When I say, my dear niece, that all roads lead to Rome, I do not mean that they will lead me there. I was wild to see Rome and our present good Pope: but you and your sister attract me back to France: I sacrifice the Holy Father to you. I wish I could also sacrifice the King of Prussia, but that is impossible. He is as amiable as are you yourselves; he is a king, but his passion for me is of sixteen years’ standing: he has turned my head. I had the audacity to think that nature made me for him; I found that there is so remarkable a conformity in our tastes that I forgot he was the lord of half Germany, and that the other half trembled at his name, that he had won five battles, that he was the finest general in Europe, and had about him great monsters of heroes six feet high. All that would, indeed, have made me fly a thousand miles from him: but the philosopher humanized the monarch, and I know him only as a great man, good and kindly. Everybody taunts me with his having written verses for d‘Amaud—which are certainly not among his best: but you must remember that four hundred miles from Paris it is very difficult to judge if a person who has been recommended to you is, or is not, worthy; that, anyhow, verses, ill or well applied, prove that the conqueror of Austria loves literature; and I love him with all my heart. Besides, d’Arnaud is a good sort of person who, now and again, does light on some pretty lines. He has taste: he is improving; and if he does not improve—well, it is no great matter. In a word, that little slight the King of Prussia put on me does not prevent him being the most agreeable and remarkable of men.
The climate here is not so rigorous as people think. You Parisians talk as if I were in Lapland: let me inform you that we have had a summer quite as hot as yours, that we have enjoyed good peaches and grapes, and that you really have no business to give yourself such airs of superiority on the strength of two or three extra degrees of sunshine.
You will see Mahomet acted at my house in Paris: but I shall be acting in Rome Sauvée at Berlin—the hoarsest old Cicero you ever heard. Further, my dear child, we must look to our digestions: that is the main point. My health is very much as it was in Paris: when I have the colic. I have given up the grand suppers, and am a little the better. I am under a great obligation to the King of Prussia: he sets me an example of temperance. What! said I to myself, here is a king born a gourmand, who sits at table and eats nothing, and yet is excellent company; while I give myself indigestion like a fool! How I pity you, changing your diet of asses’ milk for the waters of Forges and pecking like a sparrow, and, with it all. never well! Compensate yourself: there are other pleasures.
Good-bye: my compliments to everyone. I hope ta embrace you in November. I am writing to your sister: but please tell her I shall love her all my life, even better than I do my new master.
TO MME. DENIS
Potsdam, October 13,17,50.
Behold us in retreat at Potsdam! The excitement of the fêtes is over, and my soul is relieved. I am not sorry to be here with a king who has neither court nor cabinet. It is true Potsdam is full of the mustaches and helmets of grenadiers: thank God, I do not see them. I work peacefully in my rooms, to the accompaniment of the drum. I have given up the royal dinners: there were too many generals and princes. I could not get used to being always opposite a king in state, and to talking in public. I sup with him, and a very small party. The supper is shorter, gayer, and healthier. I should die at the end of three months of boredom and indigestion if I had to dine every day with a king in state.
I have been handed over, my dear, with all due formalities, to the King of Prussia. The marriage is accomplished: will it be happy? I do not know in the least: yet I cannot prevent myself saying, Yes. After coquetting for so many years, marriage was the necessary end. My heart beat hard even at the altar. I fully intend to come this winter and give you an account of myself, and perhaps bring you back with me. There is no further question of my trip to Italy; I gladly give up for you the Holy Father and the buried city: perhaps I ought also to have sacrificed Potsdam. Who would have guessed, seven or eight months ago, when I was making every arrangement to live with you in Paris, that I should settle three hundred miles away in someone else’s house? and that someone else a master. He has solemnly sworn that I shall not repent it: he has included you, my dear child, in a sort of contract he signed which I will bring with me: but do you intend to earn your dowry of four thousand francs?
I am much afraid you will be like Mme. de Rottemberg, who always preferred the operas of Paris to those of Berlin. Oh, destiny! destiny! how you rule all things and dispose of poor humanity.
It is rather amusing that the same literary men in Paris, who longed to exterminate me, are now calling out against my absence—as desertion. They are sorry to have lost their victim. I was indeed wrong to leave you: my heart tells me so daily, more often than you think: but I have done very well to escape those gentry.
Good-bye—with regrets and affection.
TO MME. DENIS
Berlin, September 1. 1751.
I have just time, my dear, to send you a fresh packet of letters. You will find in it one from La Mettrie to the Maréchal de Richelieu, asking his good offices. Reader though he be to the King of Prussia, he is dying to return to France. This cheerful soul, supposed to do nothing but laugh, cries like a child at having to be here. He is imploring me to get M. Richelieu to obtain a permit for him.24 It is certainly a fact that one must never judge by appearances.
La Mettrie, in his writings, boasts of his delight at being near a great king, who sometimes reads his verses: in private, he weeps with me. He is ready to go back on foot: but as for mel ... what am I here for? I am going to astonish you.
This La Mettrie is a person of no importance, and chats familiarly with the King after their readings. He tells me much in confidence; and swears that, talking to the King a few days ago of the so-called favor extended to me and the little jealousy it excites, the King replied, “I shall want him a year longer, at the outside: one squeezes the orange and throws away the peel.”
