was, next to her, your oldest friend.  How, when you have sought an asylum in my house, can it ever be thought it will become your prison?  How, being your friend, can I ever become your tyrant?  I do not understand this.  I am convinced that, as long as I live, you will be happy here.  You will be honored as the father of literature, and you will ever find in me that assistance and sympathy which a man of your worth has a right to demand of all who honor and appreciate him.” [Footnote:  The king’s own words.—­Oeuvres Posthumes.]

“Alas! your majesty says that you honor me, but you no longer say that you love me,” cried Voltaire, who had listened to this eloquent and heart-felt speech of the king with eager impatience and lowering frowns.  “Yes, yes, I feel it; I know it too well!  Your majesty has already limited me to your consideration, your regard; but your love, your friendship, these are costly treasures from which I have been disinherited.  But I know these hypocritical legacy-hunters, who have robbed me of that most beautiful portion of my inheritance.  I know these poor, beggarly cousins, these D’Argens, these Algarottis, these La Mettries, this vainglorious peacock Maupertius.  I—­”

“Voltaire,” said the king, interrupting him, “you forget that you speak of my friends, and I do not allow any one to speak evil of them.  I will never be partial, never unjust!  My heart is capable of valuing and treasuring all my friends, but my friends must aim to deserve it; and if I give them my heart, I expect one in return.”

“Friendship is a bill of exchange, by which you give just so much as you are entitled to demand in return.”

“Give me, then, your whole heart, Voltaire, and I will restore mine to you!  But I fear you have no longer a heart; Nature gave you but a small dose of this fleeting essence called love.  She had much to do with your brain, and worked at that so long that no time remained to make the heart perfect; just as she was about to pour a few drops of this wonderful love-essence into your heart, the cock crew three times for your birth, and betrayed you into the world.  You have long since used up the poor pair of drops which fell into your heart.  Your brain was armed for centuries, with power to work, to be useful, to rejoice the souls of others. but I fear your heart was exhausted in your youthful years.”

“Ah, I wish your majesty were right!” cried Voltaire; “I should not then feel the anguish which now martyrs me, the torture of being misunderstood by the most amiable, the most intellectual, the most exalted of monarchs.  Oh, sire, sire!  I have a heart, and it bleeds because you doubt of its existence!”

“I would believe you if you were a little less pathetic,” said the king.  “You not only assert, but you declaim.  There is too little of nature and truth in your tone; you remind me a little of the stilted French tragedies, in which design and premeditation obscure all true passion; in which love is only a phrase, that no one believes in, dressed up with the tawdry gilding of sentiment and pathos.”