Whether the king actually intended the execution of his son is questioned.  As it was, earnest remonstrances were addressed to him from the Kings of Sweden and Poland, the Emperor of Germany, and other monarchs.  He gradually recovered from the insanity of his rage, and, on humble appeals from his son, remitted his sentence, requiring him to take a solemn oath that he was converted from his infidel beliefs, that he begged a thousand pardons from his father for his crimes, and that he repented not having been always obedient to his father’s will.

This done, Frederick was released from prison, but was kept under surveillance at Cuestrin till February, 1732, when he was permitted to return to Berlin.  He had been there before on the occasion of his sister’s marriage, in November, 1731, the poor girl gladly accepting marriage to a prince she had never seen as a means of escape from a king of whom she had seen too much.  With this our story ends.  Father and son were reconciled, and lived to all appearance as good friends until 1740, when the old despot died, and Frederick succeeded him as king.

VOLTAIRE AND FREDERICK THE GREAT.

Voltaire, who was an adept in the art of making France too hot to hold him, had gone to Prussia, as a place of rest for his perturbed spirit, and, in response to the repeated invitations of his ardent admirer, Frederick the Great.  It was a blunder on both sides.  If they had wished to continue friends, they should have kept apart.  Frederick was autocratic in his ways and thoughts; Voltaire embodied the spirit of independence in thought and speech.  The two men could no more meet without striking fire than flint and steel.  Moreover, Voltaire was normally satirical, restless, inclined to vanity and jealousy, and that terrible pen of his could never be brought to respect persons and places.  With a martinet like Frederick, the visit was sure to end in a quarrel, despite the admiration of the prince for the poet.

Frederick, though a German king, was French in his love for the Gallic literature, philosophy, and language.  He cared little for German literature—­there was little of it in his day worth caring for—­and always wrote and spoke in French, while French wits and thinkers who could not live in safety in straitlaced Paris, gained the amplest scope for their views in his court.  Voltaire found three such emigrants there, Maupertuis, La Mettrie, and D’Arnaud.  He was received by them with enthusiasm, as the sovereign of their little court of free thought.  Frederick had given him a pension and the post of chamberlain,—­an office with very light duties,—­and the expatriated poet set himself out to enjoy his new life with zest and animation.

“A hundred and fifty thousand victorious soldiers,” he wrote to Paris, “no attorneys, opera, plays, philosophy, poetry, a hero who is a philosopher and a poet, grandeur and graces, grenadiers and muses, trumpets and violins, Plato’s symposium, society and freedom!  Who would believe it?  It is all true, however.”