by George Sand
“And Your Highness would also like to see an unseemly love affair between the king and some girl from the Opera?”
“Oh! With Porporina the thing would be more plausible and the distance less alarming. I imagine that in the theater, as at court, there is a hierarchy, for that bias is the whim and malady of the human race. A singer must have a much higher opinion of herself than a dancer. Besides, people say that Porporina is more intelligent, better educated, more gracious, that she knows even more languages than Barberini. Speaking languages he doesn’t know is my brother’s little quirk. And then there’s music, which he also pretends to love, even though he has no notion of it, you see? Yet another point of contact with our prima donna. Finally, she too goes to Potsdam in the summer; she has Barberini’s old rooms in the new Sans-Souci, she sings in the king’s little concerts. . . . Isn’t this enough for my conjecture to be true?”
“Your Highness vainly flatters herself to discover some weakness in the life of our great prince. All this is too conspicuous, too solemn for it to be a matter of love.”
“No, not love; Frederick doesn’t know what love is. But a certain attraction, a little intrigue. That’s what everybody’s whispering, and there’s no denying it.”
“No one believes it, Madame. They say that the king, to relieve his boredom, does his best to enjoy an actress’s chatter and pretty trills. But after fifteen minutes he says, as though he were speaking to one of his secretaries, ‘That’s enough for today; if I want more tomorrow, I’ll let you know.’ ”
“What a cad! If that’s how he courted Mme de Cocceï, I’m not surprised that she couldn’t put up with him. Does Porporina return the favor? What are people saying?”
“They say that she is perfectly modest, proper, timid, and sad.”
“Well, that’s the best way to please the king. Maybe she’s very clever. If only she were! If only we could trust her!”
“Don’t put your trust in anyone, Madame, I beg you, not even Mme de Maupertuis, who is sleeping so soundly.”
“Let her snore. Awake or asleep, she’s always the same old dolt. . . . Be that as it may, von Kleist, I want to get to know this Porporina and see if one can get anything out of her. I sorely regret having refused to have her in when the king proposed bringing her over one morning to make music. You know I was biased against her. . . .”
“For no good reason, I’m sure. It was altogether impossible. . . .”
“Well, now it’s in the hands of God. I’ve been so racked with grief and horror for the last year that less important worries have vanished. I want to see the girl. Who knows if she won’t succeed in winning from the king what we’ve been begging for in vain? That’s what I’ve been thinking for the last few days, and since the only thing I think about is you know what, when I saw Frederick worried and upset about her this evening, I became firmer in the opinion that therein lay our salvation.”
“Beware, Your Highness. . . . The danger is great.”
“That’s what you always say. I’m more wary and circumspect than you are. Well, we’ll have to mull it over. Wake up, dear governess, we’ve arrived.”
Chapter II
While the beautiful young abbess1 was making these observations, the king swept into Porporina’s dressing room without knocking. She had just begun to regain consciousness.
“Well, Mademoiselle,” he said in a tone without much sympathy or even courtesy, “how are you feeling? Do you often suffer such spells? In your profession, that would be a serious inconvenience. Has something irked you? Are you so ill that you cannot answer me? Then you’ll answer for her, Doctor. Is she seriously ill?”
“Indeed, Sire,” replied the doctor. “Her pulse is scarcely perceptible, her circulation is greatly perturbed, and her basic functions seem suspended. Her skin is cold as ice.”
“True,” said the king, taking the girl’s hand. “Her eyes are vacant, and her lips pale. Give her some of Dr. von Hoffmann’s drops, damn it! I thought it was all a sham, and I was wrong. The girl is terribly ill. She’s not unruly or flighty, right, Signor Porporino? Did anybody upset her tonight? Nobody’s ever had any reason to complain about her, right?”
“Sire, she’s not an actress, but an angel,” replied Porporino.
“Nothing less, eh? Are you in love with her?”
“No, Sire, I have infinite respect for her; she’s like a sister to me.”
“Thanks to the two of you, to God as well who doesn’t send actors straight to hell any longer, my theater is turning into a real academy of virtue! Look, she’s coming around a bit. Porporina, you know who I am, don’t you?”
