Clean, quiet Potsdam stands on the river Havel and is sixteen miles from Berlin. In 1745, the great Frederick had begun to build there the little, white, one-storied palace called Sans-Souci. He desired to be buried at the foot of a statue of Flora on one of its terraces—“when I am there I shall be sans souci.”

The French tastes of the royal architect are everywhere evident. Sans-Souci is a kind of miniature Versailles. It stands on a hill. Formal terraces slope to a formal park. Here are statues, and a fountain—all the artificial and no natural beauties. Within the palace may still be seen, almost unaltered, the rooms where the great King lived and died—his chair, his clock, his portrait. In the picture gallery he walked and talked with Voltaire. And in the west wing is the room occupied by that favoured guest, and before him by the MarÉchal de Saxe.

Voltaire arrived then at Sans-Souci on July 10th, after a journey which cost thrifty Frederick 600l., and during which the traveller had visited the famous battlefields of Fontenoy, Raucoux, and Lawfeld.

It was ten years since Voltaire had escaped from his Madame du ChÂtelet to first see in the flesh the hero of his dreams. It was fourteen years since the pair had first exchanged adoring letters. Their friendship was of European fame. They were the two greatest men of their age. Half the world watched their meeting—and awaited results.

The pair fell metaphorically, and perhaps literally too, into each other’s arms. This day had been so long delayed. The host had worked for it so persistently, doggedly, and consistently! The visitor had so warmly wanted it when it had been wholly impossible—and when it was inevitable had done his best to recall that early enthusiasm.

The enthusiasm may well have come back to him now. It did come back. Instead of sulky Louis’s cold shoulder, was “my Frederick the Great,” flattery, honour, and consideration. Potsdam was gay and busy with preparations for a splendid fÊte to be held in Berlin in August. But it forgot gaiety and business alike to do honour to Voltaire.

Saxe’s apartments left nothing to be desired. The royal stables were at the guest’s disposal. There were music and conversation. On July 24th, the guest sketched Potsdam for d’Argental—“one hundred and fifty thousand soldiers ... opera, comedy, philosophy, poetry, grandeur and graces, grenadiers and muses, trumpets and violins, the suppers of Plato, society and liberty—who would believe it? Yet it is very true.”

And on August 1st to Thibouville, “To find all the charms of society in a king who has won five battles; to be in the midst of drums and to hear the lyre of Apollo; ... to pass one’s days half in fÊtes, half in the delights of a quiet and occupied life”—here was glamour indeed.

And then on a day before August 14th, and before Voltaire had been five weeks at Potsdam, Frederick, who perfectly understood the policy of striking while the iron is hot, offered his dearest friend, if he would but stay with him for ever, the post of Chamberlain, a Royal Order, twenty thousand francs per annum, and niece Denis a yearly pension of four thousand francs if she would come and keep her uncle’s house in Berlin.

The offer was so sudden and so brilliant! That impetuosity which had made all his shrewdness of no avail a hundred times before, was still at once Voltaire’s charm and stumbling-block. He forgot “Anti-Machiavelli” and d’Arnaud. Everything that makes life delightful surrounded him at the moment. Behind him lay the Bastille of his youth, flight to Holland, hiding at Cirey, the “English Letters” burnt by the hangman, the fierce persecution for that babbling trifle the “Mondain,” the Pompadour’s false smile, the kingly scowl, CrÉbillon, Desfontaines, Boyer. At its best his country had given him grudging and empty honours. If he had won fame and fortune, it had been in spite of Courtly malice and for ever at the point of the sword. He was sick to the soul of gagging and injustice. It was not the least part of his bitterness against his Louis, that he had cringed to and flattered such a creature—in vain. He was fifty-six years old. The fifty-six years had been one long persecution. He had still the daring spirit of a boy. He had still such deeds to do that the gods would make him immortal, if need be, to do them. A new heaven and a new earth lay before him. He accepted the offer—and began the world again.

