten busy years too; and nothing
visible in them, of main significance, but a crash of Author's Quarrels,
and the Crowning Visit of Voltaire? Truly yes, reader; so it has been
ordered. Innumerable high-dressed gentlemen, gods of this lower world,
are gone all to inorganic powder, no comfortable or profitable memory to
be held of them more; and this poor Voltaire, without implement except
the tongue and brain of him,--he is still a shining object to all the
populations; and they say and symbol to me, "Tell us of him! He is the
man!" Very strange indeed. Changed times since, for dogs barking at the
heels of him, and lions roaring ahead,--for Asses of Mirepoix, for foul
creatures in high dizenment, and foul creatures who were hungry valets
of the same,--this man could hardly get the highways walked! And
indeed had to keep his eyes well open, and always have covert within
reach,--under pain of being torn to pieces, while he went about in the
flesh, or rather in the bones, poor lean being. Changed times; within
the Century last past! For indeed there was in that man what far
transcends all dizenment, and temporary potency over valets, over
legions, treasure-vaults and dim millions mostly blockhead: a spark
of Heaven's own lucency, a gleam from the Eternities (in small
measure);--which becomes extremely noticeable when the Dance is over,
when your tallow-dips and wax-lights are burnt out, and the brawl of the
night is gone to bed.




Chapter II.--PEEP AT VOLTAIRE AND HIS DIVINE EMILIE (BY CANDLELIGHT) IN
THE TIDE OF EVENTS.

Public European affairs require little remembrance; the War burning well
to leeward of us henceforth. A huge world of smoky chaos; the special
fires of it, if there be anything of fire, are all the more clear far
in the distance. Of which sort, and of which only, the reader is to have
notice. Marechal de Saxe--King Louis oftenest personally there, to
give his name and countenance to things done--is very glorious in
the Netherlands; captures, sometimes by surprisal, place after place
(beautiful surprisal of Brussels last winter); with sieges of Antwerp,
Mons, Charleroi, victoriously following upon Brussels: and, before the
end of 1746, he is close upon Holland itself; intent on having Namur and
Maestricht; for which the poor Sea-Powers, with a handful of Austrians,
fight two Battles, and are again beaten both times. [1. Battle of
Roucoux, 11th October, 1746; Prince Karl commanding, English taking
mainly the stress of fight;--Saxe having already outwitted poor Karl,
and got Namur. 2. Battle of Lawfelt, or Lauffeld, called also of VAL, 2d
July, 1747; Royal Highness of Cumberland commanding (and taking most
of the stress; Ligonier made prisoner, &c.),--Dutch fighting ill, and
Bathyani and his Austrians hardly in the fire at all.] A glorious,
ever-victorious Marechal; and has an Army very "high-toned," in more
than one sense: indeed, I think, one of the loudest-toned Armies ever
on the field before. Loud not with well-served Artillery alone, but with
play-actor Thunder-barrels (always an itinerant Theatre attends), with
gasconading talk, with orgies, debaucheries,--busy service of the Devil,
AND pleasant consciousness that we are Heaven's masterpiece, and are
in perfect readiness to die at any moment;--our ELASTICITY and agility
("ELAN" as we call it) well kept up, in that manner, for the time being.

Hungarian Majesty, contrary to hope, neglects the Netherlands, "Holland
and England, for their own sake, will manage there!"--and directs all
her resources, and her lately Anti-Prussian Armies (General Browne
leading them) upon Italy, as upon the grand interest now. Little to the
comfort of the Sea-Powers. But Hungarian Majesty is decided to cut
in upon the French and Spaniards, in that fine Country,--who had been
triumphing too much of late; Maillebois and Senor de Gages doing their
mutual exploits (though given to quarrel); Don Philip wintering in Milan
even (1745-1746); and the King of Sardinia getting into French courses
again.

Strong cuts her Hungarian Majesty does inflict, on the Italian side;
tumbles Infant Philip out of Milan and his Carnival gayeties, in plenty
of hurry; besieges Genoa, Marquis Botta d'Adorno (our old acquaintance
Botta) her siege-captain, a native of this region; brings back the
wavering Sardinian Majesty; captures Genoa, and much else. Captures
Genoa, we say,--had not Botta been too rigorous on his countrymen, and
provoked a revolt again, Revolt of Genoa, which proved difficult to
settle. In fine, Hungarian Majesty has, in the course of this year 1746,
with aid of the reconfirmed Sardinian Majesty, satisfactorily beaten the
French and Spaniards. Has--after two murderous Battles gained over the
Maillebois-Gages people--driven both French and Spaniards into corners,
Maillebois altogether home again across the Var;--nay has descended in
actual Invasion upon France itself. And, before New-year's day,
1747, General Browne is busy besieging Antibes, aided by English
Seventy-fours; so that "sixty French Battalions" have to hurry home,
from winter-quarters, towards those Provencal Countries; and Marechal de
Belleisle, who commands there, has his hands full. Triumphant enough
her Hungarian Majesty, in Italy; while in the Netherlands, the poor
Sea-Powers have met with no encouragement from the Fates or her.
["Battle of Piacenza" (Prince Lichtenstein, with whom is Browne, VERSUS
Gages and Maillebois), 16th June, 1746 (ADELUNG, v. 427); "Battle of
Rottofreddo" (Botta chief Austrian there, and our old friend Barenklau
getting killed there), 12th August, 1746 (IB. 462); whereupon, 7th
SEPTEMBER, Genoa (which had declared itself Anti-Austrian latterly, not
without cause, and brought the tug of War into those parts) is coerced
by Botta to open its gates, on grievous terms (IB. 484-489); so that,
NOVEMBER 30th, Browne, no Bourbon Army now on the field, enters Provence
(crosses the Var, that day), and tries Antibes: 5th-11th DECEMBER,
Popular Revolt in Genoa, and Expulsion of proud Botta and his Austrians
(IB. 518-523); upon which surprising event (which could not be mended
during the remainder of the War), Browne's enterprise became impossible.
See Buonamici,--Histoire de la derniere Revolution de Genes;--Adelung,
v. 516; vi. 31, &c. &c.] All which the reader may keep imagining at his
convenience;--but will be glad rather, for the present, to go with us
for an actual look at M. de Voltaire and the divine Emilie, whom we have
not seen for a long time. Not much has happened in the interim; one or
two things only which it can concern us to know;--scattered fragments of
memorial, on the way thus far:--

1. M. DE VOLTAIRE HAS, IN 1745, MADE WAY AT COURT. Divine Emilie picked
up her Voltaire from that fine Diplomatic course, and went home with him
out of our sight, in the end of 1743; the Diplomatic career gradually
declaring itself barred to him thenceforth. Since which, nevertheless,
he has had his successes otherwise, especially in his old Literary
course: on the whole, brighter sunshine than usual, though never without
tempestuous clouds attending. Goes about, with his divine Emilie, now
wearing browner and leaner, both of them; and takes the good and evil of
life, mostly in a quiet manner; sensible that afternoon is come.

The thrice-famous Pompadour, who had been known to him in the Chrysalis
state, did not forget him on becoming Head-Butterfly of the Universe. By
her help, one long wish of his soul was gratified, and did not hunger or
thirst any more. Some uncertain footing at Court, namely, was at length
vouchsafed him:--uncertain; for the Most Christian Majesty always rather
shuddered under those carbuncle eyes, under that voice "sombre and
majestious," with such turns lying in it:--some uncertain footing at
Court; and from the beginning of 1745, his luck, in the Court spheres,
began to mount in a wonderful and world-evident manner. On grounds
tragically silly, as he thought them. On the Dauphin's Wedding,--a
Termagant's Infanta coming hither as Dauphiness, at this time,--there
needed to be Court-shows, Dramaticules, Transparencies, Feasts of
Lanterns, or I know not what. Voltaire was the chosen man; Voltaire and
Rameau (readers have heard of RAMEAU'S NEPHEW, and musical readers still
esteem Rameau) did their feat; we may think with what perfection, with
what splendor of reward. Alas, and the feat done was, to one of the
parties, so unspeakably contemptible! Voltaire pensively surveying Life,
brushes the sounding strings; and hums to himself, the carbuncle eyes
carrying in them almost something of wet:--

         "MON Henri Quatre ET MA Zaire,
         ET MON AMERICAIN Alzire,
         NE M'ONT VALU JAMAIS UN SEUL REGARD DU ROI;
         J'AVAIS MILLE ENNEMIS AVEC TRES PEU DE GLOIRE:
         LES HONNEURS ET LES BIENS PLEUVENT ENFIN SUR MOI
                POUR UN FARCE DE LA FOIRE."

["My HENRI QUATRE, my ZAIRE, my ALZIRE [high works very many], could
never purchase me a single glance of the King; I had multitudes of
enemies, and very little fame:--honors and riches rain on me, at last,
for a Farce of the Fair" (--OEuvres,--ii. 151). The "Farce" (which by no
means CALLED itself such) was PRINCESSE DE NAVARRE (--OEuvres,--lxxiii.
251): first acted 23d February, 1745, Day of the Wedding. Gentlemanship
of the Chamber thereupon (which Voltaire, by permission, sold, shortly
after, for 2,500 pounds, with titles retained), and appointment as
Historiographer Royal. Poor Dauphiness did not live long; Louis XVI.'s
Mother was a SECOND Wife, Saxon-Polish Majesty's Daughter.] Yes, my
friend; it is a considerable ass, this world; by no means the Perfectly
Wise put at the top of it (as one could wish), and the Perfectly Foolish
at the bottom. Witness--nay, witness Psyche Pompadour herself, is not
she an emblem! Take your luck without criticism; luck good and bad
visits all.

2. AND GOT INTO THE ACADEMY NEXT YEAR, IN CONSEQUENCE. In 1746, the
Academy itself, Pompadour favoring, is made willing; Voltaire sees
himself among the Forty: soul, on that side too, be at ease, and hunger
not nor thirst anymore. ["May 9th, 1746, Voltaire is received at the
Academy; and makes a very fine Discourse" (BARBIER, ii. 488).--OEuvres
de Voltaire,--lxxiii. 355, 385, and i. 97.] This highest of felicities
could not be achieved without an ugly accompaniment from the surrounding
Populace. Desfontaines is dead, safe down in Sodom; but wants not for
a successor, for a whole Doggery of such. Who are all awake, and giving
tongue on this occasion. There is M. Roi the "Poet," as he was then
reckoned; jingling Roi, who concocts satirical calumnies; who collects
old ones, reprints the same,--and sends Travenol, an Opera-Fiddler,
to vend them. From which sprang a Lawsuit, PROCES-TRAVENOL, of famous
melancholy sort. As Voltaire had rather the habit of such sad melancholy
Lawsuits, we will pause on this of Travenol for a moment:--

3. SUMMARY OF TRAVENOL LAWSUIT. "Monday, 9th May, 1746, was the Day
or reception at the Academy; reception and fruition, thrice-savory to
Voltaire. But what an explosion of the Doggeries, before, during and
after that event! Voltaire had tried to be prudent, too. He had been
corresponding with Popes, with Cardinals; and, in a fine frank-looking
way, capturing their suffrages:--not by lying, which in general he
wishes to avoid, but by speaking half the truth; in short, by advancing,
in a dexterous, diplomatic way, the uncloven foot, in those Vatican
precincts. And had got the Holy Father's own suffrage for MAHOMET (think
of that, you Ass of Mirepoix!), among other cases that might rise. When
this seat among the Forty fell vacant, his very first measure--mark it,
Orthodox reader--was a Letter to the Chief Jesuit, Father Latour, Head
of one's old College of Louis le Grand. A Letter of fine filial
tenor: 'My excellent old Schoolmasters, to whom I owe everything; the
representatives of learning, of decorum, of frugality and modest human
virtue:--in what contrast to the obscure Doggeries poaching about in
the street-gutters, and flying at the peaceable passenger!'
[In--Voltairiana, ou Eloges Amphigouriques,--&c. (Paris, 1748), i.
150-160, the LETTER itself, "Paris, 7th February, 1746;" omitted
(without need or real cause on any side) in the common Collections
of--OEuvres de Voltaire.--] Which captivated Father Latour; and made
matters smooth on that side; so that even the ANCIEN DE MIREPOIX said
nothing, this time: What could he say? No cloven foot visible, and the
Authorities strong.

"Voltaire had started as Candidate with these judicious preliminaries.
Voltaire was elected, as we saw; fine Discourse, 9th May; and on the
Official side all things comfortable. But, in the mean while, the
Doggeries, as natural, seeing the thing now likely, had risen to
a never-imagined pitch; and had filled Paris, and, to Voltaire's
excruciated sense, the Universe, with their howlings and their
hyena-laughter, with their pasquils, satires, old and new. So that
Voltaire could not stand it; and, in evil hour, rushed downstairs
upon them; seized one poor dog, Travenol, unknown to him as Fiddler or
otherwise; pinioned Dog Travenol, with pincers, by the ears, him for
one;--proper Police-pincers, for we are now well at Court;--and had a
momentary joy! And, alas, this was not the right dog; this, we say, was
Travenol a Fiddler at the Opera, who, except the street-noises, knew
nothing of Voltaire; much less had the least pique at him; but had taken
to hawking certain Pasquils (Jingler Roi's COLLECTION, it appears), to
turn a desirable penny by them.

"And mistakes were made in the Affair Travenol,--old FATHER Travenol
haled to prison, instead of Son,--by the Lieutenant of Police and
his people. And Voltaire took the high-hand method (being well at
Court):--and thereupon hungry Advocates took up Dog Travenol and his
pincered ears: 'Serene Judges of the Chatelet, Most Christian Populace
of Paris, did you ever see a Dog so pincered by an Academical Gentleman
before, merely for being hungry?' And Voltaire, getting madder and
madder, appealed to the Academy (which would not interfere); filed
Criminal Informations; appealed to the Chatelet, to the Courts above
and to the Courts below; and, for almost a year, there went on the
'PROCES-TRAVENOL:' [About Mayday, 1746, Seizure of Travenol; Pleadings
are in vigor August, 1746; not done April, 1747. _In--Voltairiana,--_ii.
141-206, Pleadings, &c., copiously given; and most of the original
Libels, in different parts of that sad Book (compiled by Travenol's
Advocate, a very sad fellow himself): see also--OEuvres de
Voltaire,--lxxiii. 355 n., 385 n.; IB. i. 97; BARBIER, ii. 487. All in a
very jumbled, dateless, vague and incorrect condition.] Olympian Jove
in distressed circumstances VERSUS a hungry Dog who had eaten dirty
puddings. Paris, in all its Saloons and Literary Coffee-houses (figure
the ANTRE DE PROCOPE, on Publication nights!), had, monthly or so,
the exquisite malign banquet; and grinned over the Law Pleadings: what
Magazine Serial of our day can be so interesting to the emptiest mind!

"Lasted, I find, for above a year. From Spring, 1746, till towards
Autumn, 1747: Voltaire's feelings being--Haha, so exquisite, all the
while!--Well, reader, I can judge how amusing it was to high and low.
And yet Phoebus Apollo going about as mere Cowherd of Admetus, and
exposed to amuse the populace by his duels with dogs that have bitten
him? It is certain Voltaire was a fool, not to be more cautious of
getting into gutter-quarrels; not to have a thicker skin, in fact."

PROCES-TRAVENOL escorting one's Triumphal Entry; what an adjunct! Always
so: always in your utmost radiance of sunshine a shadow; and in your
softest outburst of Lydian or Spheral symphonies something of eating
Care! Then too, in the Court-circle itself, "is Trajan pleased," or are
all things well? Readers have heard of that "TRAJAN EST-IL CONTENT?" It
occurred Winter, 1745 (27th November, 1745, a date worth marking), while
things were still in the flush of early hope. That evening, our TEMPLE
DE LA GLOIRE (Temple of Glory) had just been acted for the first time,
in honor of him we may call "Trajan," returning from a "Fontenoy
and Seven Cities captured:" [Seven of them; or even eight of a kind:
Tournay, Ghent, Bruges, Nieuport, Dendermond, Ath, Ostend; and nothing
lost but Cape Breton and one's Codfishery.]--

    "Reviens, divin Trajan, vainqueur doux et terrible;
     Le monde est mon rival, tous les coeurs sont a toi;
     Mais est-il un coeur plus sensible,
     Et qui t'adore plus que moi?"
     [TEMPLE DE LA GLOIRE, Acte iv. (--OEuvres,--xii. 328).]

    "Return, divine Trajan, conqueror sweet and terrible;
     The world is my rival, all hearts are thine;
     But is there a heart more loving,
     Or that adores thee more than I?"

An allegoric Dramatic Piece; naturally very admirable at Versailles.
Issuing radiant from Fall of the Curtain, Voltaire had the farther honor
to see his Majesty pass out; Majesty escorted by Richelieu, one's
old friend in a sense: "Is Trajan pleased?" whispered Voltaire to his
Richelieu; overheard by Trajan,--who answered in words nothing, but in
a visible glance of the eyes did answer, "Impertinent Lackey!"--Trajan
being a man unready with speech; and disliking trouble with the people
whom he paid for keeping his boots in polish. O my winged Voltaire,
to what dunghill Bubbly-Jocks (COQS D'INDE) you do stoop with homage,
constrained by their appearance of mere size!--

Evidently no perfect footing at Court, after all. And then the
Pompadour, could she, Head-Butterfly of the Universe, be an anchor that
would hold, if gales rose? Rather she is herself somewhat of a gale, of
a continual liability to gales; unstable as the wind! Voltaire did
his best to be useful, as Court Poet, as director of Private
Theatricals;--above all, to soothe, to flatter Pompadour; and never
neglected this evident duty. But, by degrees, the envious Lackey-people
made cabals; turned the Divine Butterfly into comparative indifference
for Voltaire; into preference of a Crebillon's poor faded Pieces:
"Suitabler these, Madame, for the Private Theatricals of a Most
Christian Majesty." Think what a stab; crueler than daggers through
one's heart: "Crebillon?" M. de Voltaire said nothing; looked nothing,
in those sacred circles; and never ceased outwardly his worship, and
assiduous tuning, of the Pompadour: but he felt--as only Phoebus Apollo
in the like case can!"Away!" growled he to himself, when this atrocity
had culminated. And, in effect, is, since the end of 1746 or so, pretty
much withdrawn from the Versailles Olympus; and has set, privately in
the distance (now at Cirey, now at Paris, in our PETIT PALAIS there),
with his whole will and fire, to do Crebillon's dead Dramas into
living oues of his own. Dead CATILINA of Crebillon into ROME SAUVEE of
Voltaire, and the other samples of dead into living,--that stupid old
Crebillon himself and the whole Universe may judge, and even Pompadour
feel a remorse!--Readers shall fancy these things; and that the world is
coming back to its old poor drab color with M. de Voltaire; his divine
Emilie and he rubbing along on the old confused terms. One face-to-face
peep of them readers shall now have; and that is to be enough, or more
than enough:--




VOLTAIRE AND THE DIVINE EMILIE APPEAR SUDDENLY, ONE NIGHT, AT SCEAUX.

About the middle of August, 1747, King Friedrich, I find, was at
home;--not in his new SANS-SOUCI by any means, but running to and fro;
busy with his Musterings, "grand review, and mimic attack on Bornstadt,
near Berlin;" INVALIDEN-HAUS (Military Hospital) getting built; Silesian
Reviews just ahead; and, for the present, much festivity and moving
about, to Charlottenburg, to Berlin and the different Palaces;
Wilhelmina, "August 15th," having come to see him; of which fine visit,
especially of Wilhelmina's thoughts on it,--why have the envious Fates
left us nothing!

While all this is astir in Berlin and neighborhood, there is, among the
innumerable other visits in this world, one going on near Paris, in the
Mansion or Palace of Sceaux, which has by chance become memorable. A
visit by Voltaire and his divine Emilie, direct from Paris, I suppose,
and rather on the sudden. Which has had the luck to have a LETTER
written on it, by one of those rare creatures, a seeing Witness, who
can make others see and believe. The seeing Witness is little Madame de
Staal (by no means Necker's Daughter, but a much cleverer), known as one
of the sharpest female heads; she from the spot reports it to Madame du
Deffand, who also is known to readers. There is such a glimpse afforded
here into the actuality of old things and remarkable human creatures,
that Friedrich himself would be happy to read the Letter.