“No, sir,” she said, gazing with alarm at the king who was slapping her wrists.
“Perhaps she’s had a seizure,” said the king. “Have you ever noticed any signs of epilepsy?”
“Oh! Sire, impossible! What a dreadful thought,” exclaimed Porporino, wounded by the king’s boorish way of talking about such a fine person.
“Hold on, don’t bleed her,” said the king, pushing away the doctor and his scalpel. “I don’t like to see innocent blood spilled nonchalantly off the battlefield. You doctors aren’t soldiers, but assassins. Leave her be, and give her some air. Porporino, don’t let him bleed her. See here, that can kill a person! These doctors have some nerve. I’m turning her over to you. Take her home in your carriage, Poelnitz! She’s your responsibility now. The greatest diva we’ve ever had, and we won’t find another one like her right now, maybe never. By the way, what are you singing for me tomorrow, Conciolini?”
Chatting about some other matter, the king accompanied the tenor down the theater’s stairs and went to supper with Voltaire, La Mettrie, d’Argens, Algarotti, and General Quintus Icilius.
Frederick was tough, violent, and profoundly selfish. He was also generous and kind, even tender and affectionate when the spirit moved him. There is no paradox here. Everyone knows the simultaneously terrifying and seductive character of that man of many faces, a complex constitution full of contrasts, like all strong natures, especially when they’ve been invested with absolute power and tried by turbulent times.
Over supper, amidst jokes and small talk that was by turns bitter, elegant, brutish and subtle, among these dear friends whom he failed to find endearing and these admirable wits whom he did not admire much at all, Frederick suddenly turned introspective. He looked preoccupied for a moment or two, then got up and said to his guests, “Carry on, I’m listening.”
He went into the next room, took his cap and sword, gestured to a page to follow, and descended into the subterranean passages and mysterious stairways of his ancient palace. His guests, meanwhile, thinking that he was still within earshot, measured their words and dared not say a single thing that ought not fall on the king’s ears. Besides, they were all so wary of each other (and for good reason) that anywhere at all within the borders of Prussia they always felt Frederick’s terrifying, malicious spirit hovering overhead.
La Mettrie, a doctor whom the king rarely consulted and a reader to whom the king rarely listened, was the only one who knew no fear, nor did he inspire any. Considered altogether inoffensive, he had discovered a way to make himself invulnerable to harm. He did and said so many impertinent, outrageous, and silly things right under the royal nose that it was impossible to suspect him of anything more, and there was no enemy or spy who could ascribe to this impudent wag a wrong that he had not already openly, audaciously proclaimed before the king’s eyes. He seemed to take literally the egalitarian philosophy that the king affected in private with the seven or eight people whom he honored with his familiarity. At that time, about ten years into his reign, Frederick, who was still a young man, had not entirely thrown off the informal affability of the crown prince, of the bold philosopher of Rheinsberg. Those who knew the man were careful not to trust him. Voltaire, the most pampered of all and the latest arrival, was starting to get worried, having caught a few glimpses of the tyrant’s face beneath the mask of the good prince, of Dion
ysius of Syracuse lurking behind Marcus Aurelius. Yet La Mettrie, out of incredible naïveté, deep design, or bold indifference, gave the king the cavalier treatment that he purportedly desired. He removed his cravat, his wig, even his shoes in the king’s rooms, lounged on the sofas, spoke his mind, openly contradicted the king, made offhand remarks about the vanity of this world’s pomp, the throne, the altar, and all the other preconceived ideas against which present-day reason had done battle. In short, he acted like a true cynic, and his behavior gave so many grounds for disgrace or dismissal that it was a miracle to see him still standing when so many others had been knocked down and smashed for mere peccadillos. For people like Frederick, prone to suspicion and quick to take offense, an insidious word relayed by his spies, a semblance of hypocrisy, or a slight doubt create more of an impression than a thousand reckless stunts. Frederick, who considered La Mettrie insane, was often so astonished by the man that he would stop short, petrified with surprise, and say to himself, “The impudence of this animal is truly a scandal,” then add this aside, “But the man is sincere, and he’s not playing a double game with me. There’s no way he could abuse me more in secret than he does right to my face. Yet all the rest of them, who do nothing but fawn at my feet, what don’t they say and do when my back is turned and they stand back up? So La Mettrie must be the most honest man I’ve got, and I must tolerate him all the more because he’s intolerable.”