There is still preserved his letter to Madame Denis, dated August 14, 1750, wherein he tells her of Frederick’s bounty. It has the spontaneous enthusiasm of youth. “You must come, niece Louise,” it says in effect. “Think of the magnificence of the offer! And then—Berlin has such operas!” (shrewd Uncle Voltaire!) He had hardly been given time to breathe, much less to think, since he arrived at Potsdam. Pleasure had succeeded to pleasure and flattery to flattery. For three hours at a time he would criticise his royal host’s writings. Crafty Frederick gave up whole days to belles-lettres. There was everything to intoxicate the excitable brain of this French child of genius. The great Frederick was cool enough. He had no glamour. Does it make the great Voltaire less lovable that he saw things all en rose or en noir, was led dangerous lengths by his emotions, and for all that rasping cynicism could be a dreamer of dreams, a visionary, and a sentimentalist?

Practical niece Denis, with her vulgar, shrewd instincts, wrote back and said that no man could be the friend of a king. Toady or slave—but friend, never. And Voltaire, carried to Berlin in the whirl of the Court for the Carrousel, wrote to d’Argental begging him to persuade her, and asking d’Argental’s forgiveness for the course upon which he was resolved.

On August 23d, Frederick, having read Madame Denis’s letter, condescended to write with his own royal hand from his private apartment to beg Voltaire to stay with him. What more flattering? Yet even now Voltaire was not quite sure he was wise. He took such immense pains to prove himself so. But he had decided irrevocably—and flung the responsibility of that choice on destiny at last. “I abandon myself to my fate,” he wrote on August 28th, “and throw myself head foremost into that abyss.”

The fall was soft enough at first.

The Carrousel had begun about August 8th.

Berlin was crowded with noble and distinguished guests from all lands. Frederick rode about the city on horseback, personally supervising the preparations for the fÊte. Red of face, portly of figure, eight-and-thirty years old, and much addicted to snuff—one of his English guests thus described him, not ungraphically. With his five great battles behind him and such a future before him as might well surpass the wildest flights of fancy, he was a great man to call “friend.”

And in Berlin, among the notables of all Europe convened to celebrate a Carrousel which should make Louis XIV.’s famous fÊte of the Tuileries dull and obscure, the great Voltaire was only less honoured than the great Frederick himself. He may be forgiven for thinking he had chosen well.

Among the guests was the Margravine of Bayreuth, Frederick’s sister, and very much Voltaire’s friend. In 1743, he had spent ten days with her at Bayreuth. French plays were acted—but, strangely enough, no plays by M. Arouet de Voltaire. He was a spectator on the occasion. He had said truly of himself that he loved good verses so much that he loved other people’s—“which is a great deal for a poet.” On August 17th the French players acted the “Mauvais Riche” of his vain little rival, Baculard d’Arnaud. But Voltaire was in the mood when he was ready to be pleased with anything. On August 26th was played the “IphigÉnie” of Racine, and on the 27th the “MÉdecin MalgrÉ Lui.”

“The language least talked at Court was German,” said Voltaire. “Our tongue and literature have made more conquests than Charlemagne.” He wrote delightedly of the King’s brother and sister, Henry and Amelia, as the most charming reciters of French verse. His spectacles were rose-coloured indeed.

August 25th was the crowning point of the fÊte, one of those splendid revelries which were the boast of the old rÉgime—and died with it. The Carrousel of the Sun King had been glorious. The Berlin Carrousel far outvied it. It was, too, one of the golden nights of Voltaire’s life, and lives in history for that reason.

The courtyard of the great palace in Berlin had been turned into an amphitheatre. Three thousand soldiers under arms lined the approaches to the place. Forty-six thousand lights illuminated it. Tier above tier, brilliantly apparelled, blazing with jewels, the nobility of all lands, sat the spectators. Among them were Lord Melton and Jonas Hanway—“a chiel amang ye, takin’ notes”—and Collini, a young Florentine. Save only the royal box, every seat was occupied. The hush of expectation was on the audience. And then, on a sudden, gorgeous in dress, as that period alone knew how to be gorgeous, “among a group of great lords,” a lean figure moved towards the King’s enclosure. For an instant the house was silent. And then there swept through it a murmur like the wind among the trees—“Voltaire!” “Voltaire!”

