blandishing, and the wretch was always lured back to captivity.  As for La Mettrie, he made his escape in a different manner—­by dying after supper one evening of a surfeit of pheasant pie.  ‘Jesus!  Marie!’ he gasped, as he felt the pains of death upon him.  ‘Ah!’ said a priest who had been sent for, ’vous voila enfin retourne a ces noms consolateurs.’  La Mettrie, with an oath, expired; and Frederick, on hearing of this unorthodox conclusion, remarked, ‘J’en suis bien aise, pour le repos de son ame.’

Among this circle of down-at-heel eccentrics there was a single figure whose distinction and respectability stood out in striking contrast from the rest—­that of Maupertuis, who had been, since 1745, the President of the Academy of Sciences at Berlin.  Maupertuis has had an unfortunate fate:  he was first annihilated by the ridicule of Voltaire, and then recreated by the humour of Carlyle; but he was an ambitious man, very anxious to be famous, and his desire has been gratified in over-flowing measure.  During his life he was chiefly known for his voyage to Lapland, and his observations there, by which he was able to substantiate the Newtonian doctrine of the flatness of the earth at the poles.  He possessed considerable scientific attainments, he was honest, he was energetic; he appeared to be just the man to revive the waning glories of Prussian science; and when Frederick succeeded in inducing him to come to Berlin as President of his Academy the choice seemed amply justified.  Maupertuis had, moreover, some pretensions to wit; and in his earlier days his biting and elegant sarcasms had more than once overwhelmed his scientific adversaries.  Such accomplishments suited Frederick admirably.  Maupertuis, he declared, was an homme d’esprit, and the happy President became a constant guest at the royal supper-parties.  It was the happy—­the too happy—­President who was the rose-leaf in the bed of Voltaire.  The two men had known each other slightly for many years, and had always expressed the highest admiration for each other; but their mutual amiability was now to be put to a severe test.  The sagacious Buffon observed the danger from afar:  ’ces deux hommes,’ he wrote to a friend, ’ne sont pas faits pour demeurer ensemble dans la meme chambre.’  And indeed to the vain and sensitive poet, uncertain of Frederick’s cordiality, suspicious of hidden enemies, intensely jealous of possible rivals, the spectacle of Maupertuis at supper, radiant, at his ease, obviously protected, obviously superior to the shady mediocrities who sat around—­that sight was gall and wormwood; and he looked closer, with a new malignity; and then those piercing eyes began to make discoveries, and that relentless brain began to do its work.