To the same effect speaks Johannes von Muller: "Voltaire had an Ape called Luc; and the spiteful man, in thus naming the King, meant to stigmatize him as the mere APE of greater men; as one without any greatness of his own."--No; LUC was mischievous, flung stones after passengers; had, according to Clogenson, "bitten Voltaire himself, while being caressed by him;" that was the analogy in Voltaire's mind. Preuss says, this Nickname first occurs "12th December, 1757." Suppose 11th December to have been the day of getting one's leg bitten thrice over; and that, in bed next morning,--stiff, smarting, fretful against the sad ape-tricks and offences of this life,--before getting up to one's Works and Correspondences, the angry similitude had shot, slightly fulgurous and consolatory, athwart the gloom of one's mood? [Longchamp et Wagniere _Memoires,_ i. 34; Johannes von Muller, _Works _ (12mo, Stuttgard, 1821), xxxi. 140 (LETTERS TO HIS BROTHER, No, 218, "July, 1796"); Clogenson's Note, in _OEuvres de Voltaire,_ lxxvii. 103; Preuss, ii. 71.] That will account for Luc. Many of the Voltaire-Friedrich LETTERS are lost; and the remainder lie in sad disorder in all the Editions, their sequence unintelligible without lengthy explanation. So that the following Snatches cannot well be arranged here in the way of Choral Strophe and Antistrophe, as would have been desirable. We shall have to group them loosely under heads; with less respect to date than to subject-matter, and to the reader's convenience for understanding them. VOLTAIRE ON FRIEDRICH, TO DIFFERENT THIRD-PARTIES, DURING THIS WAR. TO D'ARGENTAL (Has not yet heard of LEUTHEN, which happened five days before).... "I have tasted the vengeance of consoling the King of Prussia, and that is enough for me. He goes beating on the one side, and getting beaten on the other: except for another miracle [like Rossbach], he will be ruined. Better have really been a philosopher, as he pretended to be." [_OEuvres de Voltaire,_ lxvii. 139 ("The Delices, 10th December, 1757").]