It was a moment worth life and worth death. A stranger and foreigner raised by genius alone to that mighty eminence of fame to which genius, a proud line of royal ancestors, and five great battles had raised Frederick the King! Every eye was upon this son of a notary, this Paris bourgeois, Voltaire. Collini noticed the delight in the piercing eyes, and a certain modesty of demeanour very pleasing. Voltaire had chosen rightly after all! There could have been no doubt in his impressionable mind at that magnificent minute.

Then in the arena the tournament began. Voltaire described it as fairyland, the fÊte of Chinese lanterns, and the Carrousel of Louis the Magnificent, all in one. The competitors in the fray were royal, and a princess—Venus and the apple—gave away the prizes. After the tournament was a supper, and after the supper a ball. Voltaire did not go to that. He was surfeited with delight—las with adulation. He had already written of his great host that he scratched with one hand and caressed, with the other. To-night it had been all caresses. And would surely be caresses for ever! “When a clever man commits a folly, it is not a small one.”

The plan as now formed was that Voltaire, with Prussia as home, should travel in Italy in this autumn of 1750 and so gratify a desire of years, and that in the spring of 1751 Madame Denis should join him in Berlin. In the meantime, Prussia was heaven.

On September 12th, he wrote again to his niece earnestly trying to persuade her of its charms. And would have succeeded very likely if she had not had particular reasons of her own at the time for preferring Paris.

Even at Berlin and during a Carrousel Voltaire had entire liberty. Or at least as much liberty as fame and distinctions allow any man. His days were his own. In the morning he studied “to the sound of the drum.” In the evening queens asked him to supper, he said, and were not offended when he denied them. He spent hours correcting Frederick’s works, and observed gallantly “CÆsar supra grammaticam” to excuse the noble pupil’s defects in that department. He gave up the kingly dinners presently—there were too many generals and princes, forsooth, for this M. de Voltaire.

On September 14th, “Rome SauvÉe” was played in the rooms of the Princess Amelia at Berlin and on a stage especially erected by its author, who took the part of Cicero as he had done at Sceaux and in the Rue TraversiÈre. He also trained the company and lost his temper with them, exactly as he had lost it with his troupe in Paris. When the tumult of fÊtes was past the Court went back to Potsdam. Life was a thousand times more delightful than ever. “I have my whole time to myself, I am crossed in nothing.” “I find a port after thirty years of storm. I find the protection of a king, the conversation of a philosopher, the charms of an agreeable man united in one who for sixteen years consoled me in misfortune and sheltered me from my enemies.... If one can be certain of anything it is of the character of the King of Prussia.” “I have the audacity to think that nature has made me for him. I have found so singular a likeness between his tastes and mine that I have forgotten he is the ruler of half Germany and the other half trembles at his name....” “The conqueror of Austria loves belles-lettres, which I love with all my heart.” “My marriage is accomplished then. Will it be happy? I do not know. I cannot help myself saying ‘Yes.’ One had to finish by marriage after coquetting for so many years.”

Even the d’Arnaud affair “does not prevent the King of Prussia from being the most amiable and remarkable of men.” Nay, d’Arnaud himself was “bon diable” after all. And the Prussian climate so rigorous? Not a bit of it. What are a few rays of sunshine more or less to make us give ourselves such airs? The glamour was complete.

All the letters from which these extracts are taken were written less than four months after Voltaire’s arrival in Prussia, and when the contrast between his treatment there and the treatment meted to him in France, was fresh and glaring. All the letters were written to persons who only half approved or wholly disapproved, of what Lord Chesterfield called Voltaire’s “emigration.”

His friends, enemies, and niece were all united in fearing and disliking it. In Paris a caricature was being sold in the street: “Voltaire the famous Prussian! Look at him with his great bear skin bonnet to keep out the cold! Six sous for Voltaire the famous Prussian!”

