He called Tripot, and commanded him to announce to Fredersdorf that he was ill, and could not accompany the king to Potsdam in the morning.

He then retired, and the gods, perhaps, heard his prayer, and allowed him in dreams to look upon Paris, where the Marquis de Pompadour reigned supreme, and the pious priests preached against the Atheist Voltaire, to whom the great-hearted King of Prussia had given an asylum.  Perhaps he saw in his dreams the seigneurie of his glittering future, and his beautiful house at Ferney, where he built a temple, with the proud inscription, “Voltaire Deo erexit!”

At all events, his dreams must have been pleasant and refreshing.  He laughed in his sleep; and his countenance, which was so often clouded by base and wicked passions, was bright and clear; it was the face of a poet, who, with closed eyes, looked up into the heaven of heavens.

The morning came, and Voltaire still slept—­even the rolling of the carriages aroused him but for a moment; he wrapped himself up in his warm bed. the soft eider down of his pillow closed over his head and made him invisible.  Tripot came lightly upon tiptoe and removed the black coat of the merchant Fromery.  Voltaire heard nothing; he slept on.  And now the door was noisily opened, and a young woman, with fresh, rosy cheeks and sparkling eyes, entered the room; she was dressed as a chambermaid, a little white coquettish cap covered her hair, and a white apron with a little bodice was laced over her striped woollen robe.  Upon her white, naked arm she carried linen which she threw carelessly upon the floor, and drew with rash steps near the bed.  Voltaire still slept, and was still invisible.

The young chambermaid, believing that he had gone with the king to Potsdam, had come to arrange the room; with a quick movement she seized the bed with her sinewy hands and threw it off.  A wild cry was heard! a white skeleton figure rose from the bed, now lying in the middle of the chamber, and danced about the floor with doubled fists and wild curses.  The girl uttered a shriek of terror and rushed from the room; and if the form and the nightcap had not been purely white, she would have sworn she had seen the devil in person, and that she had cast him out from the bed of the great French poet. [Footnote:  Thiebault, v., 281.]

CHAPTER X.

The lovers.

The day of grace was at an end.  The four weeks which the king had granted to his sister, in order that she might take counsel with herself, were passed, and the heart of the princess was unmoved—­ only her face was changed.  Amelia hid her pallor with rouge, and the convulsive trembling of her lips with forced smiles; but it was evident that her cheeks became daily more hollow, and her eyes more inflamed.  Even the king remarked this, and sent his physician to examine her eyes.  The princess received this messenger of the king with a bitter, icy smile.