seductive creature that I know, capable of making everybody love you when you wish. You have so many graces of intellect that you can at the same time offend, and deserve the indulgence of everybody. In fact, you would be perfect if you were not man."
So the suppers went on as before, Voltaire was again in the ascendant, scandal was reduced to speak of him in whispers—only, along with his Court-favour, sprang up and flourished the envy which it excited among his fellow-courtiers, especially his countrymen.
A Doctor La Mettrie, one of these French adventurers, imparted to Voltaire, as a piece of news likely to gratify him, that Frederick had said, "I still want Voltaire for another year—one sucks the orange before throwing away the skin;" and about the same time, this or another kind friend told his Majesty that General Manstein having taken his Memoirs to Voltaire for revision, received for reply, "The king sends me his dirty linen to wash, so yours must wait;" and also, that the poet, seeing on his table a packet of the royal verses, brought for correction, had petulantly exclaimed, "This man is both Cæsar and the Abbé Cotin" (a poetaster satirised by Boileau).
Here were at any rate some promising elements of distrust and suspicion. Voltaire took La Mettrie's communication much to heart, and dwelt upon it in his correspondence. He made it, with his doubts and reflections thereupon, the subject of a long letter to his niece, and referred to it more than once afterwards. "I am always thinking of the orange-skin. I try not to believe it, but I fear I am like those betrayed husbands who force themselves to believe that their wives are very
