Feb.-March, 1743.

Carnival," said every body; and in the height of it, with all manner of gayeties going on, think where the dainty little shoes have been pinching!

Princesses Ulrique and Amelia to the King.

Berlin, "1st March, 1743.

My dearest Brother, I know not if it is not too bold to trouble your Majesty on private affairs; but the great confidence which my Sister" (Amelia) " and I have in your kindness encourages us to lay before you a sincere avowal as to the state of our bits of finances (nos petites finances), which are a good deal deranged just now; the revenues having, for two years and a half past, been rather small, amounting to only 400 crowns (£60) a year, which could not be made to cover all the little expenses required in the adjustments of ladies. This circumstance, added to our card-playing, though small, which we could not dispense with, has led us into debts. Mine amount to £225 (1500 crowns), my Sister's to £270 (1800 crowns).

"We have not spoken of it to the Queen-Mother, though we are well sure she would have tried to assist us; but as that could not have been done without some inconvenience to her, and she would have retrenched in some of her own little entertainments, I thought we should do better to apply direct to Your Majesty, being persuaded you would have taken it amiss had we deprived the Queen of her smallest pleasure, and especially as we consider you, my dear Brother, the Father of the Family, and hope you will be so gracious as help us. We shall never forget the kind acts of Your Majesty; and we beg you to be persuaded of the perfect and tender attachment with which we are proud to be all our lives, your Majesty's most humble and most obedient Sisters and Servants, LOUISE-ULRIQUE; ANNE-AMÉLIE" (which latter adds anxiously as Postscript, Ulrique having written hitherto),

"P.S.-I most humbly beg Your Majesty not to speak of this to the Queen-Mother, as perhaps she would not approve of the step we are now taking."

Poor little souls, bankruptcy just imminent! I have no doubt Friedrich came handsomely forward on this grave occasion, though Dryasdust has not the grace to give me the least information. "Frederick Baron Trenck," loud-sounding Phantasm once famous in the world, now gone to the Nurseries as mythical, was of this Carnival 1742-3, and of the next, and not of the

9 Euvres de Frédéric, xxvii., I., 387.

Feb.-March, 1743. next again—a tall actuality in that time, swaggering about in sumptuous Lifeguard uniform in his messrooms and assemblyrooms-much in love with himself, the fool! And I rather think, in spite of his dog insinuations, neither Princess had heard of him till twenty years hence, in a very different phasis of his life, the empty, noisy, quasi-tragic fellow; sounds throughout quasi-tragically, like an empty barrel, well-built, longing to be filled. And it is scandalously falsew hat loud Trenck insinuates, what stupid Thiébault (always stupid, incorrect, and the prey of stupidities) confirms as to this matter, fit only for the Nurseries till it cease altogether.

Voltaire, at Paris, is made immortal by a Kiss.

Voltaire and the divine Émilie are home to Cirey again; that of Brussels, with the Royal Aachen Excursion, has been only an interlude. They returned by slow stages, visit after visit, in October last, some slake occurring, I suppose, in that interminable Honsbruck Lawsuit, and much business, not to speak of ennui, urging them back. They are now latterly in Paris itself, safe in their own "little palace (petit palais) at the point of the Isle ;" little jewel of a house on the Isle St. Louis, which they are warming again after long absence in Brussels and the barbarous countries. They have returned hither on sufferance, on good behavior; multitudes of small interests, small to us, great to them-death of old Fleury, hopeful changes of Ministry, not to speak of theatricals and the like-giving opportunity and invitation. Madame, we observe, is marrying her Daughter; the happy man a Duke of Montenero, ill-built Neapolitan, complexion rhubarb, and face consisting much of nose. Madame never wants for business; business enough, were it only in the way shopping, visiting, consulting lawyers, doing the Pure Sciences. As to Voltaire, he has, as usual, Plays to get acted--if he Mahomet, no; Mort de César, yes or no; for the Authorities are shy, in spite of the Public. One Play Voltaire did get acted with a success-think of it, reader !—the exquisite Tragedy Mérope, perhaps now hardly known to you, of which you shall hear anon.

can.

10

10 Letter of Voltaire, in Euvres, lxxiii., 24.

of

Feb.-March, 1743.

But Plays are not all. Old Fleury being dead, there is again a Vacancy in the Academy; place among the sacred Forty-vacant for Voltaire, if he can get it. Voltaire attaches endless importance to this place; beautiful as a feather in one's cap; useful also to the solitary Ishmael of Literature, who will now, in a certain sense, have Thirty-nine Comrades, and at least one fixed House of Call in this world. In fine, nothing can be more ardent than the wish of M. de Voltaire for these supreme felicities. To be of the Forty, to get his Plays acted-oh, then were the Saturnian Kingdom come; and a man might sing Io triumphe, and take his ease in the Creation more or less! Stealthily, as if on shoes of felt-as if on paws of velvet, with eyes luminous, tail bushy--he walks warily, all energies compressively summoned, toward that high goal. Hush! steady! May you soon catch that bit of savory red-herring, then, worthiest of the human feline tribe! As to the Play Mérope, here is the no

table passage:

Paris, Wednesday, 20th February, 1743. First night of Mérope, which raised the Paris Public into transports, so that they knew not what to do to express their feelings. 'Author! M. de Voltaire! Author!' shouted they, summoning the Author, what is now so common, but was then an unheard-of originality. 'Author! Author!' Author, poor blushing creature, lay squatted somewhere, and durst not come; was ferreted out; produced in the Lady Villars's Box-Dowager Maréchale de Villars, and her Son's Wife, Duchesse de Villars, being there, known friends of Voltaire's. Between these Two he stands ducking some kind of bow, uncertain, embarrassed what to do, with a Theatre all in rapturous delirium round him-uncertain it too, but not embarrassed. 'Kiss him! Madame la Duchesse de Villars, embrassez Voltaire !' Yes, kiss him, fair Duchess, in the name of France! shout all mortals; and the younger Lady has to do it; does it with a charming grace, urged by Madame la Maréchale her mother-in-law. Ah! and Madame la Maréchale was herself an old love of Voltaire's, who had been entirely unkind to him!

"Thus are you made immortal by a Kiss, and have not your choice of the Kiss, Fate having chosen for you. The younger Lady was a Daughter of Maréchal de Noailles" (our fine old Maréchal, gone to the

11 Duvernet (T. J. D. V.), Vie de Voltaire, p. 128; Voltaire himself, (Euvres, ii., 142; Barbier, ii., 358.

March-June, 1743. Wars against his Britannic Majesty in those very weeks); “infinitely clever (infiniment d'esprit); beautiful too, I understand, though toward forty; hangs to the human memory slightly, but indissolubly, ever since that Wednesday Night of 1743."

Old Maréchal de Noailles is to the Wars, we said; it is in a world all twinkling with watch-fires, and raked coals of War, that these fine Carnival things go on. Noailles is 70,000 strong; posted in the Rhine Countries, middle and upper Rhine; vigilantly patrolling about, to support those staggering Bavarian Affairs, especially to give account of his Britannic Majesty. Britannic Majesty is thought to have got the Dutch hoisted after all; to have his sword out; and, ere long, does actually get on march, up the Rhine hitherward, as is too evident to Noailles, to the Kaiser, and every body!

CHAPTER IV.

AUSTRIAN AFFAIRS MOUNT TO A DANGEROUS HEIGHT.

LED by fond hopes, and driven also by that sad fear of a Visit from his Britannic Majesty, the poor Kaiser, in the rear of those late Seckendorf successes, quitted Frankfurt April 17th, and the second day after got to München. Saw himself in München again after a space of more than two years, "all ranks of people crowding out to welcome him," the joy of all people, for themselves and for him, being very great. Next day he drove out to Nymphenburg; saw the Pandour devastations there; might have seen the window where the rugged old Unertl set up his ladder: "For God's sake, your Serenity, have nothing to do with those French!" and did not want for sorrowful comparisons of past and present.

It was remarked, he quitted München in a day or two, preferring Country Palaces still unruined-for example, Wolnzach, a Schloss he has some fifty miles off, down the Iser Valley, not far from the little Town of Mosburg, which, at any rate, is among the Broglio-Seckendorf posts, and convenient for business. Broglio and Seckendorf lie dotted all about, from Braunau up to Ingolstadt and farther, chiefly in the Iser and Inn

9th-17th May, 1743.

Valleys, but on the north side of the Donau too, over an area say of 2000 square miles; Seckendorf preaching incessantly to Broglio, what is sun-clear to all eyes but Broglio's, "Let us concentrate, M. le Maréchal; let us march and attack! If Prince Karl come upon us in this scattered posture, what are we to do?" Broglio continuing deaf; Broglio answering-in a way to drive one frantic.

* *

The Kaiser himself takes Broglio in hand; has a scene with Broglio, which, to readers that study it, may be symbolical of much that is gone and that is coming. It fell "about the middle of May" (prior to May 17th, as readers will guess before long); and here, according to report, was the somewhat explosive finale it had. Prince Conti, the same who ran to join Maillebois, and has proved a gallant fellow and got command of a Division, attends Broglio in this important interview at Wolnzach: Schloss of Wolnzach, May, 1743. “The Kaiser pressed, in the most emphatic manner, That the Two Armies" (French and Bavarian) "should collect and unite for immediate action; to which Broglio declared he could by no means assent, not having any order from Paris of that tenor. The Kaiser thereupon: 'I give you my order for it; I, by the Most Christian King's appointment, am Commander-inChief of your Army as of my own, and I now order you;' taking out his Patent, and spreading it before Broglio with the sign-manual visible. Broglio knew the Patent very well, but answered 'That he could not, for all that, follow the wish of his Imperial Majesty; that he, Broglio, had later orders, and must obey them.' Upon which the Imperial Majesty, nature irrepressibly asserting itself, towered into Olympian height; flung his Patent on the table, telling Conti and Broglio, 'You can send that back, then; Patents like that are of no service to me,' and quitted them in a blaze."

The indisputable fact is, Prince Karl is at the door; nay, he has beaten-in the door in a frightful manner, and has Braunau, key of the Inn, again under siege. Not we getting Passau; it is he getting Braunau! A week ago (9th May), his vanguard, on the sudden, cut to pieces our poor Bavarian 8000 and their poor Minuzzi, who were covering Braunau, and has ended him

1

1 Adelung, iii., b, 150; cites Etats Politique (Annual Register of those times), xiii., 16. Nothing of this scene in Campagnes, which is officially careful to suppress the like of this.