A devil—­or perhaps an angel?  One cannot be quite sure.  For, amid the complexities of that extraordinary spirit, where good and evil were so mysteriously interwoven, where the elements of darkness and the elements of light lay crowded together in such ever-deepening ambiguity, fold within fold, the clearer the vision the greater the bewilderment, the more impartial the judgment the profounder the doubt.  But one thing at least is certain:  that spirit, whether it was admirable or whether it was odious, was moved by a terrific force.  Frederick had failed to realise this; and indeed, though Voltaire was fifty-six when he went to Berlin, and though his whole life had been spent in a blaze of publicity, there was still not one of his contemporaries who understood the true nature of his genius; it was perhaps hidden even from himself.  He had reached the threshold of old age, and his life’s work was still before him; it was not as a writer of tragedies and epics that he was to take his place in the world.  Was he, in the depths of his consciousness, aware that this was so?  Did some obscure instinct urge him forward, at this late hour, to break with the ties of a lifetime, and rush forth into the unknown?

What his precise motives were in embarking upon the Berlin adventure it is very difficult to say.  It is true that he was disgusted with Paris—­he was ill-received at Court, and he was pestered by endless literary quarrels and jealousies; it would be very pleasant to show his countrymen that he had other strings to his bow, that, if they did not appreciate him, Frederick the Great did.  It is true, too, that he admired Frederick’s intellect, and that he was flattered by his favour.  ‘Il avait de l’esprit,’ he said afterwards, ’des graces, et, de plus, il etait roi; ce qui fait toujours une grande seduction, attendu la faiblesse humaine.’  His vanity could not resist the prestige of a royal intimacy; and no doubt he relished to the full even the increased consequence which came to him with his Chamberlain’s key and his order—­to say nothing of the addition of L800 to his income.  Yet, on the other hand, he was very well aware that he was exchanging freedom for servitude, and that he was entering into a bargain with a man who would make quite sure that he was getting his money’s worth; and he knew in his heart that he had something better to do than to play, however successfully, the part of a courtier.  Nor was he personally attached to Frederick; he was personally attached to no one on earth.  Certainly he had never been a man of feeling, and now that he was old and hardened by the uses of the world he had grown to be completely what in essence he always was—­a fighter, without tenderness, without scruples, and without remorse.  No, he went to Berlin for his own purposes—­however dubious those purposes may have been.