History of Friedrich II of Prussia Volume XI Part 6

The Newspapers, though their eyes were not yet of the Argus quality now familiar to us, have been intent on Friedrich during this Baireuth-Cleve Journey, especially since that sudden eclipse of him at Strasburg lately; forming now one scheme of route for him, now another; Newspapers, and even private friends, being a good deal uncertain about his movements. Rumor now ran, since his reappearance in the Cleve Countries, that Friedrich meant to have a look at Holland before going home, And that had, in fact, been a notion or intention of Friedrich's.

"Holland? We could pa.s.s through Brussels on the way, and see Voltaire!"

thought he.

In Brussels this was, of course, the rumor of rumors. As Voltaire's Letters, visibly in a twitter, still testify to us. King of Prussia coming! Madame du Chatelet, the "Princess Tour" (that is, Tour-and-Taxis), all manner of high Dames are on the tiptoe. Princess Tour hopes she shall lodge this unparalleled Prince in her Palace: "You, Madame?" answers the Du Chatelet, privately, with a toss of her head: "His Majesty, I hope, belongs more to M. de Voltaire and me: he shall lodge here, please Heaven!" Voltaire, I can observe, has sublime hostelry arrangements chalked out for his Majesty, in case he go to Paris; which he does n't, as we know. Voltaire is all on the alert, awake to the great contingencies far and near; the Chatelet-Voltaire breakfast-table,--fancy it on those interesting mornings, while the post comes round! [Voltaire, xxii. 238-256 (Letters 22d August-22d September, 1740).]

Alas, in the first days of September,--Friedrich's Letter is dated "Wesel, 2d" (and has the STRASBURD DOGGEREL enclosed in it),--the Brussels Postman delivers far other intelligence at one's door; very mortifying to Madame: "That his Majesty is fallen ill at Wesel; has an aguish fever hanging on him, and only hopes to come:" VOILA, Madame!--Next Letter, Wesel, Monday, 5th September, is to the effect: "Do still much hope to come; to-morrow is my trembling day; if that prove to be off!"--Out upon it, that proves not to be off; that is on: next Letter, Tuesday, September 6th, which comes by express (Courier das.h.i.+ng up with it, say on the Thursday following) is,--alas, Madame!--here it is:--

KING FRIEDRICH TO M. DE VOLTAIRE AT BRUSSELS.

"WESEL, 6th September, 1740. "MY DEAR VOLTAIRE,--In spite of myself, I have to yield to the Quartan Fever, which is more tenacious than a Jansenist; and whatever desire I had of going to Antwerp and Brussels, I find myself not in a condition to undertake such a journey without risk.

I would ask of you, then, if the road from Brussels to Cleve would not to you seem too long for a meeting; it is the one means of seeing you which remains to me. Confess that I am unlucky; for now when I could dispose of my person, and nothing hinders me from seeing you, the fever gets its hand into the business, and seems to intend disputing me that satisfaction.

"Let us deceive the fever, my dear Voltaire; and let me at least have the pleasure of embracing you. Make my best excuses [polite, rather than sincere] to Madame the MARQUISE, that I cannot have the satisfaction of seeing her at Brussels. All that are about me know the intention I was in; which certainly nothing but the fever could have made me change.

"Sunday next I shall be at a little Place near Cleve,"--Schloss of Moyland, which, and the route to which, this Courier can tell you of;--"where I shall be able to possess you at my ease. If the sight of you don't cure me, I will send for a Confessor at once. Adieu; you know my sentiments and my heart. [Preuss, _OEuvres de Frederic,_ xxii. 27.]

FREDERIC."

After which the Correspondence suddenly extinguishes itself; ceases for about a fortnight,--in the bad misdated Editions even does worse;--and we are left to thick darkness, to our own poor s.h.i.+fts; Dryasdust being grandly silent on this small interest of ours. What is to be done?

PARTICULARS OF FIRST INTERVIEW, ON SEVERE SCRUTINY.

