Voltaire to Frederick the Great - 1742 August 29
![29 August 1741 [1742]](http://scalar.usc.edu/works/voltaire/media/1742%20aug%2029%20vol-coll874-09-01~1.jpg){kind=link}
m1. (must be
m2. from 1742)
m3. (the king was
m4. at Aix-la-Chapelle
m5. the 27th 1742
m6. see one of the
m7. letters of this day
m8. and year dated from
m9. this town)[1]
1. After your beautiful campaign,
2. After these verses brilliant and sweet,
3. Great Apollo of Germany,
4. In which Parnassus do you reside?!
5. You are in Aix[2], among us,
6. As in the Country of Charlemagne,
7. And not as in the meeting place
8. Of the feverish, of fools, and of madmen
9. Accompanied by a sorry Aesculapius.
10. My hero, my King, please permit that an abominable cold,
11. which seized me while on the road from Lille to
12. Brussels, be somewhat diminished so that I may fly to Aix-
13. la-Chapelle. This cold has made me deaf—and one
14. must not be so in the presence of your majesty—this would be as if
15. one were impotent in the presence of one’s mistress.
16. During the three or four days that I am
17. condemned to remain in my bed, I shall transcribe
18. Mahomet[3] as it was performed, just as it delighted
19. the philosophers and as it horrified the believers.
20. This is the story of Tartuffe[4]; the hypocrites persecuted
21. Molière, and fanatics have risen in arms against me.
22. I yielded to the torrent without saying a single word. If Socrates
23. had done likewise, he would not have drunk the hemlock. I confess
24. that I know nothing that dishonors my country more than
25. this infamous superstition created to debase human nature.
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26. I needed the king of Prussia as my master
27. and the English people as my fellow citizens. Our Frenchmen,
28. in general, are no more than grown children; but, finally,
29. to this point I always return: The small number of
30. thinking beings is excellent here, and for their sake we ought
31. to pardon the rest. With regard to my historic prattle[5],
32. a first shipment left Paris on the 20th of this month
33. addressed to the trustworthy David Girard, and
34. the second is all ready. I have already apologized to
35. your majesty for the trouble you may perhaps have in
36. deciphering the handwriting of the different
37. scribes who hastily copied what I have
38. gathered together.
39. I imagine that the packet is currently on
40. the way to bore your majesty at
41. Aix-la-Chapelle.
42. I know for certain (should men be permitted to use
43. this word) that it was not a clerk in Brussels
44. who opened the letter, which has become my
45. Pandora’s box; this entire fine feat was accomplished
46. in Paris in a time of crisis, and it is a
47. spy for the person whom your majesty suspects[6] who is
48. responsible for all this evil. Your majesty had very well
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49. guessed it, you are as well-versed in small things as in
50. great ones.
51. You are particularly well acquainted with the injustice
52. committed by those men who take it upon themselves to judge kings, and your
53. ode on this brand new subject is filled with
54. poetry and a true and sublime philosophy.
55. May it please the heavens that your majesty be just as
56. right in the beautiful compliments you gave me
57. in your second to last letter[7] concerning the
58. marchioness!
59. Ah, I swear, you have granted me
60. Too much grace and too much honor
61. When you say that Nature
62. Has bestowed upon me, for a certain affair,
63. Other gifts than the gift of the heart.
64. Would that I could have it still,
65. This first of divine gifts,
66. This gift that every woman adores,
67. And that disappears with our youthful years.
68. I am approaching, alas, the dark night
69. That engulfs us for good;
70. Of a man I am only the shadow;
71. All I have is the shadow of love.
72. So, do send to poets,
73. Who are still in the spring of their years,
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74. The very desirable sweet nothings
75. With which you honor my talents.
76. Gresset[8] is in this happy time;
77. It is Gresset who should head
78. For the Parnassus of Berlin.
79. But either too shy or too tender,
80. He did not dare to follow this path;
81. He languishes in his Picardie,
82. In the arms of his whore
83. And over his tragic verse.
[Shelfmark: Rare f F840, V935 d]
[1] These marginalia are in a different hand, in a different ink, and were written at a different time than the rest of the letter in order to indicate that the date should have been written “1742”.
[2] Aix-la-Chapelle is now Aachen, located on the German frontier with Belgium and the Netherlands in the northwestern state of North Rhine-Westphalia. See Aix-la-Chapelle.
[3] Mahomet: Le fanatisme, ou Mahomet le Prophète (Fanaticism, or Mahomet the Prophet) is a five-act tragedy written by Voltaire in 1736. Its debut performance was in Lille on 25 April 1741, and then in Paris, at the Comédie-Française on 9 August 1742. See Mahomet.
[4] As a result of Molière’s play Tartuffe (first performed on May 12, 1664), contemporary French and English both use the word "tartuffe" to designate a hypocrite who excessively feigns virtue, especially religious virtue. See Mahomet.
[5] Le Siècle de Louis XIV. Voltaire began to write this work in 1732 for which he undertook significant research during several years. In 1738 he sent a manuscript to Frederick who praised it. In 1739 Voltaire published a detailed plan of his project, together with the first two completed chapters: Essai sur l’histoire de Louis XIV which was disapproved by the court and seized. The very first (and tentative) publication of this work appeared in 1752, in Berlin. An edited and updated edition appeared in 1768.
[6] Fleury, André Hercule, cardinal de Fleury (22 June 1653 – 29 January 1743). He served as the chief minister of Louis XV.
[7] D2632: Letter from Frederick to Voltaire, from Potsdam, Tuesday, 7 August 1742: “The Marquise [Mme du Châtelet] is beautiful, amiable; You are sensitive, she has a heart; You have feelings, she is not made of stone, you are not a eunuch; You have been living together for ten years. Is it possible, without insulting your manhood, to believe that you have spoken all this time of philosophy to the most amiable woman in France? If I may say so, my dear friend, you would have played a very poor character, and I did not imagine that the temple of virtue in which you lived was the exile of that of pleasure.”
[8] Jean-Baptiste-Louis Gresset (29 August 1709 – 16 June 1777) was a French poet and dramatist. In 1750 he founded the Académie des Sciences, Belles-lettres et Arts d’Amiens (formerly Société Littéraire d’Amiens). He resided in Amiens (a Picardy county) until his death in 1777. See: The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French. Oxford University Press, 1995 (Published online: 2005).