Thus, their routine was set. La Mettrie, who could no longer ruffle the king, even managed to make him chortle over capers that would have been judged revolting on the part of anyone else. From the very start Voltaire had launched into a system of adulation that he found impossible to sustain, and now even he was growing weary and strangely sick of it. La Mettrie, meanwhile, went on amusing himself. He was as much at ease with Frederick as with anybody else, and he felt no need to curse and overthrow an idol to whom he had neither sacrificed nor promised a single thing. For that reason Frederick, who was also growing weary of Voltaire, heartily enjoyed La Mettrie’s company and could scarcely do without him since La Mettrie was the only one who did not merely pretend to enjoy Frederick’s.
The Marquis d’Argens, a chamberlain with a stipend of six thousand francs (Voltaire, as first chamberlain, was paid twenty thousand francs), was a light philosopher, a facile, superficial writer, a true Frenchman of his time, kind, scatterbrained, libertine, sentimental, at one and the same time stout-hearted, effeminate, witty, generous, and derisive; a man neither young nor old, romantic as a swain, skeptical as a graybeard. Having spent his entire youth with actresses, deceiving and deceived in turn, but always madly in love with the latest one, he wound up contracting a secret marriage with Mlle Cochois, the star of the Comédie-Française in Berlin, a most ugly and most intelligent person, to whom he enjoyed giving an education. Frederick was still unaware of their clandestine union, and d’Argens carefully concealed it from those who could betray him. Voltaire, however, was in on the secret. D’Argens sincerely loved the king, but he was no more loved than anyone else. Frederick did not believe in anyone’s affection, and poor d’Argens was now the accessory, now the butt of his cruelest jokes.
The colonel whom Frederick had decorated with the pompous sobriquet of Quintus Icilius was, as everyone knows, a man of French ancestry named Guichard. He was an energetic soldier, a clever tactician, also a great pillager, like all the men of his sort, and a courtier in the fullest sense of the term.
We shall say nothing about Algarotti, so as not to weary the reader with a whole gallery of historical characters. It will suffice to relate the worries of Frederick’s guests while he was elsewhere. Finding no relief from the secret discomfort that oppressed them, they felt even more uneasy, unable to say a single word without glancing at the half-open door through which the king had passed, behind which he was perhaps keeping an eye on them.
La Mettrie was the sole exception. Observing that the table service had been neglected in the king’s absence, he blurted out, “Gracious, how rude of the master of the house to leave us like this without servants or champagne, and I’m going to go see if he’s there to bring him my complaint.”
He got up and, without fear of indiscretion, went into the king’s bedroom, then came back exclaiming, “Nobody there! How amusing! He may well have mounted up and gone for a torch-lit drill to stimulate his digestion. What an odd one he is!”
“You’re the odd one!” replied Quintus Icilius, who could not stomach La Mettrie’s strange ways.
“So the king has gone out?” asked Voltaire, beginning to breathe more easily.
“Yes, the king has gone out,” said Baron von Poelnitz, entering the room. “I just ran across him in a back courtyard with a single page as escort. He was going totally incognito in his drab cloak. That’s why I didn’t know who he was.”
This freshly arrived third chamberlain requires a word of explanation. Otherwise, the reader will never understand why someone other than La Mettrie dared talk about the king so unceremoniously. Poelnitz, whose age, stipend, and functions were equally problematic, was the Prussian baron, the Regency rake who, in his youth, had played such a brilliant role at the court of the Palatine princess, the Duke of Orleans’ mother; a wild gambler whose debts the Prussian king no longer wished to reimburse, a great adventurer, a cynical libertine, very much a spy, a bit of a crook, a cheeky courtier who was fed, chained, scorned, ridiculed, and paid only a pittance by his master, who nevertheless could not do without him, for an absolute monarch always needs to have at hand a man who is capable of the worst things, who finds therein a compensation for his humiliations and the justification of his existence. At this time Poelnitz was also the director of His Majesty’s theaters, a sort of supreme steward of the king’s trivial pleasures. People already called him old Poelnitz, and that was still the case thirty years later. He was the eternal courtier and had been a page to the previous king. In his person he joined the elegant vices of the Regency, the cynical vulgarity of Big Willy’s smoking dens, and the impertinent stiffness of Frederick the Great’s witty, militaristic reign. As Frederick considered him in a chronic state of disgrace, Poelnitz worried little about losing favor. Besides, since he always acted as an agent provocateur, he truly had no fear that anyone could do him harm around the master who employed him.
