Freytag’s zeal received a cruel rebuff: orders arrived to let the poet go. “I gave you no orders like that,” wrote Frederick, “you should never make more noise than a thing deserves. I wanted Voltaire to give up to you the key, the cross, and the volume of poems I had intrusted to him;, as soon as all that was given up to you I can’t see what earthly reason could have induced you to make this uproar.” At last, on the 6th of July, “all this affair of Ostrogoths and Vandals being over,” Voltaire left Frankfort precipitately. His niece had taken the road to Paris, whence she soon wrote to him, “There is nobody in France, I say nobody without exception, who has not condemned this violence mingled with so much that is ridiculous and cruel; it makes a deeper impression than you would believe. Everybody says that you could not do otherwise than you are doing, in resolving to meet with philosophy things so unphilosophical. We shall do very well to hold our tongues; the public speaks quite enough.” Voltaire held his tongue, according to his idea of holding his tongue, drawing, in his poem of _La Loi naturelle,_ dedicated at first to the margravine of Baireuth and afterwards to the Duchess of Saxe-Gotha, a portrait of Frederick which was truthful and at the same time bitter: “Of incongruities a monstrous pile, Calling men brothers, crushing them the while; With air humane, a misanthropic brute; Ofttimes impulsive, sometimes over-’cute; Weak ‘midst his choler, modest in his pride; Yearning for virtue, lust personified; Statesman and author, of the slippery crew; My patron, pupil, persecutor too.” Voltaire’s intimacy with the Great Frederick was destroyed it had for a while done honor to both of them; it had ended by betraying the pettinesses and the meannesses natural to the king as well as to the poet. Frederick did not remain without anxiety on the score of Voltaire’s rancor; Voltaire dreaded nasty diplomatic proceedings on the part of the king; he had been threatened with as much by Lord Keith, Milord Marechal, as he was called on the Continent from the hereditary title he had lost in his own country through his attachment to the cause of the Stuarts:--