Duchesse du Maine, Lady of Sceaux, is a sublime old personage, with whom
and with whose high ways and magnificent hospitalities at Sceaux, at
Anet and elsewhere, Voltaire had been familiar for long years past.
[In--OEuvres de Voltaire,--lxxiii. 434 n, x. 8, &c., "Clog." and
others represent THIS Visit as having been to Anet,--though the record
otherwise is express.] This Duchess, grand-daughter of the great Conde,
now a dowager for ten years, and herself turned of seventy, has been a
notable figure in French History this great while: a living fragment
of Louis le Grand, as it were. Was wedded to Louis's "Legitimated"
Illegitimate, the Duc du Maine; was in trouble with the Regent d'Orleans
about Alberoni-Cellamare conspiracies (1718), Regent having stript her
husband of his high legitimatures and dignities, with little ceremony;
which led her to conspire a good deal, at one time. [DUC DU MAINE
with COMTE DE TOULOUSE were products of Louis XIV. and Madame de
Montespan:--"legitimated" by Papa's fiat in 1673, while still only young
children; DISlegitimated again by Regent d'Orleans, autumn, 1718; grand
scene, "guards drawn out" and the like, on this occasion (BARBIER, i.
8-11, ii. 181); futile Conspiracies with Alberoni thereupon; arrest
of Duchess and Duke (29th December, 1718), and closure of that poor
business. Duc du Maine died 1736; Toulouse next year; ages, each about
sixty-five. "Duc de Penthievre," Egalite's father-in-law, was Toulouse's
son; Maine has left a famous Dowager, whom we see. Nothing more of
notable about the one or the other.] She was never very beautiful; but
had a world of grace and witty intelligence; and knew a Voltaire when
she saw him. Was the soul of courtesy and benignity, though proud
enough, and carrying her head at its due height; and was always very
charming, in her lofty gracious way, to mankind. Interesting to all,
were it only as a living fragment of the Grand Epoch,--kind of French
Fulness of Time, when the world was at length blessed with a Louis
Quatorze, and Ne-plus-ultra of a Gentleman determined to do the handsome
thing in this world. She is much frequented by high people, especially
if of a Literary or Historical turn. President Henault (of the ABREGE
CHRONOLOGIQUE, the well-frilled, accurately powdered, most correct old
legal gentleman) is one of her adherents; Voltaire is another, that may
stand for many: there is an old Marquis de St. Aulaire, whom she calls
"MON VIEUX BERGER (my old shepherd," that is to say, sweetheart or flame
of love); [BARBIER, ii. 87; see ib. (i. 8-11; ii. 181, 436; &c.) for
many notices of her affairs and her.] there is a most learned President
de Mesmes, and others we have heard of, but do not wish to know. Little
De Staal was at one time this fine Duchess's maid; but has far outgrown
all that, a favorite guest of the Duchess's instead; holds now mainly by
Madame du Deffand (not yet fallen blind),--and is well turned of fifty,
and known for one of the shrewdest little souls in the world, at the
time she writes. Her Letter is addressed "TO MADAME DU DEFFAND, at
Paris;" most free-flowing female Letter; of many pages, runs on, day
after day, for a fortnight or so;--only Excerpts of it introducible
here:--

"SCEAUX, TUESDAY, 15th AUGUST, 1747.... Madame du Chatelet and Voltaire,
who had announced themselves as for to-day, and whom nobody had heard
of otherwise, made their appearance yesternight, near midnight; like two
Spectres, with an odor of embalmment about them, as if just out of their
tombs. We were rising from table; the Spectres, however, were hungry
ones: they needed supper; and what is more, beds, which were not ready.
The Housekeeper (CONCIERGE), who had gone to bed, rose in great haste.
Gaya [amiable gentleman, conceivable, not known], who had offered his
apartment for pressing cases, was obliged to yield it in this emergency:
he flitted with as much precipitation and displeasure as an army
surprised in its camp; leaving a part of his baggage in the enemy's
hands. Voltaire thought the lodging excellent, but that did not at all
console Gaya.

"As to the Lady, her bed turns out not to have been well made; they
have had to put her in a new place to-day. Observe, she made that
bed herself, no servants being up, and had found a blemish or DEFAUT
of"--word wanting: who knows what?--"in the mattresses; which I believe
hurt her exact mind, more than her not very delicate body. She has got,
in the interim, an apartment promised to somebody else; and she will
have to leave it again on Friday or Saturday, and go into that of
Marechal de Maillebois, who leaves at that time."

--Yes; Maillebois in the body, O reader. This is he, with the old
ape-face renewed by paint, whom we once saw marching with an "Army
of Redemption," haggling in the Passes about Eger, unable to redeem
Belleisle; marching and haggling, more lately, with a "Middle-Rhine
Army," and the like non-effect; since which, fighting his best in
Italy,--pushed home last winter, with Browne's bayonets in his back;
Belleisle succeeding him in dealing with Browne. Belleisle, and the
"Revolt of Genoa" (fatal to Browne's Invasion of us), and the Defence
of Genoa and the mutual worryings thereabout, are going on at a great
rate,--and there is terrible news out of those Savoy Passes, while
Maillebois is here. Concerning which by and by. He is grandson of the
renowned Colbert, this Maillebois. A Field-Marshal evidently extant, you
perceive, in those vanished times: is to make room for Madame on Friday,
says our little De Staal; and take leave of us,--if for good, so much
the better!

"He came at the time we did, with his daughter and grand-daughter: the
one is pretty, the other ugly and dreary [l'UNE, L'AUTRE; no saying
which, in such important case! Madame la Marechale, the mother
and grandmother, I think must be dead. Not beautiful she, nor very
benignant, "UNE TRES-MECHANTE FEMME, very cat-witted woman," says
Barbier; "shrieked like a devil, at Court, upon the Cardinal," about
that old ARMY-OF-REDEMPTION business; but all her noise did nothing].
[Barbier, ii, 332 ("November, 1742").]--M. le Marechal has hunted here
with his dogs, in these fine autumn woods and glades; chased a bit of
a stag, and caught a poor doe's fawn: that was all that could be got
there.

"Our new Guests will make better sport: they are going to have their
Comedy acted again [Comedy of THE EXCHANGE, much an entertainment with
them]: Vanture [conceivable, not known] is to do the Count de Boursoufle
(DE BLISTER or DE WINDBAG); you will not say this is a hit, any more
than Madame du Chatelet's doing the Hon. Miss Piggery (LA COCHONNIERE),
who ought to be fat and short." [L'ECHANGE, The Exchange, or WHEN SHALL
I GET MARRIED? Farce in three acts:--OEuvres, x. 167-222; used to be
played at Cirey and elsewhere (see plenty of details upon it, exact or
not quite so, IB. 7-9).]--Little De Staal then abruptly breaks off, to
ask about her Correspondent's health, and her Correspondent's friend old
President Henault's health; touches on those "grumblings and discords in
the Army (TRACASSERIES DE L'ARMEE)," which are making such astir; how M.
d'Argenson, our fine War-Minister, man of talent amid blockheads, will
manage them; and suddenly exclaims: "O my queen, what curious animals
men and women are! I laugh at their manoeuvres, the days when I have
slept well; if I have missed sleep, I could kill them. These changes of
temper prove that I do not break off kind. Let us mock other people, and
let other people mock us; it is well done on both sides.--[Poor
little De Staal: to what a posture have things come with you, in that
fast-rotting Epoch, of Hypocrisies becoming all insolvent!]

"WEDNESDAY, 16th. Our Ghosts do not show themselves by daylight. They
appeared yesterday at ten in the evening; I do not think we shall see
them sooner to-day: the one is engaged in writing high feats [SIECLE DE
LOUIS XV., or what at last became such]; the other in commenting Newton.
They will neither play nor walk: they are, in fact, equivalent to
ZEROS in a society where their learned writings are of no
significance.--[Pauses, without notice given: for some hours, perhaps
days; then resuming:] Nay, worse still: their apparition to-night has
produced a vehement declamation on one of our little social diversions
here, the game of CAVAGNOLE: ["Kind of BIRIBI," it would appear; in the
height of fashion then.] it was continued and maintained," on the part
of Madame du Chatelet, you guess, "in a tone which is altogether unheard
of in this place; and was endured," on the part of Serene Highness,
"with a moderation not less surprising. But what is unendurable is my
babble"--And herewith our nimble little woman hops off again into the
general field of things; and gossips largely, How are you, my queen,
Whither are you going, Whither we; That the Maillebois people are
away, and also the Villeneuves, if anybody knew them now; then how
the Estillacs, to the number of four, are coming to-morrow; and Cousin
Soquence, for all his hunting, can catch nothing; and it is a continual
coming and going; and how Boursoufle is to be played, and a Dame Dufour
is just come, who will do a character. Rubrics, vanished Shadows, nearly
all those high Dames and Gentlemen; LA PAUVRE Saint-Pierre, "eaten with
gout," who is she? "Still drags herself about, as well as she can;
but not with me, for I never go by land, and she seems to have the
hydrophobia, when I take to the water. [Thread of date is gone! I almost
think we must have got to Saturday by this time:--or perhaps it is only
Thursday, and Maillebois off prematurely, to be out of the way of
the Farce? Little De Staal takes no notice; but continues gossiping
rapidly:]

"Yesterday Madame du Chatelet got into her third lodging: she could not
any longer endure the one she had chosen. There was noise in it, smoke
without fire:--privately meseems, a little the emblem of herself! As to
noise, it was not by night that it incommoded her, she told me, but by
day, when she was in the thick of her work: it deranges her ideas. She
is busy reviewing her PRINCIPLES"--NEWTON'S PRINCIPIA, no doubt, but De
Staal will understand it only as PRINCIPES, Principles in general:--"it
is an exercise she repeats every year, without which the Principles
might get away, and perhaps go so far she would never find them again
[You satirical little gypsy!]. Her head, like enough, is a kind of
lock-up for them, rather than a birthplace, or natural home: and that is
a case for watching carefully lest they get away. She prefers the high
air of this occupation to every kind of amusement, and persists in not
showing herself till after dark. Voltaire has produced some gallant
verses [unknown to Editors] which help off a little the bad effect of
such unusual behavior.

"SUNDAY, 27th. I told you on Thursday [no, you did n't; you only meant
to tell] that our Spectres were going on the morrow, and that the Piece
was to be played that evening: all this has been done. I cannot give you
much of Boursoufle [done by one Vanture]. Mademoiselle Piggery [DE
LA COCHONNIERE, Madame du Chatelet herself] executed so perfectly the
extravagance of her part, that I own it gave me real pleasure. But
Vanture only put his own fatuity into the character of Boursoufle, which
wanted more: he played naturally in a Piece where all requires to be
forced, like the subject of it."--What a pity none of us has read this
fine Farce! "One Paris did the part of MUSCADIN (Little Coxcomb), which
name represents his character: in short, it can be said the Farce was
well given. The Author ennobled it by a Prologue for the Occasion;
which he acted very well, along with Madame Dufour as BARBE (Governess
Barbara),--who, but for this brilliant action, could not have put up
with merely being Governess to Piggery. And, in fact, she disdained the
simplicity of dress which her part required;--as did the chief actress,"
Du Chatelet herself (age now forty-one); "who, in playing PIGGERY,
preferred the interests of her own face to those of the Piece, and
made her entry in all the splendor and elegant equipments of a Court
Lady,"--her "PRINCIPLES," though the key is turned upon them, not unlike
jumping out of window, one would say! "She had a crow to pluck" [MAILLE A
PARTIR, "clasp to open," which is better] with Voltaire on this point:
but she is sovereign, and he is slave. I am very sorry at their going,
though I was worn out with doing her multifarious errands all the time
she was here.

"WEDNESDAY, 30th. M. le President [Henault] has been asked hither; and
he is to bring you, my Queen! Tried all I could to hinder; but they
would not be put off. If your health and disposition do suit, it will
be charming. In any case, I have got you a good apartment: it is the one
that Madame du Chatelet had seized upon, after an exact review of all
the Mansion. There will be a little less furniture than she had put in
it; Madame had pillaged all her previous apartments to equip this one.
We found about seven tables in it, for one item: she needs them of all
sizes; immense, to spread out her papers upon; solid, to support her
NECESSAIRE; slighter, for her nicknacks (POMPONS), for her jewels. And
this fine arrangement did not save her from an accident like that of
Philip II., when, after spending all the night in writing, he got his
despatches drowned by the oversetting of an ink-bottle. The Lady did not
pretend to imitate the moderation of that Prince; at any rate, he was
only writing on affairs of state; and the thing they blotted, on this
occasion, was Algebra, much more difficult to clean up again.

"This subject ought to be exhausted: one word more, and then it does
end. The day after their departure, I receive a Letter of four pages,
and a Note enclosed, which announces dreadful burly-burly: M. de
Voltaire has mislaid his Farce, forgotten to get back the parts, and
lost his Prologue: I am to find all that again [excessively tremulous
about his Manuscripts, M. de Voltaire; of such value are they, of such
danger to him; there is LA PUCELLE, for example,--enough to hang a man,
were it surreptitiously launched forth in print!]--I am to send him the
Prologue instantly, not by post, because they would copy it; to keep the
parts for fear of the same accident, and to lock up the Piece 'under
a hundred keys.' I should have thought one padlock sufficient for this
treasure! I have duly executed his orders." [--Madame de Graffigny
(Paris, 1820), pp. 283-291.]

And herewith EXPLICIT DE STAAL. Scene closes: EXEUNT OMNES; are off
to Paris or Versailles again; to Luneville and the Court of Stanislaus
again,--where also adventures await them, which will be heard of!

"Figure to yourself," says some other Eye-witness, "a lean Lady, with
big arms and long legs; small head, and countenance losing itself in a
cloudery of head-dress; cocked nose [RETROUSSE, say you? Very slightly,
then; quite an unobjectionable nose!] and pair of small greenish eyes;
complexion tawny, and mouth too big: this was the divine Emilie, whom
Voltaire celebrates to the stars. Loaded to extravagance with ribbons,
laces, face-patches, jewels and female ornaments; determined to be
sumptuous in spite of Economics, and pretty in spite of Nature:" Pooh,
it is an enemy's hand that paints! "And then by her side," continues he,
"the thin long figure of Voltaire, that Anatomy of an Apollo, affecting
worship of her," [From Rodenbeck (quoting somebody, whom I have surely
seen in French; whom Rodenbeck tries to name, as he could have done,
but curiously without success), i. 179.]--yes, that thin long Gentleman,
with high red-heeled shoes, and the daintiest polite attitudes and
paces; in superfine coat, laced hat under arm; nose and under-lip ever
more like coalescing (owing to decay of teeth), but two eyes shining on
you like carbuncles; and in the ringing voice, such touches of speech
when you apply for it! Thus they at Sceaux and elsewhere; walking their
Life-minuet, making their entrances and exits.

One thing is lamentable: the relation with Madame is not now a
flourishing one, or capable again of being: "Does not love me as he did,
the wretch!" thinks Madame always;--yet sticks by him, were it but in
the form of blister. They had been to Luneville, Spring, 1747; happy
dull place, within reach of Cirey; far from Versailles and its cabals.
They went again, 1748, in a kind of permanent way; Titular Stanislaus,
an opulent dawdling creature, much liking to have them; and Father
Menou, his Jesuit,--who is always in quarrel with the Titular
Mistress,--thinking to displace HER (as you, gradually discover), and
promote the Du Chatelet to that improper dignity! In which he had not
the least success, says Voltaire; but got "two women on his ears instead
of one." It was not to be Stanislaus's mistress; nor a TITULAR one at
all, but a real, that Madame was fated in this dull happy place! Idle
readers know the story only too well;--concerning which, admit this
other Fraction and no more:--

"Stanislaus, as a Titular King, cannot do without some kind of Titular
Army,--were it only to blare about as Life-guard, and beat kettle-drums
on occasion. A certain tall high-sniffing M. de St. Lambert, a young
Lorrainer of long pedigree and light purse, had just taken refuge in
this Life-guard [Summer 1748, or so], I know not whether as Captain or
Lieutenant, just come from the Netherlands Wars: of grave stiff manners;
for the rest, a good-looking young fellow; thought to have some poetic
genius, even;--who is precious, surely, in such an out-of-the-way
place. Welcome to Voltaire, to Madame still more. Alas, readers know the
History,--on which we must not dwell. Madame, a brown geometric Lady,
age now forty-two, with a Great Man who has scandalously ceased to
love her, casts her eye upon St. Lambert: 'Yes, you would be the
shoeing-horn, Monsieur, if one had time, you fine florid fellow, hardly
yet into your thirties--' And tries him with a little coquetry; I
always think, perhaps in this view chiefly? And then, at any rate, as he
responded, the thing itself became so interesting: 'Our Ulysses-bow,
we can still bend it, then, aha! 'And is not that a pretty stag withal,
worth bringing down; florid, just entering his thirties, and with the
susceptibilities of genius! Voltaire was not blind, could he have helped
it,--had he been tremulously alive to help it. 'Your Verses to her, my
St. Lambert,--ah, Tibullus never did the like of them. Yes, to you
are the roses, my fine young friend, to me are the thorns:' thus
sings Voltaire in response; [--OEuvres,--xvii. 223 (EPITRE A M. DE
ST. LAMBERT, 1749); &c. &c. In--Memoires sur Voltaire par Longchamp
et Wagniere--(Paris, 1826), ii. 229 et seq., details enough and more.]
perhaps not thinking it would go so far. And it went,--alas, it went to
all lengths, mentionable and not mentionable: and M. le Marquis had
to be coaxed home in the Spring of 1749,--still earlier it had been
suitabler;--and in September ensuing, M. de St. Lambert looking his
demurest, there is an important lying-in to be transacted!
Newton's PRINCIPIA is, by that time, drawing diligently to its
close;--complicated by such far abstruser Problems, not of the geometric
sort! Poor little lean brown woman, what a Life, after all; what an End
of a Life!"--




WAR-PASSAGES IN 1747.

The War, since Friedrich got out of it, does not abate in animosity, nor
want for bloodshed, battle and sieging; but offers little now memorable.
March 18th, 1747, a ghastly Phantasm of a Congress, "Congress of Breda,"
which had for some months been attempting Peace, and was never able to
get into conference, or sit in its chairs except for moments, flew away
altogether; [In September, 1746, had got together; but would not take
life, on trying and again trying, and fell forgotten: February, 1747,
again gleams up into hope: March 18th and the following days, vanishes
for good (ADELUNG, v. 50; vi. 6, 62).] and left the War perhaps angrier
than ever, more hopelessly stupid than ever. Except, indeed, that
resources are failing; money running low in France, Parlements beginning
to murmur, and among the Population generally a feeling that glory is
excellent, but will not make the national pot boil. Perhaps all this
will be more effective than Congresses of Breda? Here are the few Notes
worth giving:

APRIL 23d-30th, 1747, THE FRENCH INVADE HOLLAND; WHEREUPON, SUDDENLY,
A STADTHOLDER THERE. "After Fontenoy there has been much sieging and
capturing in that Netherlands Country, a series of successes gloriously
delightful to Marechal de Saxe and the French Nation: likewise (in
bar of said sieging, in futile attempt to bar it) a Battle of Roucoux,
October, 1746; with victory, or quasi-victory, to Saxe, at least with
prostration to the opposite part."

And farther on, there is a Battle of Lauffeld coming, 2d July, 1747;
with similar results; frustration evident, retreat evident, victory not
much to speak of. And in this gloriously delightful manner Saxe and the
French Nation have proceeded, till in fact the Netherlands Territory
with all strongholds, except Maestricht alone, was theirs,--and they
decided on attacking the Dutch Republic itself. And (17th April, 1747)
actually broke in upon the frontier Fortresses of Zealand; found the
same dry-rotten everywhere; and took them, Fortress after Fortress, at
the rate of a cannon salvo each: 'Ye magnanimous Dutch, see what you
have got by not sitting still, as recommended!' To the horror and terror
of the poor Zealanders and general Dutch Population. Who shrieked to
England for help;--and were, on the very instant, furnished with a
modicum of Seventy-fours (Dutch Courier returning by the same); which
landed the Courier April 23d, and put Walcheren in a state of security.
[Adelung, vi. 105, 125-134.]

