Imagine him
embracing me at our first interview, and carrying me in his arms
as one of my valets would have done. He was dirty, coarse, and
ill-dressed. Well, all the Frenchmen ran after him; one would
have supposed by their eagerness that they had never seen a
regal countenance."
"Yet there was no occasion to run very far to see the handsome
face of a king."
"Hold your tongue, madame la baronne de Pamklek, you are a flatterer.
There is a crowned head which for thirty years has desired to visit
France, but I have always turned a deaf ear, and will resist it as
long as possible."
"Who, sire, is the king so unfortunate as to banished by you from
your majesty's presence?"
"Who? The king of philosophers, the rival of Voltaire, my brother
of Prussia. Ah, my dear baronne, he is a bad fellow; he detests me,
and I have no love for him. A king does wisely, certainly, to submit
his works to the judgment of a Freron! It would be outrageous
scandal if he came here. Great and small would crowd around him,
and there would not be twenty persons in my train."
"Ah! sire , do you think so?"
"I am sure of it. The French now-a-days do not care for their
kings, and
will be renewed at an early day. After
all, philosophers believe that Frederick II protects them: the
honest man laughs both at them and me."
"At you, sire? Impossible."
"No, no; I know the impertinences he is guilty of towards me:
but let him.
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