At the French Court the offended attitude of King Louis had not changed. King Frederick wrote very civilly to borrow the great Voltaire from his brother of France. And his brother of France, says d’Argenson, replied he should be very glad to make the loan, and turning to his courtiers, added that there would be one fool more at the Court of the King of Prussia “and one fool less at mine.”

On October 27th, Voltaire wrote to tell the d’Argentals that his post of Historiographer had been taken away from him; though Madame de Pompadour had told him, in a little note, that King Louis had had the goodness to allow him to keep an old pension of two thousand livres.

“I do not know why the King should deprive me of the Historiographership and let me retain the title of his Gentleman-in-Ordinary,” Voltaire wrote rather disgustedly to Madame Denis on October 28th. But after all, what did it matter? In return for the Historiographership he had the post of Chamberlain to the King of Prussia, that Royal Prussian Order, and that yearly Prussian pension.

He had exchanged strife for peace; slights for honour; and Louis XV. for Frederick the Great. How could he be wrong?

It is always far harder to guess the mind of Frederick on any given occasion than the mind of Voltaire. Frederick at least was sure that Voltaire was worth keeping even at a heavy price to be “the glory of one’s own Court and the envy of the world.” Gay, witty, and easy—a past master of the art of conversation—and with an impulsive susceptibility to the impressions of the moment wholly fascinating—the King was not wrong in placing a high estimate on the companionship of Voltaire. The King knew genius when he saw it. He meant to keep it now he had it. So, after a day spent in the ardours of government and military duty, at five he became the verse-maker, the man of ease and letters, the polished Frenchman instead of the great German soldier.

At seven, he had his evening concert, small, select, delightful. “If you think the King loves music,” said someone, “you are wrong. He loves only the flute and only his own flute.” (To be sure, such an egoism has been known as a love of music both before and since.) No women were admitted. Frederick the Great’s dislike of that sex is historical, and was always consistent and unmoved. And then, at nine o’clock began those immortal suppers of the gods. Voltaire was of course of them from the earliest days of his stay in Prussia.

Half Europe watched them from afar. Much more than half the genius of Europe would have paid a high price to have been of them. They generally consisted of about ten persons. The only language spoken was French, and more than half the habituÉs were of that favoured nation. The other half included two Scotchmen, one Prussian, and that great Prussian-Frenchman, Frederick himself. Baculard d’Arnaud, though living at Potsdam and under the immediate eye and favour of the King, was not invited. The meal was severely sober and frugal. The King rose at twelve, as clear-headed as he had sat down. Sometimes his guests prolonged that feast of reason far into the morning. The servants who waited on them contracted, it is said, swellings in the legs from too much standing. Occasionally, Frederick was not of the party at all. He supped with Colonel Balby instead. “What is the King doing this evening?” it was asked of Voltaire. “Il balbutie” was the ready answer.

Great among the convives of the supper was Maupertuis, the pompous and touchy geometrician, the President of the Berlin Academy, and once the friend and the tutor of Madame du ChÂtelet. He had stayed at Cirey in 1739. Voltaire had never liked anything about him but his talents. Surly, solemn, and unsociable, he was already antipathetic in every attribute of his character to the brilliant Frenchman.

Another visitor of Cirey, was also of the suppers—Algarotti, the amiable Italian, the agreeable man of the world, the “Swan of Padua,” whose “Newtonianism for Ladies” Émilie’s Newton had so completely eclipsed.

Here too was La Mettrie, a freethinking French doctor of medicine, with his ribald rollicking stories and his bold atheism, “the most frank and the most foolish of men.” He had become notorious as the author of a book called “The Man Machine” in which he had gaily proved, to his own satisfaction, the material nature of the soul.

Then there was “the brave Major Chasot,” an excellent type of a gallant eighteenth-century French gentleman. He had saved the King’s life at the battle of Mollwitz, but owed the coveted entrÉe to the suppers less to that heroism than to the facts that he was French and flute-player.

Here too was d’Argens, a profligate French marquis, whom Frederick loved for “his wit, his learning, and his person”; and who was at once credulous and sceptical, freethinking and superstitious.

