KING: "My good Thüringian, you came to Berlin, seeking to earn your bread by industrious teaching of children, and here, at the Packhof, in searching your things, they have taken your Thüringen hoard from you. True, the batzen are not legal here; but the people should have said to you: You are a stranger, and didn't know the prohibition ;—well, then, we will seal up the bag of batzen; you send it back to Thüringen, get it changed for other sorts; we will not take it from you!-Be of heart, however; you shall have your money again, and interest too. But, my poor man, Berlin pavement is bare, they don't give anything gratis; you are a stranger; before you are known and get teaching, your bit of money is done; what then?" I understood the speech right well; but my awe was too great to say: "You Majesty will have the all-highest grace to allow me something!" But as I was so simple, and asked for nothing, he did not offer anything. When we got out of the garden, the four officers were still there on the esplanade. For twenty-seven hours I had not tasted food; not a farthing in bonis to get bread with; I had waded twenty miles hither, in a sultry morning, through the sand. In this tremor of my heart, there came a Kammer-hussar (soldier-valet, valet reduced to his simplest expression) out of the palace, and asked, "Where is the man who was with my King in the garden ?" I answered, “Here!" And he led me into the Schloss, to a large room, where pages, lackeys, and Kammer-hussars were about. My Kammer-hussar took me to a little table, excellently furnished; with soup, beef; likewise carp dressed with garden-salad, likewise game with cucumber-salad; bread, knife, fork, spoon, and salt, were all there (and I with an appetite of twenty-seven hours; I, too, was there). My hussar set me a chair, said, “This that is on the table, the King has ordered to be served for you; you are to eat your fill, and mind nobody; and I am to serve. Sharp, then, fall to!" I was greatly astonished, and knew not what to do; least of all could it come into my head that the King's Kammer-hussar, who waited on his majesty, should wait on me. I pressed him to sit by me; but, as he refused, I did as bidden-sat down, took my spoon, and went at it with a will (frisch) ! The hussar took the beef from the table, set it on the charcoal-dish (to keep it hot till wanted); he did the like with the fish and roast game, and poured me out wine and beer. I ate and drank till I had abundantly enough. Dessert, confectionery, what I could. A plateful of big black cherries and a plateful of pears my waiting man wrapped in paper and stuffed them into my pockets, to be a refreshment on the way home. And so I rose from the royal table, and thanked God and the King in my heart that I had so gloriously dined. At that moment a secretary came, brought me a sealed order to the Packhof at Berlin, with my certificates and the pass; told down on the table five tail ducats and a gold Friedrich under them (better than £10 of our day), saying the King sent me this to take me home to Berlin again. The secretary took me out, and there, yoked with six horses, stood a royal Proviant-wagon, which having led me to, the secretary said: You people, the King has given order you are to take this stranger to Berlin, and also to accept no drink money from him." I again, through the Herrn Secretarium, testified my most submissive thankfulness for all royal graciousness; took my place, and rolled away. On reaching Berlin, I went at once to the Packhof and handed them my royal rescript. The head man opened the seal; in reading he changed colour, went from pale to red, said nothing, and gave it to the second man to read. The second put on his spectacles, read, and gave it to the third. However, I was to come forward, and be so good as write a quittance, "That I had received for my batzen the same sum in Brandenburg coin, ready down, without the least deduction!" My cash was at once accurately paid. And thereupon the steward was ordered, To go with me to the White Swan in the Judenstrasse, and pay what I owed there, whatever my score was. This was what the King meant when he said, "You shall have your money back and interest, too." Our gray-whiskered, raw-boned, great-hearted Candidatus lay down to sleep, at the White Swan; probably the happiest man in all Berlin. Meat, clothes, and fire he did not again lack for the time he needed them, some twenty-seven years still. He died of apoplexy at the age of eighty-eight. Of the general success of Frederick's administrative system, and the security and prosperity of his subjects, no better proof could be afforded than the fact that only fourteen or fifteen criminals were executed annually in Prussia. W CHAPTER XXI. CARLYLE'S ACCOUNT OF VOLTAIRE. ITHIN his book on Frederick Mr. Carlyle has given us what is, in effect, the best biography of Voltaire in existence, and I must not conclude my talk about Carlyle without saying something of it. Carlyle pronounces Voltaire, "the spiritual complement" of