I repeated these charming words to myself: I redoubled my questions: La Mettrie redoubled his assertions. Would you believe it? ought I to believe it? is it possible? What! after sixteen years of kindnesses, promises, protestations: after the letter which he desired that you should keep as an inviolable pledge of his word! And at a time, if you please, at a time when I am sacrificing everything to serve him, when I not only correct his works, but write in the margin, à propos of any little faults I detect, reflections on our language which are a lesson in the arts of poesy and rhetoric: having, as my sole aim, to assist his talent, enlighten him and put him in a position to do without my help!
I certainly took both pride and pleasure in cultivating his genius: everything contributed to my illusion. A King who has gained battles and provinces, a King of the North who wrote verses in our language—a King whose favor I did not seek, and who said he was devoted to me: why should he have made so many advances? It is beyond me: I cannot understand it. I have done my best not to believe La Mettrie.
All the same—I am not sure. In rereading his verses I came across an Epistle to a painter named Pesne: in which he alludes to the “dear Pesne,” whose “brush places him among the gods”; and this Pesne is a man he never looks at. However, this dear Pesne is a god. He could well say as much of me: it is not to say very much. Perhaps everything he writes is inspired by his mind, and his heart is far from it. Perhaps all those letters wherein he overwhelms me with warm and most touching assurances of kindness really mean nothing at all.
I am giving you terrible weapons to use against me. You will justly blame me for having yielded to his bland ishments. You will take me for M. Jourdain, who said, “Can I refuse anything to a court gentleman who calls me his dear friend?” Still, I shall always reply, “He is a most amiable monarch.”
You can easily fancy what reflections, what regrets, what difficulties, and, since I must own it, what grief the words of La Mettrie have brought upon me. You will say, Come away! But I am in no position to come away. W
hat I have begun, I must finish—and I have two editions on. hand and engagements for several months ahead. I am encompassed on all sides. What is to be done? Ignore that La Mettrie ever told me, confide in you alone, forget all about it, wait? You will most certainly be my consolation. I shall never have to say of you, “She deceived me, vowing she loved me.” Were you a queen, you would be true.
Tell me your opinion, I beg you, in detail by the first courier despatched to Lord Tyrconnel.
TO M. BAGIEU25
Potsdam, April 10, 1752.
Nothing, my dear sir, has ever so deeply touched me as the letter which you have so kindly and spontaneously written to me, the interest you manifest in a condition of which particulars have not been furnished to you, and the help you tender me with so much good will. The hope of finding in Paris hearts as compassionate as yours and men at once thus worthy of their profession and superior to it quickens my desire to take the journey thither and makes my life of more value to me.
I owe a great deal to Mme. Denis for having claimed your attention on my behalf. Certainly, such thoughtful people are only to be found in France: just as your art attains perfection in France alone. Mine is a small affair. I never set out to do more than amuse people: and some are very far from thanking me. You are busy giving them help in their need. I have always looked on your profession as one of those which did most honor to the age of Louis XIV: and I have spoken of it to that effect in my history of that century: but I have never thought more highly of it than I do now. Mme. de Pimbesche in the Suitors learned to plead as a barrister—by pleading —and, in this sense, I have exhaustively studied medicine. I have read Sydenham, Freind, Boerhaave. I know the art must be largely a matter of conjecture, that few temperaments are alike, and that the first aphorism of Hippocrates, Experientia fallax, judicium difficile, is the finest and truest of all.
I have come to the conclusion that each man must be his own doctor: that he must live by rule, now and again assist nature without forcing her: above all, that he must know how to suffer, grow old, and die.
The King of Prussia, who has made peace after his five victories and is now reforming laws and embellishing his country (having finished writing its history), condescends sometimes to very pretty verse, and has addressed an Ode to me on this grim necessity to which we must all submit. This work and your letter have done more for me than all the physicians on earth. I ought not to complain of my fate. I have lived to be fifty-eight years old, with a very feeble body, and have seen the most robust die in the flower of their age. If you had ever met Lord Tyrconnel and La Mettrie you would be astounded that I should survive them: care has saved me. It is true that I have lost all my teeth in consequence of a malady with which I was born: everyone has within him, from the first moment of his life, the cause of his death. We must live with the foe till he kills us. Demouret’s remedy does not suit me: it is only of service in cases of pronounced occasional scurvy, and none at all where the blood is affected and the organs have lost their vigor and suppleness. The waters of Brèges, Padua, or Ischia might do me good for a time: but I am far from sure if it is not better to suffer in peace, by one’s own fireside, and diet oneself, than to go so far in search of a cure which is both uncertain and short-lived. My manner of life with the King of Prussia is precisely suited to an invalid—perfect liberty, without the slightest constraint, a light and cheerful supper.... Deus nobis haec otia fecit. He makes me as happy as an invalid can be: and your interest in my well-being adds to the alleviations of my lot. Pray look upon me, sir, as a friend whom you made across four hundred miles of space. I trust this summer to be able to come and assure you personally with what sincere regard I am yours always, etc.
TO MME. DENIS
July 24, 1752.
You and your friends are perfectly right to urge my return, but you have not always done so by special messengers: and what goes through the post is soon known. If this were the only drawback to absence, it would be sufficient to prevent one from ever leaving one’s family and friends: but there are so many others! The postal system is all very well for letters of exchange—but not for a communion of hearts: those, when we are parted, we dare open no more.
The greatest of consolations is thus debarred us: I shall only write to you in future, my dear child, through reliable channels: which are few. These are my circumstances: Maupertuis has certainly spread the report that I think the King’s writings very bad: he accuses me of conspiring against a very dangerous power—self-love: he gently insinuates that, when the King sent me his verses to correct, I said, “Will he never stop giving me his dirty linen to wash?” He has whispered this extraordinary story in the ears of ten or a dozen people, vowing each of them to secrecy. At last I am beginning to think the King was one of his confidants. I suspect, but cannot prove it. This is not a very pleasant situation: and this is not all.
At the end of last year a young man, named La Beaumelle, arrived here. He is, I think, a Genevan, and was sent back here from Copenhagen, where he was something between a wit and a preacher. He is the author of a book called My Thoughts, in which he has given his opinion freely on all the powers in Europe. Maupertuis, with his usual good nature and, of course, not the least maliciously, persuades this young man that I have spoken ill of himself and his book to his Majesty, and have thereby prevented his entering the royal service. So La Beaumelle, to repair the harm I am supposed to have done to his career, has prepared some scandalous Notes to my Century of Louis XIV which he is about to print —I know not where. Those who have seen these fine notes say they contain as many blunders as words.
As to the quarrel between Maupertuis and Koenig, here are the facts:
Koenig has fallen in love with a geometrical problem, as a paladin with a lady. Last year he traveled from The Hague to Berlin expressly to confer with Maupertuis on an algebraic formula and on a law of nature, which would not interest you in the least. He showed him a couple of letters from an old philosopher of the last century, named Leibnitz, who would interest you no better: and made it clear that Leibnitz, in dealing with this same law, had totally disagreed with Maupertuis. Maupertuis, who is much more engaged in court intrigues—or what he takes to be such—than geometrical truths, did not even read Leibnitz’s letters.
The Hague professor demanded permission to ventilate his theories in the Leipzig papers: having it, he refuted therein, with the most exquisite politeness, the opinion of Maupertuis, quoting Leibnitz as his authority and printing passages from his works which bore on the dispute.
Now comes the odd part.
Maupertuis, having looked through and misread the Leipzig papers and the quotations from Leibnitz, gets it into his head that Leibnitz was of his opinion, and that Koenig had forged the letters to deprive him (Maupertuis) of the honor and glory of having originated—a blunder.
On these extraordinary grounds, he called together the resident academicians, whose salaries he pays: formally denounced Koenig as a forger, and had sentence passed on him, without taking a vote, and in spite of the opposition of the only geometrician who was present.
He did better still: he did not associate himself with the sentence, but wrote a letter to the Academy to ask pardon for the culprit, who, being at The Hague and so not able to be hanged in Berlin, was merely denounced, with all possible moderation, as a geometrical rogue and forger.
This fine judgment is in print. To crown all, our judicious president writes two letters to the Princess of Orange—Koenig is her librarian—to beg her to insist on the enemy’s silence, and so rob him—condemned and branded as he is—of the right to defend his honor.
These details only reached my solitude yesterday.
Every day there is something new under the sun. Never before, surely, was there such a thing as a criminal suit in an academy of sciences! Flight from such a country as this is now proved a necessity.
I am quietly putting my affairs in order. My warmest love, to you.
TO MME. DENIS
Po
stdam, October 15, 1752.
Here is something unprecedented—inimitable͟ unique. The King of Prussia, without having read a word of Koenig’s reply, without listening to or consulting anybody, has just produced a brochure against Koenig, against me, and against everyone who has tried to prove the innocence of the unjustly condemned professor. He treats all Koenig’s friends as fools, envious, dis· honest. A singular pamphlet indeed: and a king wrote it!
The German journalists, not suspecting that a monarch who had won battles could be the author of such a work, have spoken of it freely as the effort of a school-boy, perfectly ignorant of his subject. However, the brochure has been reprinted at Berlin with the Prussian eagle, a crown, and a scepter on the title page. The eagle, the scepter, and the crown are exceedingly surprised to find themselves there. Everybody shrugs their shoulders, casts down their eyes, and is afraid to say anything. Truth is never to be found near a throne: and is never farther from it than when the king turns author. Coquettes, kings, and poets are accustomed to be flattered. Frederick is a combination of all three. How can truth pierce that triple wall of vanity? Maupertuis has not succeeded in being Plato, but he wants his royal master to be Dionysius of Syracuse.
What is most extraordinary in this cruel and ridiculous affair is that the King has no liking for this Maupertuis, for whose benefit he is employing his scepter and his pen. Plato nearly died of mortification at not being invited to certain little suppers, which I attended, and where the King told us a hundred times that this Plato’s mad vanity rendered him intolerable.
The Portable Voltaire (Portable Library) Page 44