"'Upon which, see, paltry La Beaumelle has become my enemy for life!' shrieks Voltaire many times afterwards: 'And it was false, I declare to Heaven, and again declare; it was not I, it was D'Argens quizzing me about it, that called his Majesty's attention to that PENSEE of Blockhead La Beaumelle,--you treacherous Perpetual President, stirring up enemies against me, and betraying secrets of the King's table.' Sorrow on your red wig, and you!--It is certain La Beaumelle, soon after this, left Berlin: not in love with Voltaire. And there soon appeared, at Franfurt-on-Mayn, a Pirate Edition of our brand-new SIECLE DE LOUIS QUATORZE (with Annotations scurrilous and flimsy);--La Beaumelle the professed Perpetrator; 'who received for the job 7 pounds 10s. net!' [Ib. xx.] asseverates the well-informed Voltaire. Oh, M. de Voltaire, and why not leave it to him, then? Poor devil, he got put into the Bastille too, by and by; Royal Persons being touched by some of his stupid foot-notes. "La Beaumelle had a long course of it, up and down the world, in and out of the Bastille; writing much, with inconsiderable recompense, and always in a wooden manure worthy of his First vocation in the Geneva time. 'A man of pleasing physiognomy,' says Formey, 'and expressed himself well. I received his visit 14th January, 1752,'--to which latter small circumstance (welcome as a fixed date to us here) La Beaumelle's Biography is now pretty much reduced for mankind. [Formey, ii. 221.] He continued Maupertuis's adorer: and was not a bad creature, only a dull wooden one, with obstinate temper. A LIFE OF MAUPERTUIS of his writing was sent forth lately, [--Vie de Maupertuis--(cited above), Paris, 1866.] after lying hidden a hundred years: but it is dull, dead, painfully ligneous, like all the rest; and of new or of pleasant tells us nothing. "His enmity to M. de Voltaire did prove perpetual:--a bramble that might have been dealt with by fingers, or by fingers and scissors, but could not by axes, and their hewing and brandishing. 'This is the ninety-fifth anonymous Calumny of La Beaumelle's, this that you have sent me!' says Voltaire once. The first stroke or two had torn the bramble quite on end: 'He says he will pursue you to Hell even,' writes one of the Voltaire kind friends from Frankfurt, on that 7 pounds 10s. business. 'A L'ENFER?' answers M. de Voltaire, with a toss: 'Well, I should think so, he, and at a good rate of speed. But whether he will find me there, must be a question!' If you want to have an insignificant accidental fellow trouble you all your days, this is the way of handling him when he first catches hold."