Here, from a painful Predecessor whose Papers I inherit, are some old doc.u.ments and Studies on the subject,--sorrowful collection, in fact, of what poor sparks of certainty were to be found hovering in that dark element;--which do at last (so luminous are certainties always, or "sparks" that will s.h.i.+ne steady) coalesce into some feeble general twilight, feeble but indubitable; and even show the sympathetic reader how they were searched out and brought together. We number and label these poor Patches of Evidence on so small a matter; and leave them to the curious:--

No. 1. DATE OF THE FIRST INTERVIEW. It is certain Voltaire did arrive at the little Schloss of Moyland, September 11th, Sunday night,--which is the "Sunday" just specified in Friedrich's Letter. Voltaire had at once decided on complying,--what else?--and lost no time in packing himself: King's Courier on Thursday late; Voltaire on the road on Sat.u.r.day early, or the night before. With Madame's shrill blessing (not the most musical in this vexing case), and plenty of fuss. "Was wont to travel in considerable style," I am told; "the innkeepers calling him 'Your Lords.h.i.+p' (M. LE COMTE)." Arrives, sure enough, Sunday night; old Schloss of Moyland, six miles from Cleve; "moonlight," I find,--the Harvest Moon. Visit lasted three days. [Rodenbeck, p. 21; Preuss, &c. &c.]

No. 2. VOLTAIRE'S DRIVE THITHER. Schloss Moyland: How far from Brussels, and by what route? By Louvain, Tillemont, Tongres to Maestricht; then from Maestricht up the Maas (left bank) to Venlo, where cross; through Geldern and Goch to Cleve: between the Maas and Rhine this last portion.

Flat damp country; tolerably under tillage; original const.i.tuents bog and sand. Distances I guess to be: To Tongres 60 miles and odd; to Maestricht 12 or 15, from Maestricht 75; in all 150 miles English. Two days' driving? There is equinoctial moon, and still above twelve hours of sunlight for "M. le Comte."

No. 3. OF THE PLACE WHERE. Voltaire, who should have known, calls it "PEt.i.t CHATEAU DE MEUSE;" which is a Castle existing nowhere but in Dreams. Other French Biographers are still more imaginary. The little Schloss of Moyland--by no means "Meuse," nor even MORS, which Voltaire probably means in saying CHATEAU DE MEUSE--was, as the least inquiry settles beyond question, the place where Voltaire and Friedrich first met. Friedrich Wilhelm used often to lodge there in his Cleve journeys: he made thither for shelter, in the sickness that overtook him in friend Ginkel's house, coming home from the Rhine Campaign in 1734; lay there for several weeks after quitting Ginkel's. Any other light I can get upon it, is darkness visible. Busching pointedly informs me, [_Erdbeschreibung_, v. 659, 677.] "It is a Parish [or patch of country under one priest], and Till AND it are a Jurisdiction" (pair of patches under one court of justice):--which does not much illuminate the inquiring mind. Small patch, this of Moyland, size not given; "was bought," says he, "in 1695, by Friedrich afterwards First King, from the Family of Spaen,"--we once knew a Lieutenant Spaen, of those Dutch regions,--"and was named a Royal Mansion ever thereafter." Who lived in it; what kind of thing was it, is it? ALTUM SILENTIUM, from Busching and mankind. Belonged to the Spaens, fifty years ago;--some shadow of our poor banished friend the Lieutenant resting on it? Dim enough old Mansion, with "court" to it, with modic.u.m of equipment; lying there in the moonlight;--did not look sublime to Voltaire on stepping out. So that all our knowledge reduces itself to this one point: of finding Moyland in the Map, with DATE, with REMINISCENCE to us, hanging by it henceforth! Good. [Stieler's _Deutschland_ (excellent Map in 25 Pieces), Piece 12.--Till is a mile or two northeast from Moyland; Moyland about 5 or 6 southeast from Cleve.]

