"I have seen that Voltaire whom I was so curious to know… He has the eloquence of Cicero, the mildness of Pliny, the wisdom of Agrippa; he combines, in short, what is to be collected of virtues and talents from the greatest men of antiquity. His intellect is at work incessantly; every drop of ink is a trait of wit from his pen. He declaimed his Mahomet to us—an admirable tragedy; he transported us out of ourselves; I could only admire him and hold my tongue. The Du Châtelet is lucky to have him; for, of the good things he flings out at random, a person who had no faculty but memory might make a brilliant book."
In the next three years Voltaire paid three other visits to Frederick. In December of the same year when they first met, he spent six days with the king at Reinsberg. "Voltaire," wrote Frederick, "has arrived, all sparkling with new beauties, and far more sociable than at Clèves." Again, in 1742, the poet went to him from Paris, where he had been observing the reception given to his tragedy, of "Mahomet," which was, on the part of the audience, enthusiastic; but the ever-venomous Abbé Desfontaines and his crew denounced the play as impious, and raised such a storm that Cardinal Fleury, although he had read and approved of the piece, was obliged to advise the author to withdraw it. Just then came Frederick's invitation, which he showed to the Cardinal, expressing at the same time a wish to be of use to France at the Prussian Court. In these years the many-sided poet, seeing how few and hardly-won were the rewards of letters, how strong the vantage-ground that high office would give him against his enemies, was much disposed to try his fortune in diplomacy, especially with such an opening to that career as was offered by his intimacy with the most politic and most warlike sovereign then existing. With such views
