The French court wished to secure the alliance of Friedrich. No one seemed a more fitting mediator than his early counsellor, who was induced to accept the mission, and to set out for Berlin, where an enthusiastic welcome awaited him, apartments in the palace being placed at his disposal. Yet, in spite of the success of this and other public services, his enemies in Paris remained in full possession of the field. For the second time Voltaire sought admission into the _Académie_--an empty honour, the granting or refusal of which could neither add to nor detract from his fame. The prestige of that society, however, he seemed to consider essential to his safety against the increasing violence and formidable array of his enemies, who were bent on crushing him, by whatever means. It was only by submitting to the mortification of qualifying some of his opinions that he at length succeeded in his object. Notwithstanding the address with which he manages his language, it were better, as his biographer--the Marquis de Condorcet--justly remarks, he had renounced the _Académie_ than have had the weakness to submit to so evident a farce. On succeeding to a vacant chair it was customary, besides a eulogy upon the deceased member, to speak in set terms of praise of Richelieu and Louis XIV. This traditional and servile practice the new Academician was the first to break through. Philosophy and literature were treated of in unaccustomed strains of freedom, and his good example has been influential on after generations. “I was deemed worthy [writes Voltaire] to be one of the forty useless members of the _Académie_, was appointed historiographer of France, and created by the king one of the gentlemen in ordinary of his chamber. From this I concluded it was better, in order to make the most trifling fortune, to speak four words to a king’s mistress, than to write a hundred volumes.” A sort of experience he has finely illustrated in his romance of _Zadig_. Stanislaus, the ex-king of Poland, was keeping his Court at Luneville, not far from Cirey, where he divided his time between his mistress and his confessor. To this royal retreat the friends of Cirey were invited, and the whole of the year 1749 was passed there. Meanwhile Madame de Châtelet died, and Voltaire, much affected by his loss, returned to Paris. Friedrich redoubled his solicitation with new