Mors--which is near the Town of Ruhrort, about midway between Wesel and Dusseldorf--must be some forty miles from Moyland, forty-five from Cleve; southward of both. So that the place, "A DEUX LIEUES DE CLEVES,"

is, even by Voltaire's showing, this Moyland; were there otherwise any doubt upon it. "CHATEAU DE MEUSE"--hanging out a prospect of MORS to us--is bad usage to readers. Of an intelligent man, not to say a Trismegistus of men, one expects he will know in what town he is, after three days' experience, as here. But he does not always; he hangs out a mere "shadow of Mars by moonlight," till we learn better. Duvernet, his Biographer, even calls it "SLEUS-MEUSE;" some wonderful idea of Sluices and a River attached to it, in Duvernet's head! [Duvernet (2d FORM of him,--that is, _Vie de Voltaire_ par T. J. D. V.), p. 117.]

WHAT VOLTAIRE THOUGHT OF THE INTERVIEW TWENTY YEARS AFTERWARDS

Of the Interview itself, with general bird's-eye view of the Visit combined (in a very incorrect state), there is direct testimony by Voltaire himself. Voltaire himself, twenty years after, in far other humor, all jarred into angry sarcasm, for causes we shall see by and by,--Voltaire, at the request of friends, writes down, as his Friedrich Reminiscences, that scandalous VIE PRIVEE above spoken of, a most sad Doc.u.ment; and this is the pa.s.sage referring to "the little Place in the neighborhood of Cleve," where Friedrich now waited for him: errors corrected by our laborious Friend. After quoting something of that Strasburg Doggerel, the whole of which is now too well known to us, Voltaire proceeds:--

"From Strasburg he," King Friedrich, "went to see his Lower German Provinces; he said he would come and see me incognito at Brussels. We prepared a fine house for him,"--were ready to prepare such hired house as we had for him, with many apologies for its slight degree of perfection (ERROR FIRST),--"but having fallen ill in the little Mansion-Royal of Meuse (CHATEAU DE MEUSE), a couple of leagues from Cleve,"--fell ill at Wesel; and there is no Chateau de MEUSE in the world (ERRORS 2d AND 3d),--"he wrote to me that he expected I would make the advances. I went, accordingly, to present my profound homages.

Maupertuis, who already had his views, and was possessed with the rage of being President to an Academy, had of his own accord,"--no, being invited, and at my suggestion (ERROR 4th),--"presented himself there; and was lodged with Algarotti and Keyserling [which latter, I suppose, had come from Berlin, not being of the Strasburg party, he] in a garret of this Palace.

"At the door of the court, I found, by way of guard, one soldier.

Privy-Councillor Rambonet, Minister of State--[very subaltern man; never heard of him except in the Herstal Business, and here] was walking in the court; blowing in his fingers to keep them warm." Sunday night, 11th September, 1740; world all bathed in moons.h.i.+ne; and mortals mostly shrunk into their huts, out of the raw air. "He" Rambonet "wore big linen ruffles at his wrists, very dirty [visibly so in the moonlight?

ERROR 5th extends AD LIBITUM over all the following details]; a holed hat; an old official periwig,"--ruined into a totally unsymmetric state, as would seem,--"one side of which hung down into one of his pockets, and the other scarcely crossed his shoulder. I was told, this man was now intrusted with an affair of importance here; and that proved true,"--the Herstal Affair.

"I was led into his Majesty's apartment. Nothing but four bare walls there. By the light of a candle, I perceived, in a closet, a little truckle-bed two feet and a half broad, on which lay a man m.u.f.fled up in a dressing-gown of coa.r.s.e blue duffel: this was the King, sweating and s.h.i.+vering under a wretched blanket there, in a violent fit of fever. I made my reverence, and began the acquaintance by feeling his pulse, as if I had been his chief physician. The fit over, he dressed himself, and took his place at table. Algarotti, Keyserling, Maupertuis, and the King's Envoy to the States-General"--one Rasfeld (skilled in HERSTAL matters, I could guess),--"we were of this supper, and discussed, naturally in a profound manner, the Immortality of the Soul, Liberty, Fate, the Androgynes of Plato [the ANDROGYNOI, or Men-Women, in Plato's CONVIVIUM; by no means the finest symbolic fancy of the divine Plato],--and other small topics of that nature." [Voltaire, _OEuvres,_ (Piece once called VIE PRIVEE), ii. 26, 27.]