Frederick. Between these two lies mainly "what little of lasting their poor century produced." Frederick stands for what it "did," Voltaire for what it "thought." One can hardly help fancying that this generalisation is too broad to be of much practical value. A century which produced the sceptical philosophy of Hume, the constructive philosophies of Reid and of Kant, Butler's Doctrine of Conscience, Adam Smith's Political Economy, and the most important poems of Goethe, has surely left us fruits of thought more permanent and more precious than the works of Voltaire. Frederick and he were, however, the most conspicuous men of their century, the orbit of Napoleon touching only on its close; and the interest now felt in Voltaire is at least as great as that felt in Frederick. Probably, also, Voltaire's writings have directly influenced a greater number of minds than those of any of the thinkers named, his popularity being quite unrivalled until the end of his own century, and remaining to this day unsurpassed. "This poor Voltaire," says Carlyle, "without Voltaire among the Prophets. 179 implement, except the tongue and brain of him—he is still a shining object to all the populations; and they say and symbol to me, Tell us of him! He is the man!" In fundamentals Carlyle does not abandon the estimate of Voltaire published in his famous essay of 1828; it was indeed impossible that the grand preacher of earnestness should reconcile himself with the least earnest of all great writers, the man who, more, perhaps, than any one that ever lived, treated life as a jest; but it is unmistakeable that his feeling towards Voltaire had relented between 1828 and 1858; and the high lights in the portrait executed in the second period are warmer and brighter than those of the earlier likeness. He now, grudgingly indeed, and with many qualifications, yet decisively, classes Voltaire among the prophets. There was in him " a spark of heaven's own lucency, a gleam from the Eternities (in small measure)." The facts of Voltaire's life are, therefore, carefully sifted for us from the rubbish heaps of former biographies; his intercourse, personal, and by letter, with Frederick, is described; and, on the whole, we are enabled to form an idea of Voltaire no less distinct than of Frederick himself. Voltaire's father was a Paris lawyer, flourishing and influential, and it was his wish that his clever second son, born in 1694, should advance to fortune on the legal road which he was able to open for him. The mere boy seems to have been docile enough, and took his place among his father's clerks, with whom he was an immense favourite, being already "the most amusing fellow in the world; " but the youth, though he went through the regular stages of a legal education, and "even became an advocate," showed invincible impatience of the professional harness, “took to poetry, and other airy dangerous courses," and was a sorrow to the paternal mind. Meanwhile his social talents made him friends, and he became known in exalted circles as one of the most brilliant young fellows in France. He was hardly of age when, under the false suspicion of having written a popular political squib, he was flung into the Bastille for eighteen months. Such a mishap might have sobered another man into dulness or soured him into misanthropy; but young Voltaire was nowise discomposed or disheartened; and retained, as always afterwards under similar circumstances, the perfect and joyous use of his faculties. He employed himself in composing an epic poem which he called La Ligue, and which, recast and published a few years subsequently, has become known to all the world as the Henriade. He was but twenty-four when his first drama," Edipe the renowned name of it," was successful on the Parisian stage. "All of us princes, then, or poets!" he could exclaim, as he glanced round the company with which he sat at supper. Dining one day with the Duc de Sulli, and, as usual, leading the conversation, and illuminating the circle by the coruscations of his wit, he attracted the unfavourable notice of " a certain splenetic, ill-given Duc de Rohan, grandee of high rank, great haughtiness, and very ill-behaviour in the world." "Who," asks Rohan, "is this young man that talks so loud, then?" "Monseigneur," says Voltaire, "it is one who does not drag a big name about with him, but who secures respect for the name he has." Rohan stalked from the room "in a sulphurous frame of mind," and took the mean revenge of having Voltaire horsewhipped by hired bullies. Voltaire challenged him, and Rohan pretended to accept, but told the secret to his wife. Voltaire was a second time flung into the Bastille. On regaining his freedom, he at once quitted France for England. His new residence had a great effect on him. “England was full of constitutionality and free-thinking; Tolands, Collinses, Wollastons, Bolingbrokes, still living; very free, indeed. England, one is astonished to see, has its royalrepublican ways of doing; something Roman in it, from |