“Ah, sire!” cried Voltaire, “when you look at me with your great, luminous eyes, I feel capable of plucking my heart from my breast and casting it into the fire for you.  How gladly, then, will I offer up these stinging lines to a wish of my Solomon!”

“Will you indeed sacrifice ‘Akakia?’” said the king, joyfully.

“Look here! this is my manuscript, you know my hand-writing, you see that the ink is scarcely dry, the work just completed.  Well, then, see now, sire, what I make of the ‘Akakia.’” He took the manuscript and cast it into the fire before which they were both sitting.

“What are you doing?” cried the king, hastily; and, without regarding the flames, ho stretched out his hand to seize the manuscript.

Voltaire laughed heartily, seized the tongs, and pushed it farther into the flames.  “Sire, sire, I am the devil, and I will not allow my victim to be torn from me.  My ‘Akakia’ was only worthy of the lower regions; you condemned it, and therefore it must suffer.  I, the devil, command it to burn.”

“But I, the angel of mercy, will redeem the poor ‘Akakia,’” cried the king, trying to obtain possession of the tongs.  “Truly this ‘Akakia’ is too lusty and witty a boy to be laid, like the Emperor Guatimozin, upon the gridiron.  It was enough to deny him a public exhibition—­it was not necessary to destroy him.”

“Sire, I am a poor, weak man!  If I kept the living ‘Akakia’ by my side, it would be a poisonous weapon, which I would hurl one day surely at the head of Maupertius.  It is therefore better it should live only in my remembrance, and be only an imaginary dagger, with which I will sometimes tickle the haughty lord-president.”

“And you have really no copy?” said the king, whose distrust was awakened by Voltaire’s too ready compliance.  “Was this the only manuscript of the ‘Akakia?’”

“Sire, if you do not believe my word, send your servants and let them search my room.  Here are my keys; they shall bring you every scrap of written paper; your majesty will then be convinced.  I entreat you to do this, as you will not believe my simple word.”

The king fixed his eyes steadfastly upon Voltaire.  “I believe you.  It would be unworthy of you to deceive me, and unworthy of me to mistrust you.  I believe you; but I will make assurance doubly sure.  The ‘Akakia’ is no longer upon paper, but it is in your head, and I fear your head more than I do all the paper in the world.  Promise me, Voltaire, that as long as you live with me you will engage in no written strifes or controversies—­that you will not employ your bitter irony against the government, or against the authors.”

“I promise that cheerfully!”

“Will you do so in writing?”

Voltaire stepped to the table and took the pen.  “Will your majesty dictate?”