# Voltaire/Chapter 15

CHAPTER XV.
FIRST VISITS TO FREDERICK.
By far the most notable feature of this, the Cirey epoch, was his intercourse with Frederick the Great. The association of these two, the most conspicuous men of their age, had its origin in the exalted admiration with which Voltaire's writings had inspired the prince. In August 1736, Frederick, then in his twenty-fifth year, and not yet king, was living at the chateau of Reinsberg, cultivating music, poetry, science, and literature, when, having as yet no cares of government on his mind, and believing the illustrious men of the age to be, of all men, those whom it were best to know and converse with, he wrote to Voltaire such a letter as a young enthusiast would write to one whose gifts he considered to be pre-eminent—prefacing with many splendid compliments the request for "all your writings," it being notorious that many more existed than had as yet seen the light. A fitting reply from the gratified poet helped to begin a correspondence which proceeded with sustained pleasantness for four years. In 1740, Frederick, now newly made king, being on a tour along the Rhine frontier, proposed to visit Voltaire, who was at Brussels; ​but afterwards, excusing himself on the score of an attack of ague, he invited Voltaire to come to him instead, and the first meeting accordingly took place at Wesel.
"I saw," says Voltaire, "in a small room, by the light of a candle, a little mattress, two feet and a half wide, on which lay a little man wrapped up in a dressing-gown of coarse blue stuff: this was the king, who perspired and shivered under a wretched counterpane, in a violent access of fever.
"Having paid my respects, I began the acquaintance by feeling his pulse, as if I had been his first physician. The fit over, he dressed, and placed himself at table. Algarotti, Keyserling, Maupertuis, and the King's Envoy to the States-General, formed the supper-party, at which we discussed, to the very bottom, the questions of the immortality of the soul, of liberty, and of the Androgynes of Plato."
Voltaire spent three days here with the king:—
"I soon felt attached to him," he says; "the more that he was a king—always a very attractive circumstance for human weakness. In general, it is we literary people who flatter kings; but this one applauded me from top to toe, whilst the Abbé Desfontaines, and other rascals, libelled me in Paris at least once a-week."
The royal party continued its route, while Voltaire returned to Holland, whence he presently wrote to Maupertuis:—
"When we parted at Clèves, you going to the right, I to the left, I fancied myself at the last judgment, when the elect are separated from the condemned. Divus Fredericus says to you, 'Sit down at my right hand in the paradise of Berlin,' and to me, 'Depart, thou accursed, into Holland.'"
Frederick, on his side, was equally pleased with the meeting:—
​ "I have seen that Voltaire whom I was so curious to know… He has the eloquence of Cicero, the mildness of Pliny, the wisdom of Agrippa; he combines, in short, what is to be collected of virtues and talents from the greatest men of antiquity. His intellect is at work incessantly; every drop of ink is a trait of wit from his pen. He declaimed his Mahomet to us—an admirable tragedy; he transported us out of ourselves; I could only admire him and hold my tongue. The Du Châtelet is lucky to have him; for, of the good things he flings out at random, a person who had no faculty but memory might make a brilliant book."
In the next three years Voltaire paid three other visits to Frederick. In December of the same year when they first met, he spent six days with the king at Reinsberg. "Voltaire," wrote Frederick, "has arrived, all sparkling with new beauties, and far more sociable than at Clèves." Again, in 1742, the poet went to him from Paris, where he had been observing the reception given to his tragedy, of "Mahomet," which was, on the part of the audience, enthusiastic; but the ever-venomous Abbé Desfontaines and his crew denounced the play as impious, and raised such a storm that Cardinal Fleury, although he had read and approved of the piece, was obliged to advise the author to withdraw it. Just then came Frederick's invitation, which he showed to the Cardinal, expressing at the same time a wish to be of use to France at the Prussian Court. In these years the many-sided poet, seeing how few and hardly-won were the rewards of letters, how strong the vantage-ground that high office would give him against his enemies, was much disposed to try his fortune in diplomacy, especially with such an opening to that career as was offered by his intimacy with the most politic and most warlike sovereign then existing. With such views ​he spent a week with Frederick at Aix-la-Chapelle, the king coming frequently to converse with his gifted visitor in his own room, and imparting freely his political views and intentions, which were duly communicated to the Cardinal; and, moreover, bribing Voltaire to come and live at Berlin by the promise of a beautiful house and estate there. A year later, many changes having happened in the interval, he again visited his august friend, this time at Berlin. Fleury was now dead. Voltaire had brought out in Paris his tragedy of "Merope," watching it from the box of his old friend the Maréchale de Villars, whose daughter-in-law, the Duchess of Villars, sat with them. The enthusiasm for the author was unbounded—nothing like it had ever been witnessed in a French theatre: not content with summoning him to the front of the box, the audience insisted that the Duchess should kiss him, which favour she, urged by her mother-in-law, bestowed with charming grace. But there were literary griefs to balance this success: his "Death of Cæsar" was not allowed to appear; he was excluded from a vacant seat which he had hoped for (the vacancy made by Cardinal Fleury) in the French Academy; and, chilled and disappointed, he again turned his thoughts to diplomacy. France was in difficulties; personal friends of Voltaire were among the ministers; and this time he went as an unrecognised envoy, with secret instructions. No welcome could be warmer than that which Frederick gave him; he was lodged close to the king's apartments, and their intimacy was as cordial as ever. Nor was there, this time, the disturbing element of a mission concealed from Frederick: the king, willing to accept him as a negotiator, received diplomatic sug​gestions in a humorous, semi-serious, altogether indulgent vein, and even took pains to write such replies to him as from their tone, flattering to Voltaire, conciliatory to France, might serve the diplomatist without in the least committing the royal writer to any policy. But the mission was quite unsuccessful, because Frederick was convinced that he had nothing either to hope or to fear from France; because, too, he despised its government and its policy, and the diplomatist did not exist, whether Voltaire or any one else, who could have made him change his opinion; while any prospect of benefit which the aspiring negotiator might have derived from the king's compliments, vanished upon the sudden dismissal from office, through disfavour with the French sultana of the period, Madame de Chateauroux, of the favourably disposed functionary to whom his despatches were addressed.