Voltaire was not proud; he readily heaped apology upon apology; but he was irritable and vain; his ill-humor against Maupertuis came out in a pamphlet, as bitter as it was witty, entitled La Diatribe du Docteur Akakia; copies were circulating in Berlin; the satire was already printed anonymously, when the Great Frederick suddenly entered the lists.  He wrote to Voltaire, “Your effrontery astounds me after that which you have just done, and which is as clear as daylight.  Do not suppose that you will make black appear white; when one does not see, it is because one does not want to see everything; but, if you carry matters to extremity, I will have everything printed, and it will then be seen that if your works deserve that statues should be raised to you, your conduct deserves handcuffs.”

Voltaire, affrighted, still protesting his innocence, at last gave up the whole edition of the diatribe, which was burned before his eyes in the king’s own closet.  According to the poet’s wily habit, some copy or other had doubtless escaped the flames.  Before long Le Docteur Akakia appeared at Berlin, arriving modestly from Dresden by post; people fought for the pamphlet, and everybody laughed; the satire was spread over all Europe.  In vain did Frederick have it burned on the Place d’Armes by the hands of the common hangman; he could not assuage the despair of Maupertuis.  “To speak to you frankly,” the king at last wrote to the disconsolate president, “it seems to me that you take too much to heart, both for an invalid and a philosopher, an affair which you ought to despise.  How prevent a man from writing, and how prevent him from denying all the impertinences he has uttered?  I made investigations to find out whether any fresh satires had been sold at Berlin, but I heard of none; as for what is sold in Paris, you are quite aware that I have not charge of the police of that city, and that I am not master of it.  Voltaire treats you more gently than I am treated by the gazetteers of Cologne and Lubeck, and yet I don’t trouble myself about it.”

Voltaire could no longer live at Potsdam or at Sans-Souci; even Berlin seemed dangerous:  in a fit of that incurable perturbation which formed the basis of his character and made him commit so many errors, he had no longer any wish but to leave Prussia, only he wanted to go without embroiling himself with the king.  “I sent the Solomon of the North,” he writes to Madame Denis on the 13th of January, 1753, “for his present, the cap and bells he gave me, with which you reproached me so much.  I wrote him a very respectful letter, for I asked him for leave to go.  What do you think he did?  He sent me his great factotum Federshoff, who brought me back my toys; he wrote me a letter saying that he would rather have me to live with than Maupertuis.  What is quite certain is, that I would rather not live with either one or the other.”