“Farewell, Herr von Francheville,” said he, quietly.  “I thank you for having allowed me to be present at my execution.  You see I have borne it well; all do not die who are burnt.  Farewell, I must go to the castle.  I have important business there.”

With youthful agility he entered his carriage.  The people, who recognized him, shouted after him joyfully.  He passed through the crowd with an air of triumph, and they greeted him with kindly interest.

The smile disappeared from his face when he entered his room at the castle, and the scorn and tumult of his heart were plainly written on his countenance.  He seized his portfolio, and drew from it the pension patent signed by the king; tore from his neck the blue ribbon, with the great badge surrounded with brilliants, and cut the little key from his court dress, which his valet had laid out ready for his toilet.  Of these things he made a little packet, which he sealed up, and wrote upon it these lines: 

     “Je les requs avec tendresse,
      Je vous les rends avec douleur;
      C’est ainsi qu’un amant, dans sou extreme fureur,
      Rend le portrait de sa maitresse.”

He called his servant, and commanded him to take this packet to the king.

Voltaire did not hesitate a moment.  He felt not the least regret for the great pension which he was relinquishing.  He felt that there was no other course open to him; that his honor and his pride demanded it.  At this moment, his expression was noble.  He was the proud, independent, free man.  The might of genius reigned supreme, and subdued the calculating and the pitiful for a brief space.  This exalted moment soon passed away, and the cunning, miserly, calculating old man again asserted his rights.  Voltaire remembered that he had not only given up orders and titles, but gold, and measureless anguish and raging pain took possession of him.  He hastened to his writing-desk, and with a trembling hand he wrote a pleading letter to the king, in which he begged for pardon and grace—­for pity in his unhappy circumstances and his great sorrow.

The king was merciful.  He took pity on the old friendship which lay in ruins at his feet.  He felt for it that sort of reverence which a man entertains for the grave of a lost friend.  He returned the “bagatelles” with a few friendly lines to Voltaire, and invited him to accompany him to Potsdam.  Voltaire accepted the invitation, and the journals announced that the celebrated French writer had again received his orders, titles, and pension, and gone to Potsdam with the king.

But this seeming peace was of short duration.  Friendship was dead, and anger and bitterness had taken the place of consideration and love.  Voltaire felt the impossibility of remaining longer.  Impelled by the cold glance, the ironical and contemptuous laughter of the king, he begged at last for his dismissal, which the king did not refuse him.