“Your majesty will crush me with your scorn and mockery!” cried Voltaire, whose eyes now flamed with anger.  “You wish to make me feel how powerless, how pitiful I am.  Where shall I find the strength to strive with you?  I have won no battles.  I have no hundred thousand men to oppose to you and no courts-martial to condemn those who sin against me!”

“It is true you have not a hundred thousand soldiers,” said the king, “but you have four-and-twenty, and with these four-and-twenty soldiers you have conquered the whole realm of spirits; with this little army you have brought the whole of educated Europe to your feet.  You are, therefore, a much more powerful king than I am.  I have, it is true, a hundred thousand men, but I dare not say that they will not run when it comes to the first battle.  You, Voltaire, have your four-and-twenty soldiers of the alphabet, and so well have you exercised them, that you must win every battle, even if all the kings of the earth were allied against you.  Let us make peace, then, my ‘invincible!’ do not turn this terrible army of the four-and-twenty, with their deadly weapons, against me, but graciously allow me to seize upon the hem of your purple robe, to sun myself in your dazzling rays, to be your humble scholar, and from you and your army of heroes to learn the secret art of winning battles with invisible troops!”

“Your majesty makes me feel more and more how poor I am; even my four-and-twenty, of whom you speak, have gone over to you, and you understand, as well as I do, how to exercise them.”

“No, no!” said Frederick, changing suddenly his jesting tone for one of grave earnestness.  “No, I will learn of you.  I am not satisfied to be a poor-souled dilettante in poetry, though assured I can. never be a Virgil or a Voltaire.  I know that the study of poetry demands the life, the undivided heart and mind.  I am but a poor galley-slave, chained to the ship of state; or, if you will, a pilot, who does not dare to leave the rudder, or even to sleep, lest the fate of the unhappy Palinurus might overtake him.  The Muses demand solitude and rest for the soul, and that I can never consecrate to them.  Often, when I have written three verses, I am interrupted, my muse is chilled, and my spirit cannot rise again into the heights of inspiration.  I know there are privileged souls, who can make verses everywhere—­in the tumult of court life, in the loneliness of Cirey, in the prisons of the Bastile, and in the stage-coach.  My poor soul does not enjoy this freedom.  It resembles an anana, which bears fruit only in the green-house, but fades and withers in the fresh air.” [Footnote:  The king’s own words.—­Oeuvres Posthumes.]

“Ah! this is the first time I have caught the Solomon of the North in an untruth,” cried Voltaire, eagerly.  “Your soul is not like the anana, but like the wondrous southern tree which generously bears at the same time fruits and flowers; which inspires and sweetly intoxicates us with its fragrance, and at the same time strengthens and refreshes us by its celestial fruits.  You, sire, are not the pupil of Apollo, you are Apollo himself!”