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I love you as a virtuous friend. What slavery, whatmisfortune, what change can you fear in a countrywhere you are as much esteemed as in your own, andwith a friend who has a grateful heart ? I promise youthat you shall be happy here as long as you live.”
Voltaire sent this letter to count d’Argental, whomhe always named his guardian angel, as his apologyfor expatriating himself. “ Judge,” he writes, “whetherI am excusable ? I send you his letter, — you willthink that you are reading one written by Trajan orMarcus Aurelius, —yet I am not the less agitated whileI deliver myself over to fate, and throw myself, headforemost, into the whirlpool of destiny which absorbsall things. But how can I resist? How can I forgetthe barbarous manner with which I have beentreated in my own country ? You know what I havegone through. I enter port after a storm that haslasted thirty years. I enjoy the protection of a king ;I find the conversation of a philosopher — the societyof a delightful man — united in one, who, for the spaceof sixteen years, has exerted himself to comfort me inmy misfortunes, and to shelter me from my enemies.All is to be feared for me in Paris ; here I am sureof tranquillity : if I can answer for anything, it is forthe character of the king of Prussia.” He wrote witheven more enthusiasm to his niece. “ He is the mostamiable of men; he is a king ; it is a passion of six-teen years’ standing; he has turned my head. I havethe insolence to think that nature formed me for him.There is a singular conformity in our tastes. I forgetthat he is master of half Germany , and see in him onlya go>od, a friendly man.”
To establish the poet at his court, Frederic namedhim his chamberlain, and gave him the brevet of apension of twenty thousand francs for himself, and fourthousand for his niece, who was invited to come andtake up her abode with her uncle at Potzdam . Beforehe accepted these bounties, it was necessary to obtainpermission from his own sovereign, of whom he was