growing estrangement was put by Voltaire's wittiest and most pitiless personal satire on Maupertuis, the president of the Berlin Academy, a vain but worthy individual. Frederick could not help laughing at it, but he forbade its publication. Voltaire pretended to agree, but in a few days the Diatribe of Doctor Akakia appeared. It was received with great applause and merriment, but Frederick was furious. He ordered the pamphlet to be burned by the hangman and insisted on an apology from Voltaire, who in his turn sent back his order and chamberlain's key. This was the last straw, and Voltaire left Berlin. But he carried off with him a volume of Frederick's verses, probably as a curiosity. He was arrested at Frankfurt and treated with uncalled-for brutality by order of the King.
The whole visit reflects no credit whatever on either of the parties. Voltaire's foolish vanity and hot temper seem to have obscured an intellect shrewd enough to have known that such a life as he lived in the Prussian capital was empty, profitless, and utterly vain. For Frederick there was more excuse, because monarchs at all times have claimed service and homage in return for a passing smile of friendship; Court attendance they have considered a sufficiently rich reward for any devotion; and thrones have ever been surrounded by the refuse of orange-rinds out of which the juice has been sucked.
Voltaire, now over sixty, entered upon the last
