With a martinet like Frederick, the visit was sure to end in a
quarrel, despite the admiration of the prince for the poet.
Frederick, though a German king, was French in his love for the Gallic
literature, philosophy, and language. He cared little for German
literature--there was little of it in his day worth caring for--and
always wrote and spoke in French, while French wits and thinkers who
could not live in safety in straitlaced Paris, gained the amplest scope
for their views in his court. Voltaire found three such emigrants
there, Maupertuis, La Mettrie, and D'Arnaud. He was received by them
with enthusiasm, as the sovereign of their little court of free thought.
Frederick had given him a pension and the post of chamberlain,--an
office with very light duties,--and the expatriated poet set himself out
to enjoy his new life with zest and animation.
"A hundred and fifty thousand victorious soldiers," he wrote to Paris,
"no attorneys, opera, plays, philosophy, poetry, a hero who is a
philosopher and a poet, grandeur and graces, grenadiers and muses,
trumpets and violins, Plato's symposium, society and freedom! Who would
believe it? It is all true, however.
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