THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY2 The Lives and Opinions

1 66 THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY
who heard the conversation said that it was better than the most intei-
esting and best-written book in the world. They talked about everything,
and said what they thought. Frederick's wit was almost as sharp as Voltaire's;
and only Voltaire dared to answer him, with that finesse which
could kill without giving offense. "One thinks boldly, one is free here/'
wrote Voltaire joyfully. Frederick "scratches with one hand, but caresses
with the other. ... I am crossed in nothing ... I find a port after
fifty 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/ 331 However . . .
In November of this same year Voltaire thought he would improve
his finances by investing in Saxon bonds, despite Frederick's prohibition of
such investments. The bonds rose, and Voltaire profited; but his agent,
Hirsch, tried to blackmail him by threatening to publish the transaction,
Voltaire "sprang at his throat and sent Hm sprawling." Frederick learned
of the affair and fell into a royal rage. "I shall want him at the most
another year," he said to La Mettrie; "one squeezes the orange and throws
away the rind." La Mettrie, perhaps anxious to disperse his rivals, took
care to report this to Voltaire. The suppers were resumed, "but/ 5
wrote
Voltaire, "the orange rind haunts my dreams. . . . The man who fell
from the top of a steeple, and finding the falling through the air soft, said,
*Good, provided it lasts/ was not a little as I am."
He half desired a break; for he was as homesick as only a Frenchman
can be. The decisive trifle came in 1752. Maupertuis, the great mathe-
matician \\hom Frederick had imported from France \vith so many others
in an attempt to arouse the German mind by direct contact with the "Enlightenment/'
quarreled with a subordinate mathematician, Koenig, over
an interpretation of Newton. Frederick entered into the dispute on the
side of Maupertuis; and Voltaire, who had more courage than caution,
entered it on the side of Koenig. "Unluckily for me/' he wrote to Mme.
Denis, "I am also an author, and in the opposite camp to the King. I
have no sceptre, but I have a pen." About the same time Frederick was
writing to his sister: "The devil is incarnate in my men of letters; there
is no doing anything with them. These fellows have no intelligence ex-
cept for society, ... It must be a consolation to animals to see that
people with minds are often no better than they." 34 It was now that
Voltaire wrote against Maupertuis his famous "Diatribe of Dr, Akakia."
He read it to Frederick, who laughed all night over it, but begged Voltaire
not to publish it. Voltaire seemed to acquiesce; but the truth was
that the thing was already sent to the printer, and the author could not
bring himself to practise infanticide on the progeny of his pen. When it
"Tallentyre, 226, 230. **In Sainte-Beuve, i, 218.