This is Voltaire's account of the Visit,--which included three "Suppers," all huddled into one by him here;--and he says nothing more of it; launching off now into new errors, about HERSTAL, the ANTI-MACHIAVEL, and so forth: new and uglier errors, with much more of mendacity and serious malice in them, than in this harmless half-dozen now put on the score against him.

Of this Supper-Party, I know by face four of the guests: Maupertuis, Voltaire, Algarotti, Keyserling;--Rasfeld, Rambonet can sit as simulacra or mute accompaniment. Voltaire arrived on Sunday evening; stayed till Wednesday. Wednesday morning, 14th of the month, the Party broke up: Voltaire rolling off to left hand, towards Brussels, or the Hague; King to right, on inspection business, and circuitously homewards. Three Suppers there had been, two busy Days intervening; discussions about Fate and the Androgynoi of Plato by no means the one thing done by Voltaire and the rest, on this occasion. We shall find elsewhere, "he declaimed his MAHOMET" (sublime new Tragedy, not yet come out), in the course of these three evenings, to the "speechless admiration" of his Royal Host, for one; and, in the daytime, that he even drew his pen about the Herstal Business, which is now getting to its crisis, and wrote one of the Manifestoes, still discoverable. And we need not doubt, in spite of his now sneering tone, that things ran high and grand here, in this paltry little Schloss of Moyland; and that those three were actually Suppers of the G.o.ds, for the time being.

"Councillor Rambonet," with the holed hat and unsymmetric wig, continues Voltaire in the satirical vein, "had meanwhile mounted a hired hack (CHEVAL DE LOUAGE;" mischievous Voltaire, I have no doubt he went on wheels, probably of his own): "he rode all night; and next morning arrived at the gates of Liege; where he took Act in the name of the King his Master, whilst 2,000 men of the Wesel Troops laid Liege under contribution. The pretext of this fine Marching of Troops,"--not a pretext at all, but the a.s.sertion, correct in all points, of just claims long trodden down, and now made good with more spirit than had been expected,--"was certain rights which the King pretended to, over a suburb of Liege. He even charged me to work at a Manifesto; and I made one, good or bad; not doubting but a King with whom I supped, and who called me his friend, must be in the right. The affair soon settled itself by means of a million of ducats,"--nothing like the sum, as we shall see,--"which he exacted by weight, to clear the costs of the Tour to Strasburg, which, according to his complaint in that Poetic Letter [Doggerel above given], were so heavy."

That is Voltaire's view; grown very corrosive after Twenty Years. He admits, with all the satire: "I naturally felt myself attached to him; for he had wit, graces; and moreover he was a King, which always forms a potent seduction, so weak is human nature. Usually it is we of the writing sort that flatter Kings: but this King praised me from head to foot, while the Abbe Desfontaines and other scoundrels (GREDINS) were busy defaming me in Paris at least once a week."

WHAT VOLTAIRE THOUGHT OF THE INTERVIEW AT THE TIME.

But let us take the contemporary account, which also we have at first hand; which is almost pathetic to read; such a contrast between ruddy morning and the storms of the afternoon! Here are two Letters from Voltaire; fine transparent human Letters, as his generally are: the first of them written directly on getting back to the Hague, and to the feeling of his eclipsed condition.

VOLTAIRE TO M. DE MAUPERTUIS (with the King). "THE HAGUE, 18th September, 1740.

"I serve you, Monsieur, sooner than I promised; and that is the way you ought to be served. I send you the answer of M. Smith,"--probably some German or Dutch SCHMIDT, spelt here in English, connected with the Sciences, say with water-carriage, the typographies, or one need not know what; "you will see where the question stands.

"When we both left Cleve,"--14th of the month, Wednesday last; 18th is Sunday, in this old cobwebby Palace, where I am correcting ANTI-MACHIAVEL,--"and you took to the right,"--King, homewards, got to HAM that evening,--"I could have thought I was at the Last Judgment, where the Bon Dieu separates the elect from the d.a.m.ned. DIVUS FREDERICUS said to you, 'Sit down at my right hand in the Paradise of Berlin;' and to me, 'Depart, thou accursed, into Holland.'

