“Sire,” said he, “I do not resemble Lazarus; and if your majesty does not possess the miraculous power of the young rabbi, Jesus Christus, I fear you will soon have to bury me.  But I am as true a believer as any Jew.  I trust fully to the magic power of your hand.  Was not your marvellous touch sufficient to place beautiful Silesia, a gem of the first water, in the crown of Prussia?—­to awaken spirits, sleeping almost the sleep of death, and to call into life on these barbarous northern steppes the blossoms of education and refinement?  I believe in the miracles of the Solomon of the North, and I am willing to give my testimony to the whole world.”

“Nevertheless, if the French cock crows, you will betray me three times,” said the king.  “I know you, Voltaire, and I know when you are enraged, nothing is sacred.  I fear that here, as elsewhere, you will find provocations.  But now, before all other things, what have you brought me?  What gift has your muse produced for the poor philosopher of Sans-Souci?  I will not believe that you come with empty hands, and that the Homer of France has broken his lyre.”

“No, sire, I am not empty-handed!  I have brought you a present.  I believe it to be the best and most beautiful production of my muse.  For twenty years I have swelled with indignation at the tragedy which my good friend, Master Crebillon, made of the most exalted subject of antiquity.  With the adroit hands of a tailor he stitched up a monkey-jacket out of the purple toga, and adorned it with the miserable tawdry trifles of a pitiful lore and pompous Gothic verse!  Crebillon has written a French Catiline.  I, sire, have written a Roman Catiline!  You shall see, sire, and you shall admire!  In one of my most wretched, sleepless nights, the devil overcame me, and said:  ’Revenge Cicero and France!  Crebillon has disgraced both.  Wash out this stain from France.’  This was a good devil; and even you, sire, could not have driven me to work more eagerly than he did.  Day and night he chained me to my writing-desk!  I feared I should die of excitement, but the devil held on to me, and the spirits of the great Romans stood by my table and tore off the absurd and ridiculous masks which Crebillon had laid upon them.  They showed me their true, exalted, glowing faces, and commanded me to portray them, ’that the world at last might feel their majestic beauty, and be no longer deceived by the caricatures of Crebillon!’ I was obliged to obey, sire!  I worked unceasingly, and in eight days I had finished!  Catiline was born, and I was as much exhausted as ever a woman was at the birth of her first-born!” [Footnote:  This whole speech is from Voltaire.]

“You do not mean that in eight days you completed the tragedy?” said the king.  “You mean only that you have arranged the plot, and will finish the work here.”