The other Frenchman was Darget, reader, confidant, and secretary to the royal host, very discreet, reserved, and judicious, a man to be trusted. It did not take a subtle Voltaire long to recognise the value of the friendship of this friend of the King. Frederick often wrote to Voltaire through Darget, and Voltaire replied to Darget in terms of tenderness and admiration.

Then there was the French ambassador of Irish birth—Lord Tyrconnel—famous for giving heavy dinners, whose rÔle “was to be always at table,” and who had the brusque honest speech of British forbears. Lady Tyrconnel had receptions in Berlin and presently acted in Voltaire’s company of noble amateurs.

The Scotchmen were the two brothers George and James Keith, Jacobites and gentlemen, “not only accomplished men, but nobles and warriors,” the only friends of the King whom his bitter tongue spared. Nay more, George Keith was, says Macaulay, “the only human being whom Frederick ever really loved.” Earl Marischal of Scotland, he had fought with his brave young brother for that forlorn hope, the cause of the Stuarts, in 1715. They had long wandered on the Continent, and at last found a home in Potsdam with Frederick.

The only Prussian of the suppers was Baron Pollnitz, and he was cosmopolitan, had many times visited Paris, and had a rich store of travellers’ tales. Clever and well born, he was extravagant and miserably poor; and since he could not afford to lose Frederick’s favour, was the butt of his royal master’s cruellest jokes—the wretched scapegoat who could not escape and whose very helplessness goaded Frederick’s bitter wit to new effort.

Of such an assembly as this, versatile and brilliant though it was, Voltaire and the King were the natural leaders.

Sulzer, who had listened to it, declared that it was better to hear the conversation of Voltaire, Algarotti, and d’Argens than to read the most interesting and best written book in the world. The talk was on “morals, history, philosophy.” It was the boast of the talkers that they had no prejudices. They explored all subjects as one explores a newly discovered country, knowing neither whether it be sterile or fertile, rich or poor—eager to learn, sharp-set to see—and without fear of consequence. No topic was debarred them. The only intoxication was of ideas. “One thinks boldly, one is free,” said Voltaire. “Wit, reason, and science” abounded. Frederick stimulated the conversation by always taking one side of a question when his guests took the other. His own tongue was so caustic that it has been said that it is difficult to conceive how “anything short of hunger should have induced men to bear the misery of being the associates of the great King.” But that is to take a very one-sided view of his character. If one hand could scratch, the other could caress. If on one side of his nature he was a brutal jester, an untamed barbarian, on the other he was a thinker and a philosopher with all the light, the ease, the charm, and the cultivation of France.

Besides, there was one man at the suppers whom the King feared. Frederick’s satire was a saw; but Voltaire’s was a knife: and the clumsier instrument dreaded the finer. A needy Pollnitz or a patient Darget might bear the royal insolence in silence. But it did not yet dare to encounter that “most terrible of all the intellectual weapons ever wielded by man, the mockery of Voltaire.” Saw and knife seem both, for the while, to have been quietly put away.

A Voltaire with his splendid capacity for living in the present moment may sometimes have forgotten the very existence of the King’s weapon. “No cloud,” “far less a storm,” marred the harmony of those suppers.

Between them, operas, receptions, correcting the royal compositions, and spending long days with his own, the September and October of this autumn of 1750 passed away. Now and again a courtly Voltaire went to pay his devoirs at the Court of the Queen Mother and read her cantos of the “Pucelle,” which he assured the good Protestant lady was nothing in the world but a satire on the Church of Rome. Nor did he neglect to attend the dull and frugal receptions of Frederick’s unhappy wife, the pretty and accomplished Elizabeth Christina. Hanbury Williams was in Berlin in September as English envoy, and made Voltaire complimentary verses on “Rome SauvÉe.” The exile continued to write long letters to his friends, speaking of his speedy return to France and of the thousand delights of life in his present “paradise of philosophers.”

He had chosen rightly after all! All would be well. All was well. But——