“It is Caesar, it is Marcus Aurelius, it is Julian, it is sometimes Abbe Chaulieu, with whom I sup,” he further wrote; “there is the charm of retirement, there is the freedom of the country, with all those little delights which the lord of a castle who is a king can procure for his very obedient humble servants and guests.  My own duties are to do nothing.  I enjoy my leisure.  I give an hour a day to the King of Prussia to touch up a bit his works in prose and verse; I am his grammarian, not his chamberlain ...  Never in any place in the world was there more freedom of speech touching the superstitions of men, and never were they treated with more banter and contempt.  God is respected, but all they who have cajoled men in His name are treated unsparingly.”

It was, in short, an Eden for a free-thinker; but an Eden with its serpent, and this serpent was the envy, jealousy, and unrestrainable satiric spirit of Voltaire.  There was soon trouble between him and his fellow-exiles.  He managed to get Arnaud exiled from the country, and gradually a coolness arose between him and Maupertuis, whom Frederick had made president of the Berlin Academy.  There were other quarrels and complications, and Voltaire grew disgusted with the occupation of what he slyly called “buck-washing” the king’s French verses,—­poor affairs they were.  Step by step he was making Berlin as hot as he had made Paris.  The new Adam was growing restless in his new Paradise.  He wrote to his niece,—­

“So it is known by this time in Paris, my dear child, that we have played the ‘Mort de Caesar’ at Potsdam, that Prince Henry is a good actor, has no accent, and is very amiable, and that this is the place for pleasure?  All this is true, but—­The king’s supper parties are delightful; at them people talk reason, wit, science; freedom prevails thereat; he is the soul of it all; no ill-temper, no clouds, at any rate no storms; my life is free and well occupied,—­but—­Opera, plays, carousals, suppers at Sans Souci, military manoeuvres, concerts, studies, readings,—­but—­The city of Berlin, grand, better laid out than Paris; palaces, play-houses, affable queens, charming princesses, maids of honor beautiful and well-made, the mansion of Madame de Tyrconnel always full and sometimes too much so,—­but—­but—­My dear child, the weather is beginning to settle down into a fine frost.”

Voltaire brought the frost.  He got into a disreputable quarrel with a Jew, and meddled in other affairs, until something very like a quarrel arose between him and Frederick.  The king wrote him a severe letter of reprimand.  The poet apologized.  But immediately afterwards his irrepressible spirit of mischief broke out in a new place.  It was his ill-humor with Maupertuis which now led him astray.  He wrote a pamphlet, full of wit and as full of bitterness, called “La diatribe du docteur Akakia,” so evidently satirizing Maupertuis that the king grew furious.  It was printed anonymously, and circulated surreptitiously in Berlin, but a copy soon fell into Frederick’s hand, who knew at once that but one man in the kingdom was capable of such a production.  He wrote so severely to Voltaire that the malicious satirist was frightened and gave up the whole edition of the pamphlet, which was burnt before his eyes in the king’s own closet, though Frederick could not help laughing at its wit.