"Here I am accordingly in this phlegmatic place of punishment, far from the divine fire which animates the Friedrichs, the Maupertuis, the Algarottis. For G.o.d's love, do me the charity of some sparks in these stagnant waters where I am,"--stiffening, cooling,--"stupefying to death. Instruct me of your pleasures, of your designs. You will doubtless see M. de Valori,"--readers know de Valori; his Book has been published; edited, as too usual, by a Human Nightmare, ignorant of his subject and indeed of almost all other things, and liable to mistakes in every page; yet partly readable, if you carry lanterns, and love "MON GROS VALORI:"--"offer him, I pray you, my respects. If I do not write to him, the reason is, I have no news to send: I should be as exact as I am devoted, if my correspondence could be useful or agreeable to him.

"Won't you have me send you some Books? If I be still in Holland when your orders come, I will obey in a moment. I pray you do not forget me to M. de Keyserling,"--Caesarion whom we once had at Cirey; a headlong dusky little man of wit (library turned topsy-turvy, as Wilhelmina called him), whom we have seen.

"Tell me, I beg, if the enormous monad of Volfius--[Wolf, would the reader like to hear about him? If so, he has only to speak!] is arguing at Marburg, at Berlin, or at Hall [HALLE, which is a very different place].

"Adieu, Monsieur: you can address your orders to me 'At the Hague:'

they will be forwarded wherever I am; and I shall be, anywhere on earth,--Yours forever (A VOUS POUR JAMAIS)." [Voltaire, lxxii. 252.]

Letter Second, of which a fragment may be given, is to one Cideville, a month later; all the more genuine as there was no chance of the King's hearing about this one. Cideville, some kind of literary Advocate at Rouen (who is wearisomely known to the reader of Voltaire's Letters), had done, what is rather an endemical disorder at this time, some Verses for the King of Prussia, which he wished to be presented to his Majesty.

The presentation, owing to accidents, did not take place; hear how Voltaire, from his cobweb Palace at the Hague, busy with ANTI-MACHIAVEL, Van Duren and many other things,--18th October, 1740, on which day we find him writing many Letters,--explains the sad accident:--

VOLTAIRE TO M. DE CIDEVILLE (at Rouen).

"AT THE HAGUE, KING OF PRUSSIA'S PALACE, 18th October, 1740.

"... This is my case, dear Cideville. When you sent me, enclosed in your Letter, those Verses (among which there are some of charming and inimitable turn) for our Marcus Aurelius of the North, I did well design to pay my court to him with them. He was at that time to have come to Brussels incognito: we expected him there; but the Quartan Fever, which unhappily he still has, deranged all his projects. He sent me a courier to Brussels,"--mark that point, my Cideville;--"and so I set out to find him in the neighborhood of Cleve.

"It was there I saw one of the amiablest men in the world, who forms the charm of society, who would be everywhere sought after if he were not King; a philosopher without austerity; full of sweetness, complaisance and obliging ways (AGREMENS); not remembering that he is King when he meets his friends; indeed so completely forgetting it that he made me too almost forget it, and I needed an effort of memory to recollect that I here saw sitting at the foot of my bed a Sovereign who had an Army of 100,000 men. That was the moment to have read your amiable Verses to him:"--yes; but then?--"Madame du Chatelet, who was to have sent them to me, did not, NE L'A PA FAIT." Alas, no, they are still at Brussels, those charming Verses; and I, for a month past, am here in my cobweb Palace! But I swear to you, the instant I return to Brussels, I, &c. &c.

[Voltaire, lxii. 282.]

Finally, here is what Friedrich thought of it, ten days after parting with Voltaire. We will read this also (though otherwise ahead of us as yet); to be certified on all sides, and sated for the rest of our lives, concerning the Friedrich-Voltaire First Interview.

KING FRIEDRICH TO M. JORDAN (at Berlin).

POTSDAM, 24th September, 1740.