So wrote Chancellor Cocceji, on the Saturday, washing his hands of this sorry business. Voltaire is ready to make desperate oath, if needful. We said once, M. de Voltaire was not given to lying; far the reverse. But yet, see, if you drive him into a corner with a sword at his throat,--alas, yes, he will lie a little! Forgery lay still less in his habits; but he can do a stroke that way, too (one stroke, unique in his life, I do believe), if a wild boar, with frothy tusks, is upon him. Tell it not in Gath,--except for scientific purposes! And be judicial, arithmetical, in passing sentence on it; not shrieky, mobbish, and flying off into the Infinite! Berlin, of course, is loud on these matters. "The man whom the King delighted to honor, this is he, then!" King Friedrich has quitted Town, some while ago; returned to Potsdam "January 30th." Glad enough, I suppose, to be out of all this unmusical blowing of catcalls and indecent exposure. To Voltaire he has taken no notice; silently leaves Voltaire, in his nook of the Berlin Schloss, till the foul business get done. "VOLTAIRE FILOUTE LES JUIFS (picks Jew pockets)," writes he once to Wilhelmina: "will get out of it by some GAMBADE (summerset)," writes he another time; "but" ["31st December, 1750" (--OEuvres de Frederic,--xxvii, i. 198); "3d February, 1751" (ib. 201).]--And takes the matter with boundless contempt, doubtless with some vexation, but with the minimum of noise, as a Royal gentleman might. Jew Hirsch is busy preparing for his new desperate Action; getting together proof that the Jewels have been changed. In proof Jew Hirsch will be weak; but in pleading, in public pamphlets, and keeping a winged Apollo fluttering disastrously in such a mud-bath, Jew Hirsch will be strong. Voltaire, "out of magnanimous pity to him," consents next week to an Agreement. Agreement is signed on Thursday, 26th February, 1751:--Papers all to be returned, Jewels nearly all, except one or two, paid at Hirsch's own price. Whereby, on the whole, as Klein computes, Voltaire lost about 150 pounds;--elsewhere I have seen it computed at 187 pounds: not the least matter which. Old Hirsch has died in the interim ("Of broken heart!" blubbers the Son); day not known.