“Good God! my dear Baron,” exclaimed La Mettrie, “you should have followed the king and come back to tell us his adventures. Then, upon his return, we would have made him mad as hell saying that we’d seen everything without so much as leaving the table.”
“Even better!” laughed Poelnitz, “We’d only tell him tomorrow, giving the sorcerer all the credit.”
“What sorcerer?” asked Voltaire.
“The famous Count de Saint-Germain, who arrived here this morning.”
“Truly? I’m very curious to know if he’s a charlatan or a madman.”
“There’s the rub,” said La Mettrie. “He plays his cards so close to his chest that nobody can decide.”
“I say, that’s not so crazy!” added Algarotti.
“Tell me about Frederick,” said La Mettrie. “I’d like to whet his curiosity with a good anecdote so that he’ll treat us to a supper of Saint-Germain and his antediluvian adventures. How amusing! Now let’s see, where can our dear monarch be at this hour? Surely you know, Baron! You’re too curious not to have followed him, or too clever not to have guessed.”
“So you want me to tell you?” asked Poelnitz.
“I do hope,” said Quintus, turning purple with indignation, “that you won’t answer La Mettrie’s strange questions. If His Majesty. . . .”
“Oh, my dear friend,” said La Mettrie, “from ten in the evening until two in the morning no king is present here. Frederick established the rule once and for all, and it’s the only rule I know: There are no kings at supper. Don’t you see that this poor king gets bored? And you, bad servant and bad friend that you are, you’re not eager to help him forget the burden of his greatness during
the sweet hours of the night? Come, Poelnitz, dear Baron, tell us! Where is the king just now?”
“I don’t wish to know,” said Quintus, standing up and leaving the table.
“As you wish,” said Poelnitz. “Let those who don’t want to hear plug their ears.”
“I’m opening mine,” said La Mettrie.
“Here, here! Me, too!” chortled Algarotti.
“Gentlemen,” said Poelnitz, “His Majesty is at Signora Porporina’s place.”
“And you really think we’ll believe that one?” La Mettrie howled, adding a Latin phrase that I cannot translate because I don’t know the tongue.
Quintus Icilius paled and left the room. Algarotti recited an Italian sonnet that I don’t much understand either. Voltaire improvised four lines of verse comparing Frederick to Julius Caesar, at which point the three learned men exchanged smiles. Then Poelnitz continued with a solemn look, “I give you my word of honor that the king is at Porporina’s.”
“Couldn’t you give us something else?” asked d’Argens, who found all this basically unpleasant, as he was not a man to betray others in order to augment his own credit.
Poelnitz replied, unperturbed, “Blast it, marquis, when the king tells us that you’re at Mlle Cochois’s place, we’re not the least bit scandalized. So why are you scandalized about his being at Mlle Porporina’s place?”
“On the contrary, you should feel edified,” Algarotti chimed in. “And if it’s true, I’ll go proclaim it at Rome.”
“And His Holiness, who likes to poke a bit of fun, will have the loveliest things to say,” Voltaire added.
“At what will His Holiness be poking fun?” inquired the king, suddenly at the door of the dining room.
“At Frederick the Great’s love affair with Porporina of Venice,” La Mettrie brazenly replied.
The king paled, shot a terrifying look at his guests, who all paled more or less, except for La Mettrie. “What do you expect?” he calmly went on. “At the Opera this evening Monsieur de Saint-Germain predicted that when Saturn passed between Regulus and Virgo, His Majesty, followed by a page. . . .”