But while writing of him, to third parties, sometimes almost simultaneously, the contrast of styles is not a little startling;and the beautiful affectionately chirping Mouse is seen suddenly to be an injured Wild-cat with its fur up. All readers of Voltaire are aware of this; and how Voltaire handles his "LUC" (mysterious nickname for KING FRIEDRICH), when Luc's back is turned. For alas, there is no man or thing but has its wrong side too; least of all, a Voltaire,--doing TREBLE voice withal, if you consider it, in such a Duet of estranged Lovers! Suppose we give these few Specimens,--treble mostly, and a few of bass as well,--to illustrate the nature of this Duet, and of the noises that went on round it, in a war-convulsed world? And first of all, concerning the enigma "What is Luc?"What the LUC in Voltaire is? Shocking explanations have been hit upon: but Wagniere (WAGNER, an intelligent Swiss man), Voltaire's old Secretary, gives this plain reading of the riddle: "M. de Voltaire had, at The Delices [near by Ferney, till the Chateau got built], a big Ape, of excessively mischievous turn; who used to throw stones at the passers-by, and sometimes would attack with its teeth friend or foe alike. One day it thrice over bit M. de Voltaire's own leg. He had called it LUC (Luke); and in conversation with select friends, as also in Letters to such, he sometimes designated the King of Prussia by that nickname: 'HE is like my Luc here; bites whoever caresses him!'--In 1756 M. de Voltaire, having still on his heart the Frankfurt Outrage, wrote curious MEMOIRES [ah, yes, VIE PRIVEE]; and afterwards wished to burn them; but a Copy had been stolen from him in 1768,"--and they still afflict the poor world.
To the same effect speaks Johannes von Muller: "Voltaire had an Ape called Luc; and the spiteful man, in thus naming the King, meant to stigmatize him as the mere APE of greater men; as one without any greatness of his own."--No; LUC was mischievous, flung stones after passengers; had, according to Clogenson, "bitten Voltaire himself, while being caressed by him;" that was the analogy in Voltaire's mind. Preuss says, this Nickname first occurs "12th December, 1757." Suppose 11th December to have been the day of getting one's leg bitten thrice over; and that, in bed next morning,--stiff, smarting, fretful against the sad ape-tricks and offences of this life,--before getting up to one's Works and Correspondences, the angry similitude had shot, slightly fulgurous and consolatory, athwart the gloom of one's mood? [Longchamp et Wagniere <italic>
Memoires, <end italic> i. 34; Johannes von Muller, <italic> Works <end italic> (12mo, Stuttgard, 1821), xxxi. 140 (LETTERS TO HISBROTHER, No, 218, "July, 1796"); Clogenson's Note, in <italic>
OEuvres de Voltaire, <end italic> lxxvii. 103; Preuss, ii. 71.]
That will account for Luc.
Many of the Voltaire-Friedrich LETTERS are lost; and the remainder lie in sad disorder in all the Editions, their sequence unintelligible without lengthy explanation. So that the following Snatches cannot well be arranged here in the way of Choral Strophe and Antistrophe, as would have been desirable. We shall have to group them loosely under heads; with less respect to date than to subject-matter, and to the reader's convenience for understanding them.
VOLTAIRE ON FRIEDRICH, TO DIFFERENT THIRD-PARTIES, DURING THIS WAR.
TO D'ARGENTAL (Has not yet heard of LEUTHEN, which happened five days before). ... "I have tasted the vengeance of consoling the King of Prussia, and that is enough for me. He goes beating on the one side, and getting beaten on the other: except for another miracle [like Rossbach], he will be ruined. Better have really been a philosopher, as he pretended to be." [<italic> OEuvres de Voltaire, <end italic> lxvii. 139 ("The Delices, 10th December, 1757").]
TO THE REVEREND COMTE DE BERNIS (outwardly still our flourishing Prime-Minister, by grace of Pompadour, but soon to be extinguished under a Red Hat. Date is six days before ZORNDORF). ... "I cannot imagine how some people have gone into suspecting that my heart might have the weakness to lean a little towards WHOM you know, towards my Ingrate that was! One is bound to have politeness;but one has memory as well;--and one is attached, as warmly as superfluously, to the Good Cause, which it belongs only to you to defend. Certain it is, poor I am not like the three-fourths of the Germans in these days [since ROSSBACH, above all]! I have everywhere seen Ladies'-fans with the Prussian Eagle painted on them, eating the FLEUR-DE-LIS; the Hanover Horse giving a kick to M. de Richelieu's bottom; a Courier carrying a bottle of Queen-of-Hungary Water to Madame de Pompadour. My Nieces shall certainly not have that fashion of Fans, at my poor little DELICES, whither I am just returning." [Ib. lxxvii. 35 ("Soleure, 19th August, 1758").]
TO MADAME D'ARGENTAL (on occasion of MINDEN: Kunersdorf three days ago, but not yet heard of). ... "Truly, Madame, when M. de Contades leads to the butchery all the descendants of our ancient chevaliers, and sets them to attack eighty pieces of cannon [not in the least, if you knew it; the reverse, if you knew it],--as Don Quixote did the windmills! This horrible day pierces my soul. I am French to excess, especially since those new favors [not worth mentioning here], which I owe to my divine Angels and to M. le Duc de Choiseul.