"Potsdam is Sparta and Athens joined in one; nothing but reviewing and poetry day by day. The Algarottis, the Maupertuises, are here; have each his work, serious for himself; then gay Supper with a King, who is a great man and the soul of good company."... Sparta and Athens, I tell you: "a Camp of Mars and the Garden of Epicurus; trumpets and violins, War and Philosophy. I have my time all to myself; am at Court and in freedom,--if I were not entirely free, neither an enormous Pension, nor a Gold Key tearing out one's pocket, nor a halter (LICOU), which they call CORDON of an ORDER, nor even the Suppers with a Philosopher who has gained Five Battles, could yield me the least happiness." [--OEuvres,--lxxiv. 325, 326, 333 (Letters, to D'Argental and others, "27th April-8th May, 1751").] Looked at by you, my outside friends,--ah, had I health and YOU here, what a situation! But seen from within, it is far otherwise. Alongside of these warblings of a heart grateful to the first of Kings, there goes on a series of utterances to Niece Denis, remarkable for the misery driven into meanness, that can be read in them. Ill-health, discontent, vague terror, suspicion that dare not go to sleep; a strange vague terror, shapeless or taking all shapes--a body diseased and a mind diseased. Fear, quaking continually for nothing at all, is not to be borne in a handsome manner. And it passes, often enough (in these poor LETTERS), into transient malignity, into gusts of trembling hatred, with a tendency to relieve oneself by private scandal of the house we are in. Seldom was a miserabler wrong-side seen to a bit of royal tapestry. A man hunted by the little devils that dwell unchained within himself; like Pentheus by the Maenads, like Actaeon by his own Dogs. Nay, without devils, with only those terrible bowels of mine, and scorbutic gums, it is bad enough: "Glorious promotions to me here," sneers he bitterly; "but one thing is indisputable, I have lost seven of my poor residue of teeth since I came!" In truth, we are in a sadly scorbutic state; and that, and the devils we lodge within ourselves, is the one real evil. Could not Suspicion--why cannot she!--take her natural rest; and all these terrors vanish? Oh, M. de Voltaire!--The practical purport, to Niece Denis, always is: Keep my retreat to Paris open; in the name of Heaven, no obstruction that way! Miserable indeed; a man fatally unfit for his present element! But he has Two considerable Sedatives, all along; two, and no third visible to me. Sedative FIRST: that, he can, at any time, quit this illustrious Tartarus-Elysium, the envy of mankind;--and indeed, practically, he is always as if on the slip; thinking to be off shortly, for a time, or in permanence; can be off at once, if things grow too bad. Sedative SECOND is far better: His own labor on LOUIS QUATORZE, which is steadily going on, and must have been a potent quietus in those Court-whirlwinds inward and outward.