And it is curious to observe that in his correspondence with his niece, Madame Denis, whom he had left behind him at the head of his Paris establishment and in whom he confided—­in so far as he can be said to have confided in anyone—­he repeatedly states that there is nothing permanent about his visit to Berlin.  At first he declares that he is only making a stay of a few weeks with Frederick, that he is going on to Italy to visit ‘sa Saintete’ and to inspect ‘la ville souterraine,’ that he will be back in Paris in the autumn.  The autumn comes, and the roads are too muddy to travel by; he must wait till the winter, when they will be frozen hard.  Winter comes, and it is too cold to move; but he will certainly return in the spring.  Spring comes, and he is on the point of finishing his Siecle de Louis XIV.; he really must wait just a few weeks more.  The book is published; but then how can he appear in Paris until he is quite sure of its success?  And so he lingers on, delaying and prevaricating, until a whole year has passed, and still he lingers on, still he is on the point of going, and still he does not go.  Meanwhile, to all appearances, he was definitely fixed, a salaried official, at Frederick’s court; and he was writing to all his other friends, to assure them that he had never been so happy, that he could see no reason why he should ever come away.  What were his true intentions?  Could he himself have said?  Had he perhaps, in some secret corner of his brain, into which even he hardly dared to look, a premonition of the future?  At times, in this Berlin adventure, he seems to resemble some great buzzing fly, shooting suddenly into a room through an open window and dashing frantically from side to side; when all at once, as suddenly, he swoops away and out through another window which opens in quite a different direction, towards wide and flowery fields; so that perhaps the reckless creature knew where he was going after all.

In any case, it is evident to the impartial observer that Voltaire’s visit could only have ended as it did—­in an explosion.  The elements of the situation were too combustible for any other conclusion.  When two confirmed egotists decide, for purely selfish reasons, to set up house together, everyone knows what will happen.  For some time their sense of mutual advantage may induce them to tolerate each other, but sooner or later human nature will assert itself, and the menage will break up.  And, with Voltaire and Frederick, the difficulties inherent in all such cases were intensified by the fact that the relationship between them was, in effect, that of servant and master; that Voltaire, under a very thin disguise, was a paid menial, while Frederick, condescend as he might, was an autocrat whose will was law.  Thus the two famous and perhaps mythical sentences, invariably repeated by historians of the incident, about orange-skins and dirty linen, do in fact sum up the gist of the matter.  ’When