"Whereupon the Dutch Population turned round on its Governors, with
a growl of indignation, spreading ever wider, waxing ever higher:
'Scandalous laggards, is this your mode of governing a free Republic?
Freedom to let the State go to dry-rot, and become the laughing-stock
of mankind. To provide for your own paltry kindred in the
State-employments; to palaver grandly with all comers; and publish
melodious Despatches of Van Hoey? Had not Britannic Majesty, for his
dear Daughter's sake, come to the rescue in this crisis, where had we
been? We demand a Stadtholder again; our glorious Nassau Orange, to keep
some bridle on you!' And actually, in this way, Populus and Plebs, by
general turning out into the streets, in a gloomily indignant manner,
which threatens to become vociferous and dangerous,--cowed the Heads of
the Republic into choosing the said Prince, with Princess and Family, as
Stadtholder, High-Admiral, High-Everything and Supreme of the Republic.
Hereditary, no less, and punctually perpetual; Princess and Family to
share in it. In which happy state (ripened into Kingship latterly) they
continue to this day. A result painfully surprising to Most Christian
Majesty; gratifying to Britannic proportionately, or more;--and indeed
beneficial towards abating dry-rot and melodious palaver in that poor
Land of the Free. Consummated, by popular outbreak of vociferation,
in the different Provinces, in about a week from April 23d, when
those helpful Seventy-fours hove in sight. Stadtholdership had been in
abeyance for forty-five years. [Since our Dutch William's death, 1702.]
The new Stadtholder did his best; could not, in the short life granted
him, do nearly enough.--Next year there was a SECOND Dutch outbreak,
or general turning into the streets; of much more violent character;
in regard to glaringly unjust Excises and Taxations, and to 'instant
dismissal of your Excise-Farmers,' as the special first item. [Adelung,
vi. 364 et seq.; Raumer, 182-193 ("March-September, 1748"); or,
in--Chesterfield's Works,--Dayrolles's Letters to Chesterfield: somewhat
unintelligent and unintelligible, both Raumer and he.] Which salutary
object being accomplished (new Stadtholder well aiding, in a valiant and
judicious manner), there has no third dose of that dangerous remedy been
needed since.

"JULY 19th, FATE OF CHEVALIER DE BELLEISLE. At the Fortress of Exilles,
in one of those Passes of the Savoy Alps,--Pass of Col di Sieta,
memorable to the French Soldier ever since,--there occurred a lamentable
thing;" doubtless much talked of at Sceaux while Voltaire was there.
"The Revolt of Genoa (popular outburst, and expulsion of our poor friend
Botta and his Austrians, then a famous thing, and a rarer than now)
having suddenly recalled the victorious General Browne from his Siege
of Antibes and Invasion of Provence,--Marechal Duc de Belleisle,
well reinforced and now become 'Army of Italy' in general, followed
steadfastly for 'Defence of Genoa' against indignant Botta, Browne and
Company. For defence of Genoa; nay for attack on Turin, which would
have been 'defence' in Genoa and everywhere,--had the captious Spaniard
consented to co-operate. Captious Spaniard would not; Couriers to
Madrid, to Paris thereupon, and much time lost;--till, at the eleventh
hour, came consent from Paris, 'Try it by yourself, then!' Belleisle
tries it; at least his Brother does. His Brother, the Chevalier, is to
force that Pass of Exilles; a terrible fiery business, but the backbone
of the whole adventure: in which, if the Chevalier can succeed, he too
is to be Marechal de France. Forward, therefore, climb the Alpine stairs
again; snatch me that Fort of Exilles.

"And so, July 19th, 1747, the Chevalier comes in sight of the Place;
scans a little the frowning buttresses, bristly with guns; the dumb
Alps, to right and left, looking down on him and it. Chevalier de
Belleisle judges that, however difficult, it can and must be possible
to French valor; and storms in upon it, huge and furious (20,000, or
if needful 30,000);--but is torn into mere wreck, and hideous recoil;
rallies, snatches a standard, 'We must take it or die,'--and dies, does
not take it; falls shot on the rampart, 'pulling at the palisades with
his own hands,' nay some say 'with his teeth,' when the last moments
came. Within one hour, he has lost 4,000 men; and himself and his
Brother's Enterprise lie ended there. [Voltaire, xxv. 221 et seq.
(SIECLE DE LOUIS QUINZE, c. 22); Adelung, vi 174.] Fancy his poor
Brother's feelings, who much loved him! The discords about War-matters
(TRACASSERIES DE L'ARMEE) were a topic at Sceaux lately, as De Staal
intimated. 'Why starve our Italian Enterprises; heaping every resource
upon the Netherlands and Saxe?' Diligent Defence of Genoa (chiefly by
flourishing of swords on the part of France, for the Austrians were
not yet ready) is henceforth all the Italian War there is; and this
explosion at Exilles may fitly be finis to it here. Let us only say that
Infant Philip did, when the Peace came, get a bit of Apanage (Parma and
Piacenza or some such thing, contemptibly small to the Maternal heart),
and that all things else lapsed to their pristine state, MINUS only the
waste and ruin there had been."

JULY 12th-SEPTEMBER 18th: SIEGE OF THE CHIEF DUTCH FORTRESS. "Unexpected
Siege of Bergen-op-Zoom; two months of intense excitement to the Dutch
Patriots and Cause-of-Liberty Gazetteers, as indifferent and totally
dead as it has now become. Marechal de Saxe, after his victory at
Lauffeld, 2d July, did not besiege Maestricht, as had been the universal
expectation; but shot off an efficient lieutenant of his, one Lowendahl,
in due force, privately ready, to overwhelm Bergen-op-Zoom with sudden
Siege, while he himself lay between the beaten enemy and it. Bergen is
the heart, of Holland, key of the Scheld, and quite otherwise important
than Maestricht. 'Coehorn's masterpiece!' exclaim the Gazetteers;
'Impregnable, you may depend!' 'We shall see,' answered Saxe, answered
Lowendahl the Dane (who also became Marechal by this business); and
after a great deal of furious assaulting and battering, took the
Place September 18th, before daylight," by a kind of surprisal or
quasi-storm;--"the Commandant, one Cronstrom, a brave old Swede, age
towards ninety, not being of very wakeful nature! 'Did as well as could
be expected of him,' said the Court-Martial sitting on his case, and
forbore to shoot the poor old man."

[Adelung, vi. 184, 206;--"for Cronstrom," if any one is curious, "see
Schlotzer,--Schwedische Biographie,--ii. 252 (in voce)."] A sore stroke,
this of Bergen, to Britannic Majesty and the Friends of Liberty; who
nevertheless refuse to be discouraged."

DECEMBER 25th, RUSSIANS IN BEHALF OF HUMAN LIBERTY. "March of 36,000
Russians from the City of Moscow, this day; on a very long journey, in
the hoary Christmas weather! Most, Christian Majesty is ruinously short
of money; Britannic Majesty has still credit, and a voting Parliament,
but, owing to French influence on the Continent, can get no recruits to
hire. Gradually driven upon Russia, in such stress, Britannic Majesty
has this year hired for himself a 35,000 Russians; 30,000 regular foot;
4,000 ditto horse, and 1,000 Cossacks;--uncommonly cheap, only 150,000
pounds the lot, not, 4 pounds per head by the year. And, in spite
of many difficulties and hagglings, they actually get on march, from
Moscow, 25th December, 1747; and creep on, all Winter, through the
frozen peats wildernesses, through Lithuania, Poland, towards Bohmen,
Mahren: are to appear in the Rhine Countries, joined by certain
Austrians; and astonish mankind next Spring. Their Captain is one
Repnin, Prince Repnin, afterwards famous enough in those Polish
Countries;"--which is now the one point interesting to us in the thing.

"Their Captain WAS, first, to be Lacy, old Marshal Lacy; then, failing
Lacy, 'Why not General Keith?'--but proves to be Repnin, after much
hustling and intriguing:" Repnin, not Keith, that is the interesting
point.

"Such march of the Russians, on behalf of Human Liberty, in pay of
Britannic Majesty, is a surprising fact; and considerably discomposes
the French. Who bestir themselves in Sweden and elsewhere against Russia
and it: with no result,--except perhaps the incidental one, of getting
our esteemed old friend Guy Dickens, now Sir Guy, dismissed from
Stockholm, and we hope put on half-pay on his return home." [Adelung,
vi. 250, 302:--Sir Guy, not yet invalided, "went to Russia," and other
errands.]




MARSHAL KEITH COMES TO PRUSSIA (September, 1747).

"Much hustling and intriguing," it appears, in regard to the Captaincy
of these Russians. Concerning which there is no word worthy to be
said,--except for one reason only, That it finished off the connection
of General Keith with Russia. That this of seeing Repnin, his junior and
inferior, preferred to him, was, of many disgusts, the last drop which
made the cup run over;--and led the said General to fling it from him,
and seek new fields of employment. From Hamburg, having got so far,
he addresses himself, 1st September, 1747, to Friedrich, with offer
of service; who grasps eagerly at the offer: "Feldmarschall your rank;
income, $1,200 a year; income, welcome, all suitable:"--and, October
28th, Feldmarschall Keith finishes, at Potsdam, a long Letter to his
Brother Lord Marischal, in these words, worth giving, as those of a very
clear-eyed sound observer of men and things:--

"I have now the honor, and, which is still more, the pleasure, of being
with the King at Potsdam; where he ordered me to come," 17th current,
"two days after he declared me Fieldmarshal: Where I have the honor to
dine and sup with him almost every day. He has more wit than I have wit
to tell you; speaks solidly and knowingly on all kinds of subjects; and
I am much mistaken if, with the experience of Four Campaigns, he is
not the best Officer of his Army. He has several persons," Rothenburg,
Winterfeld, Swedish Rudenskjold (just about departing), not to speak of
D'Argens and the French, "with whom he lives in almost the familiarity
of a friend,--but has no favorite;--and shows a natural politeness for
everybody who is about him. For one who has been four days about his
person, you will say I pretend to know a great deal of his character:
but what I tell you, you may depend upon. With more time, I shall know
as much of him as he will let me know;--and all his Ministry knows
no more." [Varnhagen van Ense,--Leben des Feldmarschalls Jakob
Keith--(Berlin, 1844,) p. 100; Adelung, vi. 244.]

A notable acquisition to Friedrich;--and to the two Keiths withal; for
Friedrich attached both of them to his Court and service, after their
unlucky wanderings; and took to them both, in no common degree. As will
abundantly appear.

While that Russia Corps was marching out of Moscow, Cocceji and his
Commissions report from Pommern, that the Pomeranian Law-stables are
completely clear; that the New Courts have, for many months back, been
in work, and are now, at the end of the Year, fairly abreast with it,
according to program;--have "decided of Old-Pending Lawsuits 2,400,
all that there were (one of them 200 years old, and filling seventy
Volumes); and of the 994 New ones, 772; not one Lawsuit remaining over
from the previous Year." A highly gratifying bit of news to his Majesty;
who answers emphatically, EUGE! and directs that the Law Hercules
proceed now to the other Provinces,--to the Kur-Mark, now, and Berlin
itself,--with his salutary industries. Naming him "Grand Chancellor,"
moreover; that is to say, under a new title, Head of Prussian Law,--old
Arnim, "Minister of Justice," having shown himself disaffected to
Law-Reform, and got rebuked in consequence, and sulkily gone into
private life. [Stenzel, iv. 321; Ranke, iii. 389.]

In February of this Year, 1747, Friedrich had something like a stroke
of apoplexy; "sank suddenly motionless, one day," and sat insensible,
perhaps for half an hour: to the terror and horror of those about
him. Hemiplegia, he calls it; rush of blood to the head;--probably
indigestion, or gouty humors, exasperated by over-fatigue. Which
occasioned great rumor in the world; and at Paris, to Voltaire's horror,
reports of his death. He himself made light of the matter: [To Voltaire,
22d February, 1747 (--OEuvres de Frederic,--xxii. 164); see IB. 164
n.] and it did not prove to have been important; was never followed by
anything similar through his long life; and produced no change in his
often-wavering health, or in his habits, which were always steady. He
is writing MEMOIRS; settling "Colonies" (on his waste moors); improving
Harbors. Waiting when this European War will end; politely deaf to the
offers of Britannic Majesty as to taking the least personal share in it.




Chapter III.--EUROPEAN WAR FALLS DONE: TREATY OF AIX-LA-CHAPELLE.

The preparations for Campaign 1748 were on a larger scale than ever.
Britannic Subsidies, a New Parliament being of willing mind, are opulent
to a degree; 192,000 men, 60,000 Austrians for one item, shall be in the
Netherlands;--coupled with this remarkable new clause, "And they are to
be there in fact, and not on paper only," and with a tare-and-tret of
30 or 40 per cent, as too often heretofore! Holland, under its new
Stadtholder, is stanch of purpose, if of nothing else. The 35,000
Russians, tramping along, are actually dawning over the horizon, towards
Teutschland,--King Friedrich standing to arms along his Silesian Border,
vigilant "Cordon of Troops all the way," in watch of such questionable
transit. [In ADELUNG, vi. 110, 143, 167, 399 ("April, 1747-August,
1748"), account of the more and more visible ill-will of the Czarina:
"jealousy" about Sweden, about Dantzig, Poland, &c. &c.] Britannic
Majesty and Parliament seem resolute to try, once more, to the utmost,
the power of the breeches-pocket in defending this sacred Cause of
Liberty so called.

Breeches-pocket MINUS most other requisites: alas, with such methods as
you have, what can come of it? Royal Highness of Cumberland is a
valiant man, knowing of War little more than the White Horse of Hanover
does;--certain of ruin again, at the hands of Marechal de Saxe. So
think many, and have their dismal misgivings. "Saxe having eaten
Bergen-op-Zoom before our eyes, what can withstand the teeth of Saxe?"
In fact, there remains only Maestricht, of considerable; and then
Holland is as good as his! As for King Louis, glory, with funds running
out, and the pot ceasing to boil, has lost its charm to an afflicted
France and him. King Louis's wishes are known, this long while;--and
Ligonier, generously dismissed by him after Lauffeld, has brought
express word to that effect, and outline of the modest terms proposed in
one's hour of victory, with pot ceasing to boil.

On a sudden, too, "March 18th,"--wintry blasts and hailstorms still
raging,--Marechal de Saxe, regardless of Domestic Hunger, took the
field, stronger than ever. Manoeuvred about; bewildering the mind of
Royal Highness and the Stadtholder ("Will he besiege Breda? Will he do
this, will he do that?")--poor Highness and poor Stadtholder; who "did
not agree well together," and had not the half of their forces come in,
not to speak of handling them when come! Bewilderment of these two once
completed, Marechal de Saxe made "a beautiful march upon Maestricht;"
and, April 15th, opened trenches, a very Vesuvius of artillery, before
that place; Royal Highness gazing into it, in a doleful manner, from the
adjacent steeple-tops. Royal Highness, valor's self, has to admit: "Such
an outlook; not half of us got together! The 60,000 Austrians are but
30,000; the--In fact, you will have to make Peace, what else?" [His
Letters, in Coxe's--Pelham--("March 29th-April 2d, 1748"), i. 405-410.]
Nothing else, as has been evident to practical Official People
(especially to frugal Pelham, Chesterfield and other leading heads) for
these two months last past.

In a word, those 35,000 Russians are still far away under the horizon,
when thoughts of a new Congress, "Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle," are
busying the public mind: "Mere moonshine again?" "Something real this
time?"--And on and from March 17th (Lord Sandwich first on the ground,
and Robinson from Vienna coming to help), the actual Congress begins
assembling there. April 24th, the Congress gets actually to business;
very intent on doing it; at least the three main parties, France,
England, Holland, are supremely so. Who, finding, for five diligent
days, nothing but haggle and objection on the part of the others, did
by themselves meet under cloud of night, "night of April 29th-30th;"
and--bring the Preliminaries to perfection. And have them signed before
daybreak; which is, in effect, signing, or at least fixing as certain,
the Treaty itself; so that Armistice can ensue straightway, and the War
essentially end.

A fixed thing; the Purseholders having signed. On the safe rear of
which, your recipient Subsidiary Parties can argue and protest (as the
Empress-Queen and her Kaunitz vehemently did, to great lengths), and
gradually come in and finish. Which, in the course of the next six
months, they all did, Empress-Queen and Excellency Kaunitz not excepted.
And so, October 18th, 1748, all details being, in the interim, either
got settled, or got flung into corners as unsettleable (mostly the
latter),--Treaty itself was signed by everybody; and there was "Peace
of Aix-la-Chapelle." Upon which, except to remark transiently how
inconclusive a conclusion it was, mere end of war because your powder is
run out, mere truce till you gather breath and gunpowder again, we will
spend no word in this place. [Complete details in ADELUNG, vi. 225-409:
"October, 1747," Ligonier returning, and first rumor of new Congress
(226); "17th March, 1748," Sandwich come (323); "April 29th-30th,"
meet under cloud of night (326); Kaunitz protesting (339): "2d August,"
Russians to halt and turn (397); "are over into the Oberpfalz, magazines
ahead at Nurnberg;" in September, get to Bohmen again, and winter there:
"18th October, 1748," Treaty finished (398, 409); Treaty itself given
(IB., Beylage, 44). See--Gentleman's Magazine,--and OLD NEWSPAPERS of
1748; Coxe's--Pelham,--ii. 7-41, i. 366-416.]

"The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle was done in a hurry and a huddle; greatly
to Maria Theresa's disgust. 'Why not go on with your expenditures, ye
Sea-Powers? Can money and life be spent better? I have yet conquered
next to nothing for the Cause of Liberty and myself!' But the Sea-Powers
were tired of it; the Dutch especially, who had been hoisted with such
difficulty, tended strongly, New Stadtholder notwithstanding, to plump
down again into stable equilibrium on the broad-bottom principle. Huddle
up the matter; end it, well if you can; any way end it. The Treaty
contained many Articles, now become forgettable to mankind. There is
only One Article, and the Want of One, which shall concern us in this
place. The One Article is: guarantee by all the European Powers to
Friedrich's Treaty of Dresden. Punctually got as bargained for,--French
especially willing; Britannic Majesty perhaps a little languid, but his
Ministers positive on the point; so that Friedrioh's Envoy had not much
difficulty at Aix. And now, Friedrich's Ownership of Silesia recognized
by all the Powers to be final and unquestionable, surely nothing more is
wanted? Nothing,--except keeping of this solemn stipulation by all the
Powers. How it was kept by some of them; in what sense some of them are
keeping it even now, we shall see by and by.

"The Want of an Article was, on the part of England, concerning
JENKINS'S EAR. There is not the least conclusion arrived at on that
important Spanish-English Question; blind beginning of all these
conflagrations; and which, in its meaning to the somnambulant Nation,
is so immense. No notice taken of it; huddled together, some hasty
shovelful or two of diplomatic ashes cast on it, 'As good as extinct,
you see!' Left smoking, when all the rest is quenched. Considerable
feeling there was, on this point, in the heart of the poor somnambulant
English Nation; much dumb or semi-articulate growling on such a
Peace-Treaty: 'We have arrived nowhere, then, by all this fighting, and
squandering, and perilous stumbling among the chimney-pots? Spain (on
its own showing) owed us 95,000 pounds. Spain's debt to Hanover; yes,
you take care of that; some old sixpenny matter, which nobody ever heard
of before: and of Spain's huge debt to England you drop no hint; of
the 95,000 pounds, clear money, due by Spain; or of one's liberty to
navigate the High Seas, none!' [PROTEST OF ENGLISH MERCHANTS AGAINST,
&c. ("May, 1748") given in ADELUNG, vi. 353-358.] A Peace the reverse of
applauded in England; though the wiser Somnambulants, much more Pitt
and Friends, who are broad awake on these German points, may well be
thankful to see such a War end on any terms."--Well, surely this old
admitted 95,000 pounds should have been paid! And, to a moral certainty,
Robinson and Sandwich must have made demand of it from the Spaniard. But
there is no getting old Debts in, especially from that quarter. "King
Friedrich [let me interrupt, for a moment, with this poor composite
Note] is trying in Spain even now,--ever since 1746, when Termagant's
Husband died, and a new King came,--for payment of old debt: Two old
Debts; quite tolerably just both of them. King Friedrich keeps trying
till 1749, three years in all: and, in the end, gets nothing whatever.
Nothing,--except some Merino Rams in the interim," gift from the new
King of Spain, I can suppose, which proved extremely useful in our Wool
Industries; "and, from the same polite Ferdinand VI., a Porcelain Vase
filled with Spanish Snuff." That was all!--

King Friedrich, let me note farther, is getting decidedly deep into
snuff; holds by SPANIOL (a dry yellow pungency, analogous to Lundy-foot
or Irish-Blackguard, known to snuffy readers); always by Spaniol, we
say; and more especially "the kind used by her Majesty of Spain," the
now Dowager Termagant: [Orders this kind, from his Ambassador in Paris,
"30th September, 1743:" the earliest extant trace of his snuffing habits
(Preuss, i. 409).--NOTE FARTHER (if interesting): "The Termagant still
lasted as Dowager, consuming SPANIOL at least, for near twenty years
(died 11th July, 1766);--the new King, Ferdinand VI., was her STEPson,
not her son; he went mad, poor soul, and died (10th August, 1759): upon
which, Carlos of Naples, our own 'Baby Carlos' that once was, succeeded
in Spain, 'King Carlos III. of Spain;' leaving his Son, a young boy
under tutelage, as King of the Two Sicilies (King 'Ferdinand IV.,' who
did not die, but had his difficulties, till 1825). Don Philip, who had
fought so in those Savoy Passes, and got the bit of Parmesan Country,
died 1765, the year before Mamma."] which, also, is to be remembered.
Dryasdust adds, in his sweetly consecutive way: "Friedrich was very
expensive about his snuff-boxes; wore two big rich boxes in his pockets;
five or six stood on tables about; and more than a hundred in store,
coming out by turns for variety. The cheapest of them cost 300 pounds
(2,000 thalers); he had them as high as 1,500 pounds. At his death,
there were found 130 of various values: they were the substance of all
the jewelry he had; besides these snuff-boxes, two gold watches only,
and a very small modicum of rings. Had yearly for personal Expenditure
1,200,000 thalers [180,000 pounds of Civil List, as we should say];
SPENT 33,000 pounds of it, and yearly gave the rest away in Royal
beneficences, aid of burnt Villages, inundated Provinces, and
multifarious PATER-PATRIAE objects." [Preuss, i. 409, 410,]--In regard
to JENKINS'S EAR, my Constitutional Friend continues:--

"SILESIA and JENKINS'S EAR, we often say, were the two bits of realities
in this enormous hurly-burly of imaginations, insane ambitions, and
zeros and negative quantities. Negative Belleisle goes home, not with
Germany cut in Four and put under guidance of the First Nation of the
Universe (so extremely fit for guiding self and neighbors), but with
the First Nation itself reduced almost to wallet and staff; bankrupt,
beggared--'Yes,' it answers, 'in all but glory! Have not we gained
Fontenoy, Roucoux, Lauffeld; and strong-places innumerable [mostly in a
state of dry-rot]? Did men ever fight as we Frenchmen; combining it
with theatrical entertainments, too! Sublime France, First Nation of the
Universe, will try another flight (ESSOR), were she breathed a little!'

"Yes, a new ESSOR ere long, and perhaps surprise herself and mankind!
The losses of men, money and resource, under this mad empty Enterprise
of Belleisle's, were enormous, palpable to France and all mortals: but
perhaps these were trifling to the replacement of them by such GLOIRE
as there had been. A GLOIRE of plunging into War on no cause at all; and
with an issue consisting only of foul gases of extreme levity. Messieurs
are of confessed promptitude to fight; and their talent for it, in some
kinds, is very great indeed. But this treating of battle and slaughter,
of death, judgment and eternity, as light play-house matters; this of
rising into such transcendency of valor, as to snap your fingers in the
face of the Almighty Maker; this, Messieurs, give me leave to say so, is
a thing that will conduct you and your PREMIERE NATION to the Devil, if
you do not alter it. Inevitable, I tell you! Your road lies that way,
then? Good morning, Messieurs; let me still hope, Not!"

Diplomatist Kaunitz gained his first glories in this Congress of Aix;
which are still great in the eyes of some. Age now thirty-seven; a
native of these Western parts; but henceforth, by degrees ever more, the
shining star and guide of Austrian Policies down almost to our own New
Epoch. As, unluckily, he will concern us not a little, in time coming,
let us read this Note, as foreshadow of the man and his doings:--

"The glory of Count, ultimately Prince, von Kaunitz-Rietberg, is
great in Diplomatic Circles of the past Century. 'The greatest of
Diplomatists,' they all say;--and surely it is reckoned something to
become the greatest in your line. Farther than this, to the readers of
these times, Kaunitz-Rietberg's glory does not go. A great character,
great wisdom, lasting great results to his Country, readers do not trace
in Kaunitz's diplomacies,--only temporary great results, or what he and
the by-standers thought such, to Kaunitz himself. He was the Supreme
Jove, we perceive, in that extinct Olympus; and regards with sublime
pity, not unallied to contempt, all other diplomatic beings. A man
sparing of words, sparing even of looks; will hardly lift his eyelids
for your sake,--will lift perhaps his chin, in slight monosyllabic
fashion, and stalk superlatively through the other door. King of the
vanished Shadows. A determined hater of Fresh Air; rode under glass
cover, on the finest day; made the very Empress shut her windows when
he came to audience; fed, cautiously daring, on boiled capons: more I
remember not,--except also that he would suffer no mention of the word
Death by any mortal. [Hormayr,--OEsterreichischer Plutarch,--iv.
(3tes), 231-283.] A most high-sniffing, fantastic, slightly insolent
shadow-king;--ruled, in his time, the now vanished Olympus; and had the
difficult glory (defective only in result) of uniting France and Austria
AGAINST the poor old Sea-Power milk-cows, for the purpose of recovering
Silesia from Friedrich, a few years hence!"--These are wondrous results;
hidden under the horizon, not very far either; and will astonish
Britannic Majesty and all readers, in a few years.




MARECHAL DE SAXE PAYS FRIEDRICH A VISIT.

In Summer, 1749, Marechal de Saxe, the other shiny figure of this mad
Business of the Netherlands, paid Friedrich a visit; had the honor to
be entertained by him three days (July 13th-16th, 1749), in his Royal
Cottage of Sans-Souci seemingly, in his choicest manner. Curiosity,
which is now nothing like so vivid as it then was, would be glad to
listen a little, in this meeting of two Suns, or of one Sun and one
immense Tar-Barrel, or Atmospheric Meteor really of shining nature,
and taken for a Sun. But the Books are silent; not the least detail, or
hint, or feature granted us. Only Fancy;--and this of Smelfungus, by way
of long farewell to one of the parties:--

... "It was at Tongres, or in head-quarters near it, 10th October,
1746,--Battle expected on the morrow [Battle of ROUCOUX, over towards
Herstal, which we used to know],-that M. Favart, Saxe's Playwright and
Theatre-Director, gave out in cheerful doggerel on fall of the Curtain,
the announcement:--

          --'Demain nous donnerons relache,
          Quoique le Directeur s'en fache,
          Vous voir combleroit nos desirs:--

         'To-morrow is no Play,
          To the Manager's regret,
          Whose sole study is to keep you happy:
          --On doit ceder tout a la gloire;
          Vous ne songes qu'a la victoire,
          Nous ne songeons qu'a vos plaisires'--

          [--Biographic Universelle,--xiv. 209,? Favart;
          Espagnac, ii. 162.]

          But, you being bent upon victory,
          What can he do?--
          Day after to-morrow,'--

'Day after to-morrow,' added he, taking the official tone, (in honor of
your laurels) [gained already, since you resolve on gaining them], we
will have the honor of presenting'--such and such a gay Farce, to as
many of you as remain alive! which was received with gay clapping of
hands: admirable to the Universe, at least to the Parisian UNIVERS and
oneself. Such a prodigality of light daring is in these French
gentlemen, skilfully tickled by the Marechal; who uses this Playwright,
among other implements, for keeping them at the proper pitch. Was there
ever seen such radiancy of valor? Very radiant indeed;--yet, it seems to
me, gone somewhat into the phosphorescent kind; shining in the dark, as
fish will do when rotten! War has actually its serious character; nor is
Death a farcical transaction, however high your genius may go. But what
then? it is the Marechal's trade to keep these poor people at the
cutting pitch, on any terms that will hold for the moment.

"I know not which was the most dissolute Army ever seen in the world;
but this of Saxe's was very dissolute. Playwright Favart had withal
a beautiful clever Wife,--upon whom the courtships, munificent
blandishments, threatenings and utmost endeavors of Marechal de Saxe
(in his character of goat-footed Satyr) could not produce the least
impression. For a whole year, not the least. Whereupon the Goat-footed
had to get LETTRE DE CACHET for her; had to--in fact, produce the
brutalest Adventure that is known of him, even in this brutal kind. Poor
Favart, rushing about in despair, not permitted to run him through the
belly, and die with his Wife undishonored, had to console himself, he
and she; and do agreeable theatricalities for a living as heretofore.
Let us not speak of it!

"Of Saxe's Generalship, which is now a thing fallen pretty much into
oblivion, I have no authority to speak. He had much wild natural
ingenuity in him; cunning rapid whirls of contrivance; and gained Three
Battles and very many Sieges, amid the loudest clapping of hands that
could well be. He had perfect intrepidity; not to be flurried by any
amount of peril or confusion; looked on that English Column, advancing
at Fontenoy with its FUE INFERNAL, steadily through his perspective;
chewing his leaden bullet: 'Going to beat me, then? Well--!' Nobody
needed to be braver. He had great good-nature too, though of hot temper
and so full of multifarious veracities; a substratum of inarticulate
good sense withal, and much magnanimity run wild, or run to seed. A
big-limbed, swashing, perpendicular kind of fellow; haughty of face,
but jolly too; with a big, not ugly strut;--captivating to the French
Nation, and fit God of War (fitter than 'Dalhousie,' I am sure!) for
that susceptive People. Understood their Army also, what it was then
and there; and how, by theatricals and otherwise, to get a great deal of
fire out of it. Great deal of fire;--whether by gradual conflagration
or not, on the road to ruin or not; how, he did not care. In respect of
military 'fame' so called, he had the great advantage of fighting always
against bad Generals, sometimes against the very worst. To his fame an
advantage; to himself and his real worth, far the reverse. Had he fallen
in with a Friedrich, even with a Browne or a Traun, there might have
been different news got. Friedrich (who was never stingy in such
matters, except to his own Generals, where it might do hurt) is profuse
in his eulogies, in his admirations of Saxe; amiable to see, and not
insincere; but which, perhaps, practically do not mean very much.

"It is certain the French Army reaped no profit from its experience
of Marechal de Saxe, and the high theatricalities, ornamental
blackguardisms, and ridicule of death and life. In the long-run a graver
face would have been of better augury. King Friedrich's soldiers, one
observes, on the eve of battle, settle their bits of worldly business;
and wind up, many of them, with a hoarse whisper of prayer. Oliver
Cromwell's soldiers did so, Gustaf Adolf's; in fact, I think all
good soldiers: Roucoux with a Prince Karl, Lauffeld with a Duke of
Cumberland; you gain your Roucoux, your Lauffeld, Human Stupidity
permitting: but one day you fall in with Human Intelligence, in an
extremely grave form;--and your 'ELAN,' elastic outburst, the quickest
in Nature, what becomes of it? Wait but another decade; we shall
see what an Army this has grown. Cupidity, dishonesty, floundering
stupidity, indiscipline, mistrust; and an elastic outspurt (ELAN) turned
often enough into the form of SAUVE-QUI-PEUT!

"M. le Marechal survived Aix-la-Chapelle little more than two years.
Lived at Chambord, on the Loire, an Ex-Royal Palace; in such splendor as
never was. Went down in a rose-pink cloud, as if of perfect felicity; of
glory that would last forever,--which it has by no means done. He made
despatch; escaped, in this world, the Nemesis, which often waits on what
they call 'fame.' By diligent service of the Devil, in ways not worth
specifying, he saw himself, November 21st, 1750, flung prostrate
suddenly: 'Putrid fever!' gloom the doctors ominously to one another:
and, November 30th, the Devil (I am afraid it was he, though clad in
roseate effulgence, and melodious exceedingly) carried him home on those
kind terms, as from a Universe all of Opera. 'Wait till 1759,--till
1789!' murmured the Devil to himself."




TRAGIC NEWS, THAT CONCERN US, OF VOLTAIRE AND OTHERS.

About two months after those Saxe-Friedrich hospitalities at Sans-Souci,
Voltaire, writing, late at night, from the hospitable Palace of Titular
Stanislaus, has these words, to his trusted D'Argental:--

LUNEVILLE, 4th SEPTEMBER, 1749.... "Madame du Chatelet, this night,
while scribbling over her NEWTON, felt a little twinge; she called
a waiting-maid, who had only time to hold out her apron, and catch a
little Girl, whom they carried to its cradle. The Mother arranged her
papers, went to bed; and the whole of that (TOUT CELA) is sleeping like
a dormouse, at the hour I write to you." My guardian angels, "poor I
sha'n't have so easy a delivery of my CATILINA" (my ROME SAVED, for
the confusion of old Crebillon and the cabals)! [--OEuvres,--lxxiv. 57
(Voltaire to D'Argental).]...

And then, six days later, hear another Witness present there:--

LUNEVILLE PALACE, 10th SEPTEMBER. "For the first three or four days,
the health of the Mother appeared excellent; denoting nothing but the
weakness inseparable from her situation. The weather was very warm.
Milk-fever came, which made the heat worse. In spite of remonstrances,
she would have some iced barley-water; drank a big glass of it;--and,
some instants after, had great pain in her head; followed by other bad
symptoms." Which brought the Doctor in again, several Doctors, hastily
summoned; who, after difficulties, thought again that all was coming
right. And so, on the sixth night, 10th September, inquiring friends had
left the sick-room hopefully, and gone down to supper, "the rather as
Madame seemed inclined to sleep. There remained none with her but M. de
St. Lambert, one of her maids and I. M. de St. Lambert, as soon as the
strangers were gone, went forward and spoke some moments to her; but
seeing her sleepy, drew back, and sat chatting with us two. Eight or ten
minutes after, we heard a kind of rattle in the throat, intermixed with
hiccoughs: we ran to the bed; found her, senseless; raised her to a
sitting posture, tried vinaigrettes, rubbed her feet, knocked into the
palms of her hands;--all in vain; she was dead!

"Of course the supper-party burst up into her room; M. le Marquis de
Chatelet, M. de Voltaire, and the others. Profound consternation: to
tears, to cries succeeded a mournful silence. Voltaire and St. Lambert
remained the last about her bed. At length Voltaire quitted the room;
got out by the Grand Entrance, hardly knowing which way he went. At the
foot of the Outer Stairs, near a sentry's box, he fell full length on
the pavement. His lackey, who was a step or two behind, rushed forward
to raise him. At that moment came M. de St. Lambert; who had taken the
same road, and who now hastened to help. M. de Voltaire, once on his
feet again, and recognizing who it was, said, through his tears and with
the most pathetic accent, 'AH, MON AMI, it is you that have killed
her to me!'--and then suddenly, as if starting awake, with the tone of
reproach and despair, 'EH, MON DIEU, MONSIEUR, DE QUOI VOUS AVISIEZ-VOUS
DE LUI FAIRE UN ENFANT (Good God, Sir, what put it into your head
to--to--)!'" [Longchamp et Wagniere,--Memoires sur Voltaire,--ii. 250,
251;--Longchamp LOQUITUR.]

Poor M. de Voltaire; suddenly become widower, and flung out upon his
shifts again, at his time of life! May now wander, Ishmael-like, whither
he will, in this hard lonesome world. His grief is overwhelming, mixed
with other sharp feelings clue on the matter; but does not last very
long, in that poignant form. He will turn up on us, in his new capacity
of single-man, again brilliant enough, within year and day.

Last Autumn, September, 1748, Wilhelmina's one Daughter, one child, was
wedded; to that young Durchlaucht of Wurtemberg, whom we saw gallanting
the little girl, to Wilhelmina's amusement, some years ago. About the
wedding, nothing; nor about the wedded life, what would have been more
curious:--no Wilhelmina now to tell us anything; not even whether Mamma
the Improper Duchess was there. From Berlin, the Two youngest Princes,
Henri and Ferdinand, attended at Baireuth;--Mannstein, our old Russian
friend, now Prussian again, escorting them. [Seyfarth, ii. 76.] The
King, too busy, I suppose, with Silesian Reviews and the like, sends
his best wishes,--for indeed the Match was of his sanctioning and
advising;--though his wishes proved mere disappointment in the sequel.
Friedrich got no "furtherance in the Swabian-Franconian Circles,"
or favor anywhere, by means of this Durchlaucht; in the end, far
the reverse!--In a word, the happy couple rolled away to Wurtemberg
(September 26th, 1748); he twenty, she sixteen, poor young creatures;
and in years following became unhappy to a degree.

There was but one child, and it soon died. The young Serene Lady was
of airy high spirit; graceful, clever, good too, they said; perhaps a
thought too proud:--but as for her Reigning Duke, there was seldom seen
so lurid a Serenity; and it was difficult to live beside him. A most
arbitrary Herr, with glooms and whims; dim-eyed, ambitious, voracious,
and the temper of an angry mule,--very fit to have been haltered, in a
judicious manner, instead of being set to halter others! Enough, in
six or seven years time, the bright Pair found itself grown thunderous,
opaque beyond description; and (in 1759) had to split asunder for good.
"Owing to the reigning Duke's behavior," said everybody. "Has behaved
so, I would run him through the body, if we met!" said his own Brother
once:--Brother Friedrich Eugen, a Prussian General by that time, whom we
shall hear of. [Preuss, iv. 149; Michaelis, iii. 451.] What thoughts
for our dear Wilhelmina, in her latter weak years;--lapped in eternal
silence, as so much else is.




Chapter IV. COCCEJI FINISHES THE LAW-REFORM; FRIEDRICH IS PRINTING HIS
POESIES.

In these years, Friedrich goes on victoriously with his Law-Reform;
Herculean Cocceji with Assistants, backed by Friedrich, beneficently
conquering Province after Province to him;--Kur-Mark, Neu-Mark,
Cleve (all easy, in comparison, after Pommern), and finally Preussen
itself;--to the joy and profit of the same. Cocceji's method, so far
as the Foreign on-looker can discern across much haze, seems to be
three-fold:--

1. Extirpation (painless, were it possible) of the Petti-fogger Species;
indeed, of the Attorney Species altogether: "Seek other employments;
disappear, all of you, from these precincts, under penalty!" The
Advocate himself takes charge of the suit, from first birth of it; and
sees it ended,--he knows within what limit of time.

2. Sifting out of all incompetent Advocates, "Follow that
Attorney-Company, you; away!"--sifting out all these, and retaining in
each Court, with fees accurately settled, with character stamped sound,
or at least SOUNDEST, the number actually needed. In a milder way, but
still more strictly, Judges stupid or otherwise incompetent are riddled
out; able Judges appointed, and their salaries raised.

3. What seems to be Friedrich's own invention, what in outcome he thinks
will be the summary of all good Law-Procedure: A final Sentence (three
"instances" you can have, but the third ends it for you) within the
Year. Good, surely. A justice that intends to be exact must front the
complicacies in a resolute piercing manner, and will not be tedious. Nay
a justice that is not moderately swift,--human hearts waiting for it,
the while, in a cancerous state, instead of hopefully following their
work,--what, comparatively, is the use of its being never so exact!--

Simple enough methods; rough and ready. Needing, in the execution, clear
human eyesight, clear human honesty,--which happen to be present here,
and without which no "method" whatever can be executed that will really
profit.

In the course of 1748, Friedrich, judging by Pommern and the other
symptoms that his enterprise was safe, struck a victorious Medal upon
it: "FRIDERICUS BORUSSORUM REX," pressing with his sceptre the oblique
Balance to a level posture; with Epigraph, "EMENDATO JURE." [Letter
to Cocceji, accompanying Copy of the Medal in Gold, "24th June, 1748"
(Seyfarth, ii. 67 n.).] And by New-year's day, 1750, the matter was in
effect completed; and "justice cheap, expeditious, certain," a fact in
all Prussian Lands.

Nay, in 1749-1751, to complete the matter, Cocceji's "Project of a
general Law-Code," PROJEKT DES CORPORIS JURIS FRIDERICIANI, came forth
in print: [Halle, 2 vols. folio (Preuss, i. 316; see IB. 315 n., as to
the LAW-PROCEDURE, $c. now settled by Cocceji).] to the admiration of
mankind, at home and abroad; "the First Code attempted since Justinian's
time," say they. PROJECT translated into all languages, and read in all
countries. A poor mildewed copy of this CODEX FRIDERICIANUS--done at
Edinburgh, 1761, not said by whom; evidently bought at least TWICE, and
mostly never yet read (nor like being read)--is known to me, for years
past, in a ghastly manner! Without the least profit to this present, or
to any other Enterprise;--though persons of name in Jurisprudence call
it meritorious in their Science; the first real attempt at a Code in
Modern times. But the truth is, this Cocceji CODEX remained a PROJECT
merely, never enacted anywhere. It was not till 1773, that Friedrich
made actual attempt to build a Law-Code and did build one (the
foundation-story of one, for his share, completed since), in which this
of Cocceji had little part. In 1773, the thing must again be mentioned;
the "Second Law-Reform," as they call it. What we practically know from
this time is, That Prussian Lawsuits, through Friedrich's Reign, do all
terminate, or push at their utmost for terminating, within one year from
birth; and that Friedrich's fame, as a beneficent Justinian, rose
high in all Countries (strange, in Countries that had thought him
a War-scourge and Conquering Hero); strange, but undeniable;
[See--Gentleman's Magazine,--xx. 215-218 ("May, 1750"): eloquent,
enthusiastic LETTER, given there, "of Baron de Spon to Chancellor
D'Aguessan," on these inimitable Law Achievements.] and that his own
People, if more silently, yet in practice very gladly indeed, welcomed
his Law-Reform; and, from day to day, enjoyed the same,--no doubt with
occasional remembrance who the Donor was.

Of Friedrich's Literary works, nobody, not even Friedrich himself, will
think it necessary that we say much. But the fact is, he is doing a
great many things that way: in Prose, the MEMOIRS OF BRANDENBURG, coming
out as Papers in the Academy from time to time; [From 1746 and onward:
first published complete (after slight revision by Voltaire), Berlin,
1751.] in Verse, very secret as yet, the PALLADION ("exquisite
Burlesque," think some), the ART OF WAR (reckoned truly his best Piece
in verse):--and wishes sometimes he had Voltaire here to perfect him
a little. This too would be one of the practical charms of Voltaire.
[Friedrich's Letter to Algarotti (--OEuvres,--xviii. 66), "12th
September, 1749."] For though King Friedrich knows and remembers always,
that these things, especially the Verse part, are mere amusements in
comparison, he has the creditable wish to do these well; one would
not fantasy ILL even on the Flute, if one could help it. "Why does n't
Voltaire come; as Quantz of the Flute has done?" Friedrich, now that
Voltaire has fallen widower, renews his pressings, "Why don't you come?"
Patience, your Majesty; Voltaire will come.

Nobody can wish details in this Department: but there is one thing
necessary to be mentioned, That Friedrich in these years, 1749-1752,
has Printers out at Potsdam, and is Printing, "in beautiful quarto
form, with copperplates," to the extent of twelve copies, the OEUVRES
(Poetical, that is) DU PHILOSOPHE DE SANS-SOUCI. Only twelve copies,
I have heard; gift of a single copy indicating that you are among the
choicest of the chosen. Copies have now fallen extremely rare (and are
not in request at all, with my readers or me); but there was one Copy
which, or the Mis-title of which, as OEUVRE DE "POESHIE" DU ROI MON
MAITRE, became miraculously famous in a year or two;--and is still
memorable to us all! On Voltaire's arrival, we shall hear more of these
things. Enough to say at present that the OEUVRES DU PHILOSOPHE DE
SANS-SOUCI: AU DONJON DU CHATEAU: AVEC PRIVILEGE D'APOLLON,--"three
thinnish quarto volumes, all the Poetry then on hand,"--was finished
early in 1750, before Voltaire came. That, when Voltaire came, a revisal
was undertaken, a new Edition, with Voltaire's corrections and other
changes (total suppression of the PALLADION, for one creditable
change): that this Edition was to have been in Two Volumes; that One,
accordingly, rather thicker than the former sort, was got finished in
1752 (same TITLE, only the new Date, and "no DONJON DU CHATEAU this
time"), One Volume in 1752; after which, owing to the explosions that
ensued, no Second came, nor ever will;--and that the actual contents of
that far-famed OEUVRE DE "POESHIE" (number of volumes even) are points
of mystery to me, at this day. [Herr Preuss--in the CHRONOLOGICAL LIST
of Friedrich's Writings (a useful accurate Piece otherwise), and in two
other places where he tries--is very indistinct on this of DONJON DU
CHATEAU; and it is all but impossible to ascertain from him WHAT, in an
indisputable manner, the OEUVRE DE "POESHIE" may have been. Here are
the places for groping, if another should be induced to try:--OEuvres
de Frederic,--x. (Preface, p. ix); IB. xi. (Preface, p. ix); IB.--Table
Chhronologique--(in what Volume this is, you cannot yet say; seems
preliminary to a GENERAL INDEX, which is infinitely wanted, but has not
yet appeared to this Editor's aid), p. 14.]

Friedrich's other employments are multifarious as those of a Land's
Husband (not inferior to his Father in that respect); and, like the
benefits of the diurnal Sun, are to be considered incessant, innumerable
and, in result to us-ward, SILENT also, impossible to speak of in this
place. From the highest pitch of State-craft (Russian Czarina now fallen
plainly hostile, and needing lynx-eyed diplomacy ever and anon), down
to that of Dredging and Fascine-work (as at Stettin and elsewhere), of
Oder-canals, of Soap-boiler Companies, and Mulberry-and-Silk Companies;
nay of ordaining Where, and where not, the Crows are to be shot, and
(owing to cattle-murrain) No VEAL to be killed: [Seyfarth, ii. 71, 83,
81; Preuss,--Buch fur Jedermann,--i. 101-109; &c.] daily comes the tide
of great and of small, and daily the punctual Friedrich keeps abreast
of it,--and Dryasdust has noted the details, and stuffed them into blind
sacks,--for forty years.

The Review seasons, I notice, go somewhat as follows. For Berlin and
neighborhood, May, or perhaps end of April (weather now bright, and
ground firm); sometimes with considerable pomp ("both Queens out," and
beautiful Female Nobilities, in "twenty-four green tents"), and often
with great complicacy of manoeuvre. In June, to Magdeburg, round by
Cleve; and home again for some days. July is Pommern: Onward thence to
Schlesien, oftenest in August; Schlesien the last place, and generally
not done with till well on in September. But we will speak of these
things, more specially, another time. Such "Reviews," for strictness of
inspection civil and military, as probably were not seen in the world
since,--or before, except in the case of this King's Father only.




Chapter V. STRANGERS OF NOTE COME TO BERLIN, IN 1750.

British Diplomacies, next to the Russian, cause some difficulties
in those years: of which more by and by. Early in 1748, while
Aix-la-Chapelle was starting, Ex-Exchequer Legge came to Berlin; on some
obscure object of a small Patch of Principality, hanging loose during
those Negotiations: "Could not we secure it for his Royal Highness
of Cumberland, thinks your Majesty?" Ex-Exchequer Legge was here;
[Coxe's--Pelham,--i. 431, &c.; Rodenbeck, pp. 155, 160 (first audience
1st May, 1748);--recalled 22d November, Aix being over.] got handsome
assurances of a general nature; but no furtherance towards his obscure,
completely impracticable object; and went home in November following, to
a new Parliamentary Career.

And the second year after, early in 1750, came Sir Hanbury Williams,
famed London Wit of Walpole's circle, on objects which, in the main,
were equally chimerical: "King of the Romans, much wanted;" "No Damage
to your Majesty's Shipping from our British Privateers;" and the
like;--about which some notice, and not very much, will be due
farther on. Here, in his own words, is Hanbury's Account of his First
Audience:--

... "On Thursday," 16th July, 1750, "I went to Court by appointment, at
11 A.M. The King of Prussia arrived about 12 [at Berlin; King in from
Potsdam, for one day]; and Count Podewils immediately introduced me into
the Royal closet; when I delivered his Britannic Majesty's Letters into
the King of Prussia's hands, and made the usual compliments to him in
the best manner I was able. To which his Prussian Majesty replied, to
the best of my remembrance, as follows:--"'I have the truest esteem
for the King of Britain's person; and I set the highest value on his
friendship. I have at different times received essential proofs of it;
and I desire you would acquaint the King your Master that I will (SIC)
never forget them.' His Prussian Majesty afterwards said something with
respect to myself, and then asked me several questions about indifferent
things and persons. He seemed to express a great deal of esteem for
my Lord Chesterfield, and a great deal of kindness for Mr. Villiers,"
useful in the Peace-of-Dresden time; "but did not once mention Lord
Hyndford or Mr. Legge,"--how singular!

"I was in the closet with his Majesty exactly five minutes and a half.
My audience done, Prussian Majesty came out into the general room, where
Foreign Ministers were waiting. He said, on stepping in, just one word"
to the Austrian Excellency; not even one to the Russian Excellency,
nor to me the Britannic; "conversed with the French, Swedish,
Danish;"--happy to be off, which I do not wonder at; to dine with Mamma
at Monbijou, among faces pleasant to him; and return to his Businesses
and Books next day. [Walpole,--George the Second,--i. 449; Rodenbeck, i.
204.]

Witty Excellency Hanbury did not succeed at Berlin on the "Romish-King
Question," or otherwise; and indeed went off rather in a hurry. But for
the next six or seven years he puddles about, at a great rate, in those
Northern Courts; giving away a great deal of money, hatching many futile
expensive intrigues at Petersburg, Warsaw (not much at Berlin, after the
first trial there); and will not be altogether avoidable to us in time
coming, as one could have wished. Besides, he is Horace Walpole's friend
and select London Wit: he contributed a good deal to the English notions
about Friedrich; and has left considerable bits of acrid testimony on
Friedrich, "clear words of an Eye-witness," men call them,--which are
still read by everybody; the said Walpole, and others, having since
printed them, in very dark condition. [In Walpole,--George the
Second--(i. 448-461), the Pieces which regard Friedrich. In--Sir Charles
Hanbury Williams's Works--(edited by a diligent, reverential, but
ignorant gentleman, whom I could guess to be Bookseller Jeffery
in person: London, 1822, 3 vols. small 8vo) are witty Verses, and
considerable sections of Prose, relating to other persons and objects
now rather of an obsolete nature.] Brevity is much due to Hanbury and
his testimonies, since silence in the circumstances is not allowable.
Here is one Excerpt, with the necessary light for reading it:--

... It is on this Romish-King and other the like chimerical errands,
that witty Hanbury, then a much more admirable man than we now find him,
is prowling about in the German Courts, off and on, for some ten
years in all, six of them still to come. A sharp-eyed man, of shrewish
quality; given to intriguing, to spying, to bribing; anxious to win his
Diplomatic game by every method, though the stake (as here) is oftenest
zero: with fatal proclivity to Scandal, and what in London circles he
has heard called Wit. Little or nothing of real laughter in the soul
of him, at any time; only a labored continual grin, always of malicious
nature, and much trouble and jerking about, to keep that up. Had
evidently some modicum of real intellect, of capacity for being wise;
but now has fatally devoted it nearly all to being witty, on those
poor terms! A perverse, barren, spiteful little wretch; the grin of him
generally an affliction, at this date. His Diplomatic Correspondence I
do not know. [Nothing of him is discoverable in the State-Paper
Office. Many of his Papers, it would seem, are in the Earl of Essex's
hands;--and might be of some Historical use, not of very much, could the
British Museum get possession of them. Abundance of BACKSTAIRS
History, on those Northern Courts, especially on Petersburg, and
Warsaw-Dresden,--authentic Court-gossip, generally malicious, often
not true, but never mendacious on the part of Williams,--is one likely
item.] He did a great deal of Diplomatic business, issuing in zero, of
which I have sometimes longed to know the exact dates; seldom anything
farther. His "History of Poland," transmitted to the Right Hon.
Henry Fox, by instalments from Dresden, in 1748, is [See--Hanbury's
Works,--vol. iii.]--Well, I should be obliged to call it worthier of
Goody Two-Shoes than of that Right Hon. Henry, who was a man of parts,
but evidently quite a vacuum on the Polish side!

Of Hanbury's News-Letters from Foreign Courts, four or five,
incidentally printed, are like the contents of a slop-pail;
uncomfortable to the delicate mind. Not lies on the part of Hanbury,
but foolish scandal poured into him; a man more filled with credulous
incredible scandal, evil rumors, of malfeasances by kings and magnates,
than most people known. His rumored mysteries between poor Polish
Majesty and pretty Daughter-in-law (the latter a clever and graceful
creature, Daughter of the late unfortunate Kaiser, and a distinguished
Correspondent of Friedrich's) are to be regarded as mere poisoned wind.
[See--Hanbury's Works,--ii. 209-240.] That "Polish Majesty gets into his
dressing-gown at two in the afternoon" (inaccessible thenceforth, poor
lazy creature), one most readily believes; but there, or pretty much
there, one's belief has to stop. The stories, in WALPOLE, on the King of
Prussia, have a grain of fact in them, twisted into huge irrecognizable
caricature in the Williams optic-machinery. Much else one can discern
to be, in essence, false altogether. Friedrich, who could not stand that
intriguing, spying, shrewish, unfriendly kind of fellow at his Court,
applied to England in not many months hence, and got Williams sent away:
["22d January, 1751" (MS. LIST in State-Paper Office).] on to Russia, or
I forget whither;--which did not mend the Hanbury optical-machinery on
that side. The dull, tobacco-smoking Saxon-Polish Majesty, about whom he
idly retails so many scandals, had never done him any offence.

On the whole, if anybody wanted a swim in the slop-pails of that extinct
generation, Hanbury, could he find an Editor to make him legible, might
be printed. For he really was deep in that slop-pail or extinct-scandal
department, and had heard a great many things. Apart from that, in
almost any other department,--except in so far as he seems to DATE
rather carefully,--I could not recommend him. The Letters and Excerpts
given in Walpole are definable as one pennyworth of bread,--much ruined
by such immersion, but very harmless otherwise, could you pick it
out and clean it,--to twenty gallons of Hanbury sherris-sack, or
chamber-slop. I have found nothing that seems to be, in all points,
true or probable, but this; worth cutting out, and rendering legible, on
other accounts. Hanbury LOQUITUR (in condensed form):

"In the summer of last year, 1749, there was, somewhere in Mahren, a
great Austrian Muster or Review;" all the more interesting, as it was
believed, or known, that the Prussian methods and manoeuvres were now to
be the rule for Austria. Not much of a Review otherwise, this of 1749;
Empress-Queen and Husband not personally there, as in coming Years they
are wont to be; that high Lady being ardent to reform her Army, root and
branch, according to the Prussian model,--more praise to her. [--Maria
Theresiens Leben,--p. 160 (what she did that way, ANNO 1749); p. 162
(PRESENT at the Reviews, ANNO 1750).] "At this Muster in Mahren, Three
Prussian Officers happened to make their appearance,--for several
imaginable reasons, of little significance: 'For the purpose of
inveigling people to desert, and enlist with them!' said the Austrian
Authorities; and ordered the Three Prussian Officers unceremoniously off
the ground. Which Friedrich, when he heard of it, thought an unhandsome
pipe-clay procedure, and kept in mind against the Austrian Authorities.

"Next Summer," next Spring, 1750, "an Austrian Captain being in
Mecklenburg, travelling about, met there an old acquaintance, one
Chapeau [HAT! can it be possible?], who is in great favor with the King
of Prussia:"--very well, Excellency Hanbury; but who, in the name of
wonder, can this HAT, or Chapeau, have been? After study, one perceives
that Hanbury wrote Chazeau, meaning CHASOT, an old acquaintance of our
own! Brilliant, sabring, melodying Chasot, Lieutenant-Colonel of the
Baireuth Dragoons; who lies at Treptow, close on Mecklenburg, and is
a declared favorite of the Duchess, often running over to the RESIDENZ
there. Often enough; but HONI SOIT, O reader; the clever Lady is towards
sixty, childless, musical; and her Husband--do readers recollect him at
all?--is that collapsed TAILORING Duke whom Friedrich once visited,--and
whose Niece, Half-Niece, is Charlotte, wise little hard-favored creature
now of six, in clean bib and tucker, Ancestress of England that is to
be; whose Papa will succeed, if the Serene Tailor die first,--which he
did not quite. To this Duchess, musical gallant Chasot may well be a
resource, and she to him. Naturally the Austrian Captain, having come
to Mecklenburg, dined with Serene Highness, he and Chasot together, with
concert following, and what not, at the Schloss of Neu-Strelitz:--And
now we will drop the 'Chapeau,' and say Chasot, with comfort, and a
shade of new interest.

"'The grand May Review at Berlin just ahead, won't you look in; it is
straight on your road home?' suggests Chasot to his travelling friend.
'One would like it, of all things,' answered the other: 'but the King?'
'Tush,' said Chasot; 'I will make that all straight!' And applies to
the King accordingly: 'Permission to an Austrian Officer, a good
acquaintance of mine.' 'Austrian Officer?' Friedrich's eyes lighten; and
he readily gives the permission. This was at Berlin, on the very eve
of the Review; and Chasot and his Austrian are made happy in that small
matter. And on the morrow [end of May, 1750], the Austrian attends
accordingly; but, to his astonishment, has hardly begun to taste the
manoeuvres, when--one of Friedrich's Aides-de-Camp gallops up: 'By the
King's command, Mein Herr, you retire on the instant!'

"Next day, the Austrian is for challenging Chasot. 'As you like, that
way,' answers Chasot; 'but learn first, that on your affront I rode
up to the King; and asked, publicly, Did not your Majesty grant me
permission? Unquestionably, Monsieur Chasot;--and if he had not come,
how could I have paid back the Moravian business of last year!'"
[Walpole,--George the Second,--i. 457, 459.]--This is much in
Friedrich's way; not the unwelcomer that it includes a satirical twitch
on Chasot, whom he truly likes withal, or did like, though now a
little dissatisfied with those too frequent Mecklenburg excursions and
extra-military cares. Of this, merely squeezing the Hanbury venom out of
it, I can believe every particular.

"Did you ever hear of anything so shocking?" is Hanbury's meaning here
and elsewhere. "I must tell you a story of the King of Prussia's regard
for the Law of Nations," continues he to Walpole? [Ib. i. 458.] Which
proves to be a story, turned topsy-turvy, of one Hofmann, Brunswick
Envoy, who (quite BEYOND commission, and a thing that must not be
thought of at all!) had been detected in dangerous intriguings with the
ever-busy Russian Excellency, or another; and got flung into Spandau,
[Adelung, v. 534; vii. 132-144.]--seemingly pretty much his due in the
matter. And so of other Hanbury things. "What a Prussia; for rigor of
command, one huge prison, in a manner!" King intent on punctuality, and
all his business upon the square. Society, official and unofficial,
kept rather strictly to their tackle; their mode of movement not that
of loose oxen at all! "Such a detestable Tyrant,"--who has ordered ME,
Hanbury, else-whither with my exquisite talents and admired wit!--




CANDIDATUS LINSENBARTH (QUASI "Lentil-beard") LIKEWISE VISITS BERLIN.

By far the notablest arrival in Berlin is M. de Voltaire's July 10th; a
few days before Hanbury got his First Audience, "five minutes long." But
that arrival will require a Chapter to itself;--most important arrival,
that, of all! The least important, again, is probably that of Candidatus
Linsenbarth, in these same weeks;--a rugged poverty-stricken
old Licentiate of Theology; important to no mortal in Berlin or
elsewhere:--upon whom, however, and upon his procedures in that City, we
propose, for our own objects, to bestow a few glances; rugged Narrative
of the thing, in singular exotic dialect, but true every word,
having fortunately come to us from Linsenbarth's own hand. [Through
Rodenbeck,--Beitrage,--i. 463 et seq.]

Berlin, it must be admitted, after all one's reading in poor Dryasdust,
remains a dim empty object; Teutschland is dim and empty: and out of
the forty blind sacks, or out of four hundred such, what picture can
any human head form to itself of Friedrich as King or Man? A trifling
Adventure of that poor individual, called Linsenbarth CANDIDATUS
THEOLOGIAE, one of the poorest of mortals, but true and credible in
every particular, comes gliding by chance athwart all that; and like the
glimmer of a poor rushlight, or kindled straw, shows it us for moments,
a thing visible, palpable, as it worked and lived. In the great dearth,
Linsenbarth, if I can faithfully interpret him for the modern reader,
will be worth attending to.

Date of Linsenbarth's Adventure is June-August, 1750. "Schloss of
Beichlingen" and "Village of Hemmleben" are in the Thuringen Hill
Country (Weimar not far off to eastward): the Hero himself, a tall
awkward raw-boned creature, is, for perhaps near forty years past, a
CANDIDATUS, say Licentiate, or Curate without Cure. Subsists, I should
guess, by schoolmastering--cheapest schoolmaster conceivable, wages mere
nothing--in the Villages about; in the Village of Hemmleben latterly;
age, as I discover, grown to be sixty-one, in those straitened but by
no means forlorn circumstances. And so, here is veteran Linsenbarth of
Hemmleben, a kind of Thuringian Dominie Sampson; whose Interview with
such a brother mortal as Friedrich King of Prussia may be worth looking
at,--if I can abridge it properly.

Well, it appears, in the year 1750, at this thrice-obscure Village of
Hemmleben, the worthy old pastor Cannabich died;--worthy old man, how
he had lived there, modestly studious, frugal, chiefly on
farm-produce, with tobacco and Dutch theology; a modest blessing to
his fellow-creatures! And now he is dead, and the place vacant.
Twenty pounds a Year certain; let us guess it twenty, with glebe-land,
piggeries, poultry-hutches: who is now to get all that? Linsenbarth
starts with his Narrative, in earnest.

Linsenbarth, who I guess may have been Assistant to the deceased
Cannabich, and was now out of work, says: "I had not the least thought
of profiting by this vacancy; but what happened? The Herr Graf von
Werthern, at Schloss Beichlingen, sent his Steward [LEHNSDIRECTOR,
FIEF-DIRECTOR is the title of this Steward, which gives rise to
obsolete thought of mill-dues, road-labor, payments IN NATURA], his
Lehnsdirector, Herr Kettenbeil, over to my LOGIS [cheap boarding
quarters]; who brought a gracious salutation from his Lord; saying
farther, That I knew too well [excellent Cannabich gone from us,
alas!] the Pastorate of Hemmleben was vacant; that there had various
competitors announced themselves, SUPPLICANDO, for the place; the Herr
Graf, however, had yet given none of them the FIAT, but waited always
till I should apply. As I had not done so, he (the Lord Graf) would
now of his own motion give me the preference, and hereby confer the
Pastorate upon me!"--

"Without all controversy, here was a VOCATIO DIVINA, to be received with
the most submissive thanks! But the lame second messenger came hitching
in [HALTING MESSENGER, German proverb] very soon. Kettenbeil began
again: 'He must mention to me SUB ROSA, Her Ladyship the Frau Grafin
wanted to have her Lady's-maid provided for by this promotion, too; I
must marry her, and take the living at the same time.'"

Whew! And this is the noble Lady's way of thinking, up in her fine
Schloss yonder? Linsenbarth will none of it. "For my notion fell at
once," says he, "when I heard it was DO UT FACIAS, FACIO UT FACIAS (I
give that thou mayest do, I do that thou mayest do; Wilt have the kirk,
then take the irk, WILLST DU DIE PFARRE, SO NIMM DIE QUARRE); on those
terms, my reply was: 'Most respectful thanks, Herr Fief-judge, and No,
for such a vocation! And why? The vocation must have LIBERTATEM, there
must be no VITIUM ESSENTIALE in it; it must be right IN ESSENTIALI,
otherwise no honest man can accept it with a good conscience. This were
a marriage on constraint; out of which a thousand INCONVENIENTIAE might
spring!'" Hear Linsenbarth, in the piebald dialect, with the sound
heart, and preference of starvation itself to some other things!
Kettenbeil (CHAIN-AXE) went home; and there was found another Candidatus
willing for the marriage on constraint, "out of which INCONVENIENTIAE
might spring," in Linsenbarth's opinion.

"And so did the sneakish courtly gentleman [HOFMANN, courtier as
Linsenbarth has it], who grasped with both hands at my rejected offer,
experience before long," continues Linsenbarth. "For the loose thing of
court-tatters led him such a life that, within three years, age yet only
thirty, he had to bite the dust" (BITE AT THE GRASS, says Linsenbarth,
proverbially), which was an INCONVENIENTIA including all others. "And I
had LEGITIMAM CAUSAM to refuse the vocation CUM TALI CONDITIONE.

"However, it was very ill taken of me. All over that Thuringian region
I was cried out upon as a headstrong foolish person: The Herr Graf von
Werthern, so ran the story, had of his own kindness, without request of
mine, offered me a living; RARA AVIS, singular instance; and I, rash and
without head, flung away such gracious offer. In short, I was told to
my face [by good-natured friends], Nobody would ever think of me for
promotion again;"--universal suffrage giving it clear against poor
Linsenbarth, in this way.

"To get out of people's sight at least," continues he, "I decided to
leave my native place, and go to Berlin," 250 miles away or more. "And
so it was that, on June the 20th, 1750, I landed at Berlin for the
first time: and here straightway at the PACKHOF (or Custom-house), in
searching of my things, 400 THALERS (some 60 pounds), all in Nurnberg
BATZEN, were seized from me;"--BATZEN, quarter-groats we may say; 7
and a half batzen go to a shilling; what a sack there must have been
of them, 9,000 in all, about the size of herring-scales, in bad silver;
fruit of Linsenbarth's stern thrift from birth upwards:--all snatched
from him at one swoop. "And why?" says he, quite historically: Yes,
Why? The reader, to understand it wholly, would need to read
in Mylius's--Edicten-Sammlung,--in SEYFARTH and elsewhere;
[Mylius,--Edict--xli., January, 1744, &c. &c.] and to know the
scandalous condition of German coinage at this time and long after;
every needy little Potentate mixing his coin with copper at discretion,
and swindling mankind with it for a season; needing to be peremptorily
forbidden, confiscated or ordered home, by the like of Friedrich.
Linsenbarth answers his own "And why?" with historical calmness:--

"The king had, some (six) years ago, had the batzen utterly cried down
(GANZ UND GAR); they were not to circulate at all in his Countries;
and I was so bold, I had brought batzen hither into the King's Capital,
KONIGLICHE RESIDENZ itself! At the Packhof, there was but one answer,
'Contraband, Contraband!'"--Here was a welcome for a man. "I made my
excuses: Did not the least know; came straight from Thuringen, many
miles of road; could not guess there What His Majesty the King had been
pleased to forbid in His (THEIRO) Countries. 'You should have
informed yourself,' said the Packhof people; and were deaf to such
considerations. 'A man coming into such a Residenz Town as Berlin, with
intent to abide there, should have inquired a little what was what,
especially what coins were cried down, and what allowed,' said they of
the Packhof." Poor Linsenbarth!"'But what am I to do now? How am I to
live, if you take my very money from me?' 'That is your outlook,'
said they;--and added, He must even find stowage for his stack of
herring-scales or batzen, as soon as it was sealed up; 'we have no room
for it in the Packhof!'" for a man: Here is a roughish welcome "I must
leave all my money here; and find stowage for it, in a day or two.

"There was, accordingly, a truck-porter called in; he loaded my effects
on his barrow, and rolled away. He brought me to the WHITE SWAN in the
JUDENSTRASSE [none of the grandest of streets, that Berlin JEWRY], threw
my things out, and demanded four groschen. Two of my batzen" 2 and a
half exact, "would have done; but I had no money at all. The landlord
came out: seeing that I had a stuffed feather-bed [note the luggage of
Linsenbarth: "FEDER-BETT," of extreme tenuity], a trunk full of linens,
a bag of Books and other trifles, he paid the man; and sent me to a
small room in the court-yard [Inn forms a Court, perhaps four stories
high]: 'I could stay there,' he said; 'he would give me food and drink
in the meanwhile.' And so I lived in this Inn eight weeks long, without
one red farthing, in mere fear and anxiety." June 20th PLUS eight weeks
brings us to August 15th; Voltaire in HEIGHT of feather; and very great
things just ahead! ["Grand Carrousel, 25th August;" &c.]--of which soon.

The White Swan was a place where Carriers lodged: some limb of the Law,
of Subaltern sort, whom Linsenbarth calls "DER ADVOCAT B." (one of the
Ousted of Cocceji, shall we fancy!), had to do with Carriers and their
pie-powder lawsuits. Advocat B. had noticed the gray dreary CANDIDATUS,
sitting sparrow-like in remote corners; had spoken to him;--undertook
for a LOUIS D'OR, no purchase no pay, to get back his batzen for
him. They went accordingly, one morning, to "a grand House;" it was
a Minister's (name not given), very grand Official Man: he heard the
Advocat B.'s short statement; and made answer: "Monsieur, and is it
you that will pick holes in the King's Law? I have understood you were
rather aiming at the HAUSVOGTEI [Common Jail of Berlin]: Go on in that
way, and you are sure of your promotion!"--Advocat B. rushed out with
Linsenbarth into the street; and there was neither pay nor purchase in
that quarter.

Poor Linsenbarth was next advised, by simple neighbors, to go direct to
the King; as every poor man can, at certain hours of the day. "Write out
your Case (Memorial) with extreme brevity," said they; "nothing but
the essential points, and those clear." Linsenbarth, steam at the
high-pressure, composed (CONZIPIRTE) a Memorial of that right laconic
sort; wrote it fair (MUNDIRTE ES);--and went off therewith "at opening
of the Gates (middle time of August, 1750, no date farther), [August
21st? (See Rodenbeck, DIARY, which we often quote, i. 205.)]--without
one farthing in my pocket, in God's name, to Potsdam." He continues:--

"And at Potsdam I was lucky enough to see the King; my first sight of
him. He was on the Palace Esplanade there, drilling his troops [fine
trim sanded Expanse, with the Palace to rear, and Garden-walks and River
to front; where Friedrich Wilhelm sat, the last day he was out, and
ordered Jockey Philips's house to be actually set about; where the
troops do evolutions every morning;--there is Friedrich with cocked-hat
and blue coat; say about 11 A.M.].

"When the drill was over, his Majesty went into the Garden, and the
soldiers dispersed; only four Officers remained lounging upon the
Esplanade, and walked up and down. For fright I knew not what to do;
I pulled the Papers out of my pocket,--these were my Memorial, two
Certificates of character, and a Thuringen Pass [poor soul]. The
Officers noticed this; came straight to me, and said, 'What letters has
He there, then?' I thankfully and gladly imparted the whole; and when
the Officers had read them, they said, 'We will give you [Him, not even
THEE] a good advice, The King is extra-gracious to-day, and is gone
alone into the Garden. Follow him straight. Thou wilt have luck.'

"This I would not do; my awe was too great. They thereupon laid hands
on me [the mischievous dogs, not ill-humored either]: one took me by the
right arm, another by the left, 'Off, off; to the Garden!' Having got
me thither, they looked out for the King. He was among the gardeners,
examining some rare plant; stooping over it, and had his back to us.
Here I had to halt; and the Officers began, in underhand tone [the
dogs!], to put me through my drill: 'Hat under left arm!--Right foot
foremost!--Breast well forward!--Head up!--Papers from pouch!--Papers
aloft in right hand!--Steady! Steady!'--And went their ways, looking
always round, to see if I kept my posture. I perceived well enough they
were pleased to make game of me; but I stood, all the same, like a wall,
being full of fear. The Officers were hardly out of the Garden, when
the King turned round, and saw this extraordinary machine,"--telegraph
figure or whatever we may call it, with papers pointing to the sky. "He
gave such a look at me, like a flash of sunbeams glancing through you;
and sent one of the gardeners to bring my papers. Which having got, he
struck into another walk with them, and was out of sight. In few minutes
he appeared again at the place where the rare plant was, with my Papers
open in his left hand; and gave me a wave with them To come nearer. I
plucked up a heart, and went straight towards him. Oh, how thrice and
four-times graciously this great Monarch deigned to speak to me!--

KING. "'My good Thuringian (LIEBER THURINGER), you came to Berlin,
seeking to earn your bread by industrious teaching of children; and
here, at the Packhof, in searching your things, they have taken your
Thuringen hoard from you. True, the batzen are not legal here; but the
people should have said to you: You are a stranger, and did n't know the
prohibition;--well then, we will seal up the Bag of Batzen; you send it
back to Thuringen, get it changed for other sorts; we will not take it
from you!--

"'Be of heart, however; you shall have your money again, and interest
too.--But, my poor man, Berlin pavement is bare, they don't give
anything gratis: you are a stranger; before you are known and get
teaching, your bit of money is done; what then?'

"I understood the speech right well; but my awe was too great to say:
'Your Majesty will have the all-highest grace to allow me something!'
But as I was so simple and asked for nothing, he did not offer anything.
And so he turned away; but had scarcely gone six or eight steps, when
he looked round, and gave me a sign I was to walk by him; and then began
catechising:--

KING. "'Where did you (ER) study?'

LINSENBARTH. "'Your Majesty, in Jena.'

KING. "'What years?'

LINSENBARTH. "'From 1716 to 1720.' ["Born 1689" (Rodenbeck, p. 474);
twenty-five when he went.]

KING. "'Under what Pro-rector were you inscribed?'

LINSENBARTH. "'Under the PROFESSOR THEOLOGIAE Dr. Fortsch.'

KING. "'Who were your other Professors in the Theological Faculty?'"

LINSENBARTH--names famed men; sunk now, mostly, in the bottomless
waste-basket: "Buddaus" (who did a DICTIONARY of the BAYLE sort,
weighing four stone troy, out of which I have learned many a thing),
"Buddaeus," "Danz," "Weissenborn," "Wolf" (now back at Halle after his
tribulations,--poor man, his immortal System of Philosophy, where is
it!).

KING. "'Did you study BIBLICA diligently?'

LINSENBARTH. "'With Buddaeus (BEYM BUDDAO).'

KING. "'That is he who had such quarrelling with Wolf?'

LINSENBARTH. "'Yea, your Majesty! He was--'

KING (does not want to know what he was). "'What other useful Courses of
Lectures (COLLEGIA) did you attend?'

LINSENBARTH. "'Thetics and Exegetics with Fortsch [How the deuce did
Fortsch teach these things?]; Hermeneutics and Polemics with Walch
[editor of--Luther's Works,--I suppose]; Hebraics with Dr. Danz;
Homiletics with Dr. Weissenborn; PASTORALE [not Pastoral Poetry, but
the Art of Pastorship] and MORALE with Dr. Buddaeus.' [There, your
Majesty!--what a glimpse, as into infinite extinct Continents, filled
with ponderous thorny inanities, invincible nasal drawling of didactic
Titans, and the awful attempt to spin, on all manner of wheels,
road-harness out of split cobwebs: Hoom! Hoom-m-m! Harness not to be had
on those terms. Let the dreary Limbus close again, till the general Day
of Judgment for all this.]

KING (glad to get out of the Limbus). "'Were things as wild then at
Jena, in your time, as of old, when the Students were forever
scuffling and ruffling, and the Couplet went:--

          --"Wer kommt von Jena ungeschlagen,
          Der hat von grossen Gluck zu sagen.--
         "He that comes from Jena SINE BELLO,
          He may think himself a lucky fellow"?'

LINSENBARTH. "'That sort of folly is gone quite out of fashion; and
a man can lead a silent and quiet life there, just as at other
Universities, if he will attend to the DIC, CURHIC? [or know what his
real errand is]. In my time their Serene Highnesses, the Nursing-fathers
of the University (NUTRITORES ACADEMIAE),--of the Ernestine Line
[Weimar-Gotha Highnesses, that is], were in the habit of having the
Rufflers (RENOMISTEN), Renowners as they are called, who made so much
disturbance, sent to Eisenach to lie in the Wartburg a while; there they
learned to be quiet.' [Clock strikes Twelve,--dinner-time of Majesty.]

KING. "'Now I must go: they are waiting for their soup'" (and so ends
Dialogue for the present). 'Did the King bid me wait?

"When we got out of the Garden," says Linsenbarth, silent on this point,
"the four Officers were still there upon the Esplanade [Captains of
Guard belike]; they went into the Palace with the King,"--clearly
meaning to dine with his Majesty.

"I remained standing on the Esplanade. For twenty-seven hours I had not
tasted food: not a farthing IN BONIS [of principal or interest] to
get bread with; I had waded twenty miles hither, in a sultry morning,
through the sand. Not a difficult thing to keep down laughter in such
circumstances!"--Poor soul; but the Royal mind is human too.--"In this
tremor of my heart, there came a KAMMER-HUSSAR [Soldier-Valet, Valet
reduced to his simplest expression] out of the Palace, and asked, 'Where
is the man that was with my King (MEINEM KONIG,--THY King particularly?)
in the Garden?' I answered, 'Here!' And he led me into the Schloss, to
a large Room, where pages, lackeys, and Kammer-hussars were about. My
Kammer-hussar took me to a little table, excellently furnished; with
soup, beef; likewise carp dressed with garden-salad, likewise game with
cucumber-salad: bread, knife, fork, spoon and salt were all there [and I
with an appetite of twenty-seven hours; I too was there]. My hussar set
me a chair, said: 'This that is on the table, the King has ordered to be
served for you (IHM): you are to eat your fill, and mind nobody; and I
am to serve. Sharp, then, fall to!'--I was greatly astonished, and knew
not what to do; least of all could it come into my head that the King's
Kammer-hussar, who waited on his Majesty, should wait on me. I pressed
him to sit by me; but as he refused, I did as bidden; sat down, took my
spoon, and went at it with a will (FRISCH)!

"The hussar took the beef from the table, set it on the charcoal dish
(to keep it hot till wanted); he did the like with the fish and
roast game; and poured me out wine and beer--[was ever such a lucky
Barmecide!] I ate and drank till I had abundantly enough. Dessert,
confectionery, what I could,--a plateful of big black cherries, and a
plateful of pears, my waiting-man wrapped in paper and stuffed them into
my pockets, to be a refreshment on the way home. And so I rose from the
Royal table; and thanked God and the King in my heart, that I had so
gloriously dined,"--HERRLICH, "gloriously" at last. Poor excellent
down-trodden Linsenbarth, one's heart opens to him, not one's larder
only.

"The hussar took away. At that moment a Secretary came; brought me a
sealed Order (Rescript) to the Packhof at Berlin, with my Certificates
(TESTIMONIA), and the Pass; told down on the table five Tail-ducats
(SCHWANZ-DUKATEN), and a Gold Friedrich under them [about 3 pounds 10s.,
I think; better than 10 pounds of our day to a common man, and better
than 100 pounds to a Linsenbarth],--saying, The King sent me this to
take me home to Berlin again.

"And if the hussar took me into the Palace, it was now the Secretary
that took me out again. And there, yoked with six horses, stood a royal
Proviant-wagon; which having led me to, the Secretary said: 'You people,
the King has given order you are to take this stranger to Berlin, and
also to accept no drink-money from him.' I again, through the HERRN
SECRETARIUM, testified my most submissive thankfulness for all Royal
graciousnesses; took my place, and rolled away.

"On reaching Berlin, I went at once to the Packhof, straight to the
office-room,"--standing more erect this time,--"and handed them my Royal
Rescript. The Head man opened the seal; in reading, he changed color,
went from pale to red; said nothing, and gave it to the second man to
read. The second put on his spectacles; read, and gave it to the third.
However, he [the Head man] rallied himself at last: I was to come
forward, and be so good as write a quittance (receipt), 'That I had
received, for my 400 thalers all in Batzen, the same sum in Brandenburg
coin, ready down, without the least deduction.' My cash was at once
accurately paid. And thereupon the Steward was ordered, To go with me to
the White Swan in the Judenstrasse, and pay what I owed there, whatever
my score was. For which end they gave him twenty-four thalers; and if
that were not enough, he was to come and get more." On these high terms
Linsenbarth marched out of the Packhof for the second time; the sublime
head of him (not turned either) sweeping the very stars.

"That was what the King had meant when he said, "You shall have your
money back and interest too:' VIDELICET, that the Packhof was to pay my
expenses at the White Swan. The score, however, was only 10 thaler,'
4 groschen, 6 pfennigs [30 shillings, 5 pence, and 2 or perhaps
3 quarter-farthings], for what I had run up in eight weeks,"--an
uncommonly frugal rate of board, for a man skilled in Hermeneutics,
Hebraics, Polemics, Thetica, Exegetics, Pastorale, Morale (and Practical
Christianity and the Philosophy of Zeno, carried to perfection, or
nearly so)!"And herewith this troubled History had its desired finish."
And our gray-whiskered, raw-boned, great-hearted Candidatus lay down to
sleep, at the White Swan; probably the happiest man in all Berlin, for
the time being.

Linsenbarth dived now into Private-teaching, "INFORMATION," as he calls
it; forming, and kneading into his own likeness, such of the young
Berliners as he could get hold of:--surely not without some good effect
on them, the model having, besides Hermeneutics in abundance, so much
natural worth about it. He himself found the mine of Informing a very
barren one, as to money: continued poor in a high degree, without honor,
without emolument to speak of; and had a straitened, laborious, and what
we might think very dark Life-pilgrimage. But the darkness was nothing
to him, he carried such an inextinguishable frugal rushlight within.
Meat, clothes and fire he did not again lack, in Berlin, for the time
he needed them,--some twenty-seven years still. And if he got no printed
praise in the Reviews, from baddish judges writing by the sheet,--here
and there brother mortals, who knew him by their own eyes and
experiences, looked, or transiently spoke, and even did, a most real
praise upon him now and then. And, on the whole, he can do without
praise; and will stand strokes even without wincing or kicking, where
there is no chance.

A certain Berlin Druggist ("Herr Medicinal-Assessor Rose," whom we may
call Druggist First, for there were Two that had to do with Linsenbarth)
was good and human to him. In Rose's House, where he had come to teach
the children, and which continued, always thenceforth, a home to him
when needful, he wrote this NARRATIVE (Anno 1774); and died there, three
years afterwards,--"24th August, 1777, of apoplexy, age 88," say the
Burial Registers. [In Rodenbeck,--Beitrage,--i. 472-475, these latter
Details (with others, in confused form); IB. 462-471, the NARRATIVE
itself.] Druggist Second, on succeeding the humane Predecessor, found
Linsenbarth's papers in the drug-stores of the place: Druggist Second
chanced to be one Klaproth, famed among the Scientific of the world; and
by him the Linsenbarth Narrative was forwarded to publication, and such
fame as is requisite.




SIR JONAS HANWAY STALKS ACROSS THE SCENE, TOO; IN A PONDERING AND
OBSERVING MANNER.

Of the then very famous "Berlin Carrousel of 1750" we propose to say
little; the now chief interesting point in it being that M. de Voltaire
is curiously visible to us there. But the truth is, they were very great
days at Berlin, those of Autumn, 1750; distinguished strangers come
or coming; the King giving himself up to entertainment of them, to
enjoyment of them; with such a hearty outburst of magnificence, this
Carrousel the apex of it, as was rare in his reign. There were his
Sisters of Schwedt and Baireuth, with suite, his dear Wilhelmina queen
of the scene; ["Came 8th August" (Rodenbeck, 205).] there were--It
would be tedious to count what other high Herrschaften and Durchlauchtig
Persons. And to crown the whole, and entertain Wilhelmina as a Queen
should be, there had come M. de Voltaire; conquered at length to us, as
we hope, and the Dream of our Youth realized. Voltaire's reception,
July 10th and ever since, has been mere splendor and kindness; really
extraordinary, as we shall find farther on. Reception perfect in all
points, except that of the Pompadour's Compliments alone. "That sublime
creature's compliments to your Majesty; such her express command!"
said Voltaire. "JE NE LA CONNAIS PAS," answered Friedrich, with his
clear-ringing voice, "I don't know her;" [Voltaire to Madame Denis,
"Potsdam, 11th August, 1750" (--OEuvres,--lxxiv. 184).]--sufficient
intimation to Voltaire, but painful and surprising. For which some
diplomatic persons blame Friedrich to this day; but not I, or any reader
of mine. A very proud young King; in his silent way, always the prouder;
and stands in no awe of the Divine Butterflies and Crowned Infatuations
never so potent, as more prudent people do.

In a Berlin of such stir and splendor, the arrivals of Sir Jonas Hanway,
of the "young Lord Malton" (famed Earl or Marquis of Rockingham that
will be), or of the witty Excellency Hanbury, are as nothing;--Sir
Jonas's as less than nothing. A Sir Jonas noticed by nobody; but himself
taking note, dull worthy man; and mentionable now on that account. Here
is a Scrap regarding him, not quite to be thrown away:

"Sir Jonas Hanway was not always so extinct as he has now become.
Readers might do worse than turn to his now old Book of TRAVELS again,
and the strange old London it awakens for us: A 'Russian Trading
Company,' full of hope to the then mercantile mind; a Mr. Hanway
despatched, years ago, as Chief Clerk, inexpressibly interested to
manage well;--and managing, as you may read at large. Has done his best
and utmost, all this while; and had such travellings through the
Naphtha Countries, sailings on the Caspian; such difficulties,
successes,--ultimately, failure. Owing to Mr. Elton and Thamas Kouli
Khan mainly. Thamas Kouli Khan--otherwise called Nadir Shah (and a very
hard-headed fellow, by all appearance)--wiled and seduced Mr. Elton, an
Ex-Naval gentleman, away from his Ledgers, to build him Ships; having
set his heart on getting a Navy. And Mr. Elton did build him (spite of
all I could say) a Bark or two on the Caspian;--most hopeful to the said
Nadir Shah; but did it come to anything? It disgusted, it alarmed
the Russians; and ruined Sir Jonas,--who is returning at this period,
prepared to render account of himself at London, in a loftily resigned
frame of mind. [Jonas Hanway,--An Account of &c.--(or in brief, TRAVELS:
London, 3 vols. 4to, 1753), ii. 183. "Arrived in Berlin," from the
Caspian and Petersburg side, "August 15th, 1750."]

"The remarks of Sir Jonas upon Berlin--for he exercises everywhere a
sapient observation on men and things--are of dim tumidly insignificant
character, reminding us of an extinct Minerva's Owl; and reduce
themselves mainly to this bit of ocular testimony, That his Prussian
Majesty rides much about, often at a rapid rate; with a pleasant
business aspect, humane though imperative; handsome to look upon, though
with face perceptibly reddish [and perhaps snuff on it, were you near].
His age now thirty-eight gone; a set appearance, as if already got into
his forties. Complexion florid, figure muscular, almost tending to be
plump.

"Listen well through Hanway, you will find King Friedrich is an object
of great interest, personal as well as official, and much the theme in
Berlin society; admiration of him, pride in him, not now the audiblest
tone, though it lies at the bottom too: 'Our Friedrich the Great,' after
all [so Hanway intimates, though not express as to epithets or words
used]. The King did a beautiful thing to Lieutenant-Colonel Keith the
other day [as some readers may remember]: to Lieutenant-Colonel Keith;
that poor Keith who was nailed to the gallows for him (in effigy), at
Wesel long ago; and got far less than he had expected. The other
day, there had been a grand Review, part of it extending into Madam
Knyphausen's grounds, who is Keith's Mother-in-law. 'Monsieur Keith,'
said the King to him, 'I am sorry we had to spoil Madam's fine
shrubbery by our manoeuvres: have the goodness to give her that, with my
apologies,'--and handed him a pretty Casket with key to it, and in the
interior 10,000 crowns. Not a shrub of Madam's had been cut or injured;
but the King, you see, would count it 1,500 pounds of damage done,
and here is acknowledgment for it, which please accept. Is not that a
gracious little touch?

"This King is doing something at Embden, Sir Jonas fears, or trying to
do, in the Trade-and-Navigation way; scandalous that English capitalists
will lend money in furtherance of such destructive schemes by the
Foreigner! For the rest, Sir Jonas went to call on Lord Malton (Marquis
of Rockingham that will be): an amiable and sober young Nobleman,
come thus far on his Grand Tour," and in time for the Carrousel. "His
Lordship's reception at Court here, one regretted to hear, was nothing
distinguished; quite indifferent, indeed, had not the Queen-Mother stept
in with amendments. The Courts are not well together; pity for it. My
Lord and his Tutor did me the honor to return my visit; the rather as
we all quartered in the same Inn. Amiable young Nobleman,"--so
distinguished since, for having had unconsciously an Edmund Burke,
and such torrents of Parliamentary Eloquence, in his breeches-pocket
(BREECHES-POCKET literally; how unknown to Hanway!)--"Amiable young
Nobleman, is not it one's duty to salute, in passing such a one? Though
I would by no means have it over-done, and am a calmly independent man.

"Sir Jonas also saw the Carrousel [of which presently]; and admired the
great men of Berlin. Great men, all obsolete now, though then admired
to infinitude, some of them: 'You may abuse me,' said the King to some
stranger arrived in Berlin; 'you may abuse me, and perhaps here
and there get praise by doing it: but I advise you not to doubt of
Lieberkuhn [the fashionable Doctor] in any company in Berlin,'" [Hanway,
ii. 190, 202, &c.]--How fashionable are men!

One Collini, a young Italian, quite new in Berlin, chanced also to be at
the Carrousel, or at the latter half of it,--though by no means in
quest of such objects just at present, poor young fellow! As he came
afterwards to be Secretary or Amanuensis of Voltaire, and will turn up
in that capacity, let us read this Note upon him:--

"Signor Como Alessandro Collini, a young Venetian gentleman of some
family and education, but of no employment or resource, had in late
years been asking zealously all round among his home circle, What am I
to do with myself? mere echo answering, What,--till a Signora Sister
of Barberina the Dancer's answered: 'Try Berlin, and King FRIDERICO IL
GRANDE there? I could give you a letter to my Sister!' At which Collini
grasps; gets under way for Berlin,--through wild Alpine sceneries,
foreign guttural populations; and with what thoughts, poor young fellow.
It is a common course to take, and sometimes answers, sometimes not. The
cynosure of vague creatures, with a sense of faculty without direction.
What clouds of winged migratory people gathering in to Berlin, all
through this Reign. Not since Noah's Ark a stranger menagerie of
creatures, mostly wild. Of whom Voltaire alone is, in our time, worth
mention.

"Collini gazed upon the Alpine chasms, and shaggy ice-palaces, with
tender memory of the Adriatic; courageously steered his way through the
inoffensive guttural populations; had got to Berlin, just in this time;
been had to dinner daily by the hospitable Barberinas, young Cocceji
always his fellow-guest,--'Privately, my poor Signorina's Husband!'
whispered old Mamma. Both the Barberinas were very kind to Collini;
cheering him with good auguries, and offers of help. Collini does not
date with any punctuality; but the German Books will do it for him.
August 25th-27th was Carrousel; and Collini had arrived few days
before." [Collini,--Mon Sejour aupres de Voltaire--(Paris, 1807), pp.
1-21.]

And now it is time we were at the Carrousel ourselves,--in a brief
transient way.




Chapter VI.--BERLIN CARROUSEL, AND VOLTAIRE VISIBLE THERE.

Readers have heard of the PLACE DU CARROUSEL at Paris; and know probably
that Louis XIV. held world-famous Carrousel there (A.D. 1662); and,
in general, that Carrousel has something to do with Tourneying, or
the Shadow of Tourneying. It is, in fact, a kind of superb be-tailored
running at the ring, instead of be-blacksmithed running at one another.
A Second milder Edition of those Tournament sports, and dangerous trials
of strength and dexterity, which were so grand a business in the Old
iron Ages. Of which, in the form of Carrousel or otherwise, down
almost to the present day, there have been examples, among puissant
Lords;--though now it is felt to have become extremely hollow; perhaps
incapable of fully entertaining anybody, except children and their
nurses on a high occasion.

A century ago, before the volcanic explosion of so many things which
it has since become wearisome to think of in this earnest world, the
Tournament, emblem of an Age of Chivalry, which was gone: but had not
yet declared itself to be quite gone, and even to be turned topsy-turvy,
had still substance as a mummery,--not enough, I should say, to spend
much money upon. Not much real money: except, indeed, the money were
offered you gratis, from other parties interested? Sir Jonas kindly
informs us, by insinuation, that this was, to a good degree, Friedrich's
case in the now Carrousel: "a thing got up by the private efforts of
different great Lords and Princes of the blood;" each party tailoring,
harnessing and furbishing himself and followers; Friedrich contributing
little but the arena and general outfit. I know not whether even the
40,000 lamps (for it took place by night) were of his purchase, though
that is likely; and know only that the Suppers and interior Palace
Entertainments would be his. "Did not cost the King much money," says
Sir Jonas; which is satisfactory to know. For of the Carrousel kind,
or of the Royal-Mummery kind in general, there has been, for graceful
arrangement, for magnificence regardless of expense,--inviting your
amiable Lord Malton, and the idlers of all Countries, and awakening the
rapture of Gazetteers,--nothing like it since Louis the Grand's time.
Nothing,--except perhaps that Camp of Muhlberg or Radowitz, where we
once were. Done, this one, not at the King's expense alone, but at other
people's chiefly: that is an unexpected feature, welcome if true; and,
except for Sir Jonas, would not have helped to explain the puzzle
for us, as it did in the then Berlin circles. Muhlberg, in my humble
judgment, was worth two of this as a Mummery;--but the meritorious
feature of Friedrich's is, that it cost him very little.

It was, say all Gazetteers and idle eye-witnesses, a highly splendid
spectacle. By much the most effulgent exhibition Friedrich ever made of
himself in the Expensive-Mummery department: and I could give in extreme
detail the phenomena of it; but, in mercy to poor readers, will not.
Fancy the assiduous hammering and sawing on the Schloss-Platz, amid
crowds of gay loungers, giving cheerful note of preparation, in those
latter days of August, 1750. And, on WEDNESDAY NIGHT, 25th AUGUST,
look and see,--for the due moments only, and vaguely enough (as in the
following Excerpt):--

PALACE-ESPLANADE OF BERLIN, 25th AUGUST, 1750 (dusk sinking into dark):
"Under a windy nocturnal sky, a spacious Parallelogram, enclosed for
jousting as at Aspramont or Trebisond. Wide enough arena in the centre;
vast amphitheatre of wooden seats and passages, firm carpentry and
fitted for its business, rising all round; Audience, select though
multitudinous, sitting decorous and garrulous, say since half-past
eight. There is royal box on the ground-tier; and the King in it, King,
with Princess Amelia for the prizes: opposite to this is entrance for
the Chevaliers,--four separate entrances, I think. Who come,--lo, at
last!--with breathings and big swells of music, as Resuscitations from
the buried Ages.

"They are in four 'Quadrilles,' so termed: Romans, Persians,
Carthaginians, Greeks. Four Jousting Parties, headed each by a Prince
of the Blood:--with such a splendor of equipment for jewels, silver
helmets, sashings, housings, as eye never saw. Prancing on their
glorious battle-steeds (sham-battle, steeds not sham, but champing their
bits as real quadrupeds with fire in their interior):--how many in all,
I forgot to count. Perhaps, on the average, sixty in each Quadrille,
fifteen of them practical Ritters; the rest mythologic winged
standard-bearers, blackamoors, lictors, trumpeters and shining melodious
phantasms as escort,--of this latter kind say in round numbers Two
Hundred altogether; and of actual Ritters threescore. [Blumenthal,--Life
of De Ziethen--(Ziethen was in it, and gained a prize), i. 257-263 et
seq.; Voltaire's LETTERS to Niece Denis (--OEuvres,--lxxiv. 174, 179,
198);--and two contemporary 4tos on the subject, with Drawings &c.,
which may well continue unknown to every reader.] Who run at rings, at
Turks' heads, and at other objects with death-doing lance; and prance
and flash and career along: glorious to see and hear. Under proud
flourishings of drums and trumpets, under bursts and breathings of
wind-music; under the shine of Forty Thousand Lamps, for one item. All
Berlin and the nocturnal firmament looking on,--night rather gusty,
'which blew out many of the lamps,' insinuates Hanway.

"About midnight, Beauty in the form of Princess Amelia distributes the
prizes; Music filling the air; and human 'EUGE'S,' and the surviving
lamps, doing their best. After which the Principalities and Ritters
withdraw to their Palace, to their Balls and their Supper of the gods;
and all the world and his wife goes home again, amid various commentary
from high and low. 'JAMAIS, Never,' murmured one high Gentleman, of the
Impromptu kind, at the Palace Supper-table:--

      --'Jamais dans Athene et dans Rome
      On n'eut de plus beaux jours, ni de plus digne prix.
      J'ai vu le fils de Mars sous les traits de Paris,
            Et Venus qui donnait la pomme.'"--

["Never in Athens or Rome were there braver sights or a worthier prize:
I have seen the son of Mars [King Friedrich] with Paris's features, and
Venus [Amelia] crowning the victorious." (--OEuvres de Voltaire,--xviii.
320.)]

And Amphitheatre and Lamps lapse wholly into darkness, and the thing has
finished, for the time being. August 27th, it was repeated by daylight:
if possible, more charming than ever; but not to be spoken of farther,
under penalties. To be mildly forgotten again, every jot and tittle
of it,--except one small insignificant iota, which, by accident, still
makes it remarkable. Namely, that Collini and the Barberinas were
there; and that not only was Voltaire again there, among the Princes and
Princesses; but that Collini saw Voltaire, and gives us transient
sight of him,--thanks to Collini. Thursday, 27th August, 1750, was the
Daylight version of the Carrousel; which Collini, if it were of any
moment, takes to have PRECEDED that of the 40,000 Lamps. Sure enough
Collini was there, with eyes open:--

"Madame de Cocceji [so one may call her, though the known alias is
Barberina] had engaged places; she invited me to come and see this
Festivity. We went;" and very grand it was. "The Palace-Esplanade was
changed" by carpentries and draperies "into a vast Amphitheatre; the
slopes of it furnished with benches for the spectators, and at the four
corners of it and at the bottom, magnificently decorated boxes for the
Court." Vast oval Amphitheatre, the interior arena rectangular, with its
Four Entrances, one for each of the Four Quadrilles. "The assemblage was
numerous and brilliant: all the Court had come from Potsdam to Berlin.

"A little while before the King himself made appearance, there rose
suddenly a murmur of admiration, and I heard all round me, from
everybody, the name 'Voltaire! Voltaire!' Looking down, I saw Voltaire
accordingly; among a group of great lords, who were walking over the
Arena, towards one of the Court Boxes. He wore a modest countenance,
but joy painted itself in his eyes: you cannot love glory, and not feel
gratefully the prize attached to it,"--attained as here. "I lost sight
of him in few instants," as he approached his Box "the place where I was
not permitting farther view." [Collini,--Mon Sejour,--p. 21.]

This was Collini's first sight of that great man (DE CE GRAND HOMME).
With whom, thanks to Barberina, he had, in a day or two, the honor of an
Interview (judgment favorable, he could hope); and before many months,
Accident also favoring, the inexpressible honor of seeing himself the
great man's Secretary,--how far beyond hope or aspiration, in these
Carrousel days!

Voltaire had now been here some Seven Weeks,--arrived 10th July, as
we often note;--after (on his own part) a great deal of haggling,
hesitating and negotiating; which we spare our readers. The poor man
having now become a Quasi-Widower; painfully rallying, with his whole
strength, towards new arrangements,--now was the time for Friedrich to
urge him: "Come to me! Away from all that dismal imbroglio; hither, I
say!" To which Voltaire is not inattentive; though he hesitates; cannot,
in any case, come without delay;--lingers in Paris, readjusting many
things, the poor shipwrecked being, among kind D'Argentals and friends.
Poor Ishmael, getting gray; and his tent in the desert suddenly carried
off by a blast of wind!

To the legal Widower, M. le Marquis, he behaves in money matters like
a Prince; takes that Paris Domicile, in the Rue Traversiere, all to
himself; institutes a new household there,--Niece Denis to be female
president. Niece Denis, widow without encumbrances; whom in her married
state, wife to some kind of Commissariat-Officer at Lille, we have seen
transiently in that City, her Uncle lodging with her as he passed. A
gadding, flaunting, unreasonable, would-be fashionable female--(a Du
Chatelet without the grace or genius, and who never was in love with
you!)--with whom poor Uncle had a baddish life in time coming. All which
settled, he still lingers. Widowed, grown old and less adventurous!
'That House in the Rue Traversiere, once his and Another's, now his
alone,--for the time being, it is probably more like a Mausoleum than
a House to him. And Versailles, with its sulky Trajans, its Crebillon
cabals, what charm is in Versailles? He thinks of going to Italy for a
while; has never seen that fine Country: of going to Berlin for a while:
of going to--In fact, Berlin is clearly the place where he will land;
but he hesitates greatly about lifting anchor. Friedrich insists, in a
bright, bantering, kindly way; "You were due to me a year ago; you said
always, 'So soon as the lying-in is over, I am yours:'--and now, why
don't you come?"

Friedrich, since they met last, has had some experiences of Voltaire,
which he does not like. Their roads, truly--one adulating Trajan
in Versailles, and growing great by "Farces of the Fair;" the other
battling for his existence against men and devils, Trajan and Company
included--have lain far apart. Their Correspondence perceptibly
languishing, in consequence, and even rumors rising on the subject,
Voltaire wrote once: "Give me a yard of ribbon, Sire [your ORDER OF
MERIT, Sire], to silence those vile rumors!" Which Friedrich, on such
free-and-easy terms, had silently declined. "A meddlesome, forward kind
of fellow; always getting into scrapes and brabbles!" thinks Friedrich.
But is really anxious, now that the chance offers again, to have such
a Levite for his Priest, the evident pink of Human Intellect; and tries
various incitements upon him;--hits at last (I know not whether by
device or by accident) on one which, say the French Biographers, did
raise Voltaire and set him under way.

A certain M. Baculard d'Arnaud, a conceited, foolish young fellow, much
patronized by Voltaire, and given to write verses, which are unknown to
me, has been, on Voltaire's recommending, "Literary Correspondent"
to Friedrich (Paris Book-Agent and the like) for some time past;
corresponding much with Potsdam, in a way found entertaining; and is now
(April, 1750) actually going thither, to Friedrich's Court, or perhaps
has gone. At any rate, Friedrich--by accident or by device--had answered
some rhymes of this D'Arnaud, "Yes; welcome, young sunrise, since
Voltaire is about to set!" [--OEuvres de Frederic,--xiv. 95 (Verses "A
D'ARNAUD," of date December, 1749.)] I hope it was by device; D'Arnaud
is such a silly fellow; too absurd, to reckon as morning to anybody's
sunset. Except for his involuntary service, for and against, in
this Voltaire Journey, his name would not now be mentionable at
all. "Sunset?" exclaimed Voltaire, springing out of bed (say the
Biographers), and skipping about indignantly in his shirt: "I will
show them I am not set yet!" [Duvernet (Second), p. 159.] And instantly
resolved on the Berlin Expedition. Went to Compiegne, where the Court
then was; to bid his adieus; nay to ask formally the Royal leave,--for
we are Historiographer and titular Gentleman of the Chamber, and King's
servant in a sense. Leave was at once granted him, almost huffingly; we
hope not with too much readiness? For this is a ticklish point: one is
going to Prussia "on a Visit" merely (though it may be longish); one
would not have the door of France slammed to behind one! The tone at
Court did seem a little succinct, something almost of sneer in it.
But from the Pompadour herself all was friendly; mere witty,
cheery graciosities, and "My Compliments to his Majesty of
Prussia,"--Compliments how answered when they came to hand: "JE NE LA
CONNAIS PAS!"

In short, M. de Voltaire made all his arrangements; got under way;
piously visited Fontenoy and the Battle-fields in passing: and is here,
since July 10th,--in very great splendor, as we see:--on his Fifth Visit
to Friedrich. Fifth; which proved his Last,--and is still extremely
celebrated in the world. Visit much misunderstood in France and
England, down to this day. By no means sorted out into accuracy and
intelligibility; but left as (what is saying a great deal!) probably the
wastest chaos of all the Sections of Friedrich's History. And has, alone
of them, gone over the whole world; being withal amusing to read,
and therefore well and widely remembered, in that mendacious and
semi-intelligible state. To lay these goblins, full of noise, ignorance
and mendacity, and give some true outline of the matter, with what
brevity is consistent with deciphering it at all, is now our sad
task,--laborious, perhaps disgusting; not impossible, if readers will
loyally assist.

Voltaire had taken every precaution that this Visit should succeed, or
at least be no loss to one of the parties. In a preliminary Letter from
Paris,--prose and verse, one of the cleverest diplomatic pieces ever
penned; Letter really worth looking at, cunning as the song of Apollo,
Voltaire symbolically intimates: "Well, Sire, your old Danae, poor
malingering old wretch, is coming to her Jove. It is Jove she wants,
not the Shower of Jove; nevertheless"--And Friedrich (thank Hanbury,
in part, for that bit of knowledge) had remitted him in hard money 600
pounds "to pay the tolls on his road." [Walpole, i. 451 ("Had it from
Princess Amelia herself"); see Voltaire to Friedrich, "Paris, 9th
June, 1750;" Friedrich to Voltaire, "Potsdam, 24th May" (--OEuvres de
Voltaire,--lxxiv. 158, 155).] As a high gentleman would; to have done
with those base elements of the business.

Nay furthermore, precisely two days before those splendors of the
Carrousel, Friedrich,--in answer to new cunning croakeries and
contrivances ("Sire, this Letter from my Niece, who is inconsolable that
I should think of staying here;" where, finding oneself so divinized,
one is disposed to stay),--has answered him like a King: By Gold Key of
Chamberlain, Cross of the Order of Merit, and Pension of 20,000 francs
(850 pounds) a year,--conveyed in as royal a Letter of Business as I
have often read; melodious as Apollo, this too, though all in business
prose, and, like Apollo, practical God of the SUN in this case.
["Berlin, 23d August, 1750" (--OEuvres de Frederic,--xxii.
255);--Voltaire to Niece Denis, "24th August" (misprinted "14th"); to
D'Argental, "28th August" (--OEuvres de Voltaire,--lxxiv. 185, 196).]
Dated 23d August, 1750. This Letter of Friedrich's I fancy to be what
Voltaire calls, "Your Majesty's gracious Agreement with me," and often
appeals to, in subsequent troubles. Not quite a Notarial Piece, on
Friedrich's part; but strictly observed by him as such.

Four days after which, Collini sees Voltaire serenely shining among the
Princes and Princesses of the world; Amphitheatre all whispering with
bated breath, "Voltaire! Voltaire!" But let us hear Voltaire himself,
from the interior of the Phenomenon, at this its culminating point:--

Voltaire to his D'Argentals,--to Niece Denis even, with whom, if with
no other, he is quite without reserve, in showing the bad and the
good,--continues radiantly eloquent in these first months: ...
"Carrousel, twice over; the like never seen for splendor, for [rather
copious on this sublimity]--After which we played ROME SAUVEE [my
Anti-Crebillon masterpiece], in a pretty little Theatre, which I have
got constructed in the Princess Amelia's Antechamber. I, who speak to
you, I played CICERO." Yes; and was manager and general stage-king and
contriver; being expert at this, if at anything. And these beautiful
Theatricals had begun weeks ago, and still lasted many weeks;
[Rodenbeck, "August-October," 1750.]--with such divine consultings,
directings, even orderings of the brilliant Royalties concerned.--
Duvernet (probably on D'Arget's authority) informs us that "once, in one
of the inter-acts, finding the soldiers allowed him for Pretorian Guards
not to understand their business here," not here, as they did at
Hohenfriedberg and elsewhere, "Voltaire shrilled volcanically out to
them [happily unintelligible): 'F----, Devil take it, I asked for men;
and they have sent me Germans (J'AI DEMANDE DES HOMMES, ET L'ON M'ENVOIE
DES ALLEMANDS)!' At which the Princesses were good-natured enough to
burst into laughter." [Duvernet (Second), p. 162,--time probably 15th
October.] Voltaire continues: "There is an English Ambassador here who
knows Cicero's Orations IN CATILINAM by heart;" an excellent Etonian,
surely. "It is not Milord Tyrconnell" (blusterous Irish Jacobite), OUR
Ambassador, note him, fat Valori having been recalled); no, "it is the
Envoy from England," Excellency Hanbury himself, who knows his Cicero by
heart. "He has sent me some fine verses on ROME SAUVEE; he says it is my
best work. It is a Piece appropriate for Ministerial people; Madame la
Chanceliere," Cocceji's better half, "is well pleased with it.
[--OEuvres,--lxxiv. (LETTERS, to the D'Argentals and Denis,
"20th August-23d September, 1750"), pp. 187, 219, 231, &c. &c.]
And then,"--But enough.

In Princess Amelia's Antechamber, there or in other celestial places,
in Palace after Palace, it goes on. Gayety succeeding gayety; mere
Princesses and Princes doing parts; in ROME SAUVEE, and in masterpieces
of Voltaire's, Voltaire himself acting CICERO and elderly characters,
LUSIGNAN and the like. Excellent in acting, say the witnesses;
superlative, for certain, as Preceptor of the art,--though impatient now
and then. And wears such Jewel-ornaments (borrowed partly from a Hebrew,
of whom anon), such magnificence of tasteful dress;--and walks his
minuet among the Morning Stars. Not to mention the Suppers of the King:
chosen circle, with the King for centre; a radiant Friedrich flashing
out to right and left, till all kindles into coruscation round him; and
it is such a blaze of spiritual sheet-lightnings,--wonderful to think
of; Voltaire especially electric. Never, or seldom, were seen such
suppers; such a life for a Supreme Man of Letters so fitted with the
place due to him. Smelfungus says:--

"And so your Supreme of Literature has got into his due place at
last,--at the top of the world, namely; though, alas, but for moments or
for months. The King's own Friend; he whom the King delights to honor.
The most shining thing in Berlin, at this moment. Virtually a kind
of PAPA, or Intellectual Father of Mankind," sneers Smelfungus; "Pope
improvised for the nonce. The new Fridericus Magnus does as the old
Pipinus, old Carolus Magnus did: recognizes his Pope, in despite of the
base vulgar; elevates him aloft into worship, for the vulgar and for
everybody! Carolus Magnus did that thrice-salutary feat [sublimely
human, if you think of it, and for long centuries successful more or
less]; Fridericus Magnus, under other omens, unconsciously does the
like,--the best he can! Let the Opera Fiddlers, the Frerons, Travenols
and Desfontaines-of-Sodom's Ghost look and consider!"--

Madame Denis, an expensive gay Lady, still only in her thirties,
improvable by rouge, carries on great work in the Rue Traversiere;
private theatricals, suppers, flirtations with Italian travelling
Marquises;--finds Intendant Longchamp much in her way, with his rigorous
account-books, and restriction to 100 louis per month; wishes even
her Uncle were back, and cautions him, Not to believe in Friedrich's
flattering unctions, or put his trust in Princes at all. Voltaire, with
the due preliminaries, shows Friedrich her Letter, one of her Letters,
[Now lost, as most of them are; Voltaire's Answer to it, already cited,
is "24th August, 1750" (misprinted "14th August,"--OEuvres,--lxxiv. 185;
see IB. lxxv. 135); King Friedrich's PRACTICAL Answer (so munificent
to Denis and Voltaire), "Your Majesty's gracious Agreement," bore date
"August 23d."]--with result as we saw above.

Formey says: "In the Carnival time, which Voltaire usually passed at
Berlin, in the Palace, people paid their court to him as to a declared
Favorite. Princes, Marshals, Ministers of State, Foreign Ambassadors,
Lords of the highest rank, attended his audience; and were received,"
says Formey, nowhere free from spite on this subject, "in a sufficiently
lofty style (HAUTEUR ASSEZ DEDAIGNEUSE). [Formey,--Souvenirs,--i. 235,
236.] A great Prince had the complaisance to play chess with him; and
to let him win the pistoles that were staked. Sometimes even the pistole
disappeared before the end of the game," continues Formey, green
with spite;--and reports that sad story of the candle-ends; bits of
wax-candle, which should have remained as perquisite to the valets,
but which were confiscated by Voltaire and sent across to the
wax-chandler's. So, doubtless, the spiteful rumor ran; probably little
but spite and fable, Berlin being bitter in its gossip. Stupid Thiebault
repeats that of the candle-ends, like a thing he had seen (twelve years
BEFORE his arrival in those parts); and adds that Voltaire "put them in
his pocket,"--like one both stupid and sordid. Alas, the brighter your
shine, the blacker is the shadow you cast.

Friedrich, with the knowledge he already had of his yoke-fellow,--one
of the most skittish, explosive, unruly creatures in harness,--cannot
be counted wise to have plunged so heartily into such an adventure with
him. "An undoubted Courser of the Sun!" thought Friedrich;--and forgot
too much the signs of bad going he had sometimes noticed in him on the
common highways. There is no doubt he was perfectly sincere and simple
in all this high treatment of Voltaire. "The foremost, literary
spirit of the world, a man to be honored by me, and by all men; the
Trismegistus of Human Intellects, what a conquest to have made; how
cheap is a little money, a little patience and guidance, for such
solacement and ornament to one's barren Life!" He had rashly hoped that
the dreams of his youth could hereby still be a little realized; and
something of the old Reinsberg Program become a fruitful and blessed
fact. Friedrich is loyally glad over his Voltaire; eager in all ways to
content him, make him happy; and keep him here, as the Talking Bird, the
Singing Tree and the Golden Water of intelligent mankind; the glory of
one's own Court, and the envy of the world. "Will teach us the secret
of the Muses, too; French Muses, and help us in our bits of Literature!"
This latter, too, is a consideration with Friedrich, as why should it
not,--though by no means the sole or chief one, as the French give it
out to be.

On his side, Voltaire is not disloyal either; but is nothing like so
completely loyal. He has, and continued always to have, not unmixed with
fear, a real admiration for Friedrich, that terrible practical Doer,
with the cutting brilliances of mind and character, and the irrefragable
common sense; nay he has even a kind of love to him, or something like
it,--love made up of gratitude for past favors, and lively anticipation
of future. Voltaire is, by nature, an attached or attachable creature;
flinging out fond boughs to every kind of excellence, and especially
holding firm by old ties he had made. One fancies in him a mixed set of
emotions, direct and reflex,--the consciousness of safe shelter, were
there nothing more; of glory to oneself, derived and still derivable
from this high man:--in fine, a sum-total of actual desire to live
with King Friedrich, which might, surely, have almost sufficed even for
Voltaire, in a quieter element. But the element was not quiet,--far from
it; nor was Voltaire easily sufficeable!



PERPETUAL PRESIDENT MAUPERTUIS HAS A VISIT FROM ONE KONIG, OUT OF
HOLLAND, CONCERNING THE INFINITELY LITTLE.

Whether Maupertuis, in red wig with yellow bottom, saw these high
gauderies of the Carrousel, the Plays in Princess Amelia's Antechamber,
and the rest of it, I do not know: but if so, he was not in the top
place; nor did anybody take notice of him, as everybody did of Voltaire.
Meanwhile, I have something to quote, as abridged and distilled from
various sources, chiefly from Formey; which will be of much concernment
farther on.

Some four weeks after those Carrousel effulgencies, Perpetual President
Maupertuis had a visit (September 21st, just while the Sun was crossing
the Line; thanks to Formey for the date, who keeps a Note-book,
useful in these intricacies): visit from Professor Konig, an effective
mathematical man from the Dutch parts. Whom readers have forgotten
again; though they saw him once: in violent quarrel, about the
Infinitely Little, with Madame du Chatelet, Voltaire witnessing with
pain;--it was just as they quitted Cirey together, ten years ago, for
these new courses of adventure. Do readers recall the circumstance?
Maupertuis, referee in that quarrel, had, with a bluntness offensive to
the female mind, declared Konig indisputably in the right; and there had
followed a dryness between the divine Emilie and the Flattener of the
Earth, scarcely to be healed by Voltaire's best efforts.

Konig has gone his road since then; become a fine solid fellow;
Professor in a Dutch University; more latterly Librarian to the Dutch
Stadtholder: still frank of speech, and with a rugged free-and-easy
turn, but of manful manners; really a person of various culture, and as
is still noticeable, of a solid geometric turn of mind. Having now, as
Librarian at the Hague, more leisure and more money, he has made a run
to Berlin,--chiefly or entirely to see his Maupertuis again, whom he
still remembers gratefully as his first Patron in older times, and a man
of sound parts, though rather blusterous now and then, A little bit of
scientific business also he has with him. Konig is Member of the Berlin
Academy, for some years back; and there is a thing he would speak with
the Perpetual President upon. "Wants nothing else in Berlin," says
Formey: a hearing by the road that Maupertuis was not there, he had
actually turned homewards again: but got truer tidings, and came on.
"The more was the pity, as perhaps will appear!"He arrived September 20th
[if you will be particular on cheese-parings]; called on me that day,
being lodged in my neighborhood; and next day, found Maupertuis at
home;" [Formey, i. 176-179.]--and flew into his arms again, like a good
boy long absent.

Maupertuis, not many months ago, had, in Two successive Papers, I think
Two, communicated to the Academy a Discovery of Metaphysico-Mathematical
or altogether Metaphysical nature, on the Laws of Motion;--Discovery
which he has, since that, brought to complete perfection, and sent forth
to the Universe at large, in his sublime little Book of COSMOLOGY; [In
La Beaumelle,--Vie de Maupertuis--(Paris, 1856), pp. 105-130, confused
account of this "Discovery," and of the gradual Publication of it to
mankind,--very gradual; first of all in the old Paris times; in the
Berlin ACADEMY latterly; and in fine, to all the world, in this ESSAI
DE COSMOLOGIE (Berlin, Summer of 1750).]--grateful Academy striving to
admire, and believe, with its Perpetual President, that the Discovery
was sublime to a degree; second only to the flattening of the Earth; and
would probably stand thenceforth as a milestone in the Progress of Human
Thought. "Which Discovery, then?" Be not too curious, reader; take only
of it what shall concern you!

It is well known there have been, to the metaphysical head, difficulties
almost insuperable as to How, in the System of Nature, Motion is?
How, in the name of wonder, it can be; and even, Whether it is at all?
Difficulties to the metaphysical head, sticking its nose into the gutter
there;--not difficult to my readers and me, who can at all times walk
across the room, and triumphantly get over them. But stick your nose
into any gutter, entity, or object, this of Motion or another,
with obstinacy,--you will easily drown, if that be your
determination!--Suffice it for us to know in this matter, that
Maupertuis, intensely watching Nature, has discovered, That the key of
her enigma (or at least the ultimate central DOOR, which hides all
her Motional enigmas, the key to WHICH cannot even be imagined as
discoverable!) is, that "Nature is superlatively THRIFTY in this affair
of motion;" that she employs, for every Motion done or do-able, "a
MINIMUM OF ACTION;" and that, if you well understand this, you will, at
least, announce all her procedures in one proposition, and have found
the DOOR which leads to everything. Which will be a comfort to you;
still looking vainly for the key, if there is still no key conceivable.

Perpetual President Maupertuis, having surprised Nature in this manner,
read Papers upon it to an Academy listening with upturned eyes; new
Papers, perfected out of old,--for he has long been hatching these
Phoenix-eggs; and has sent them out complete, quite lately, in a little
Book called COSMOLOGIE, where alone I have had the questionable benefit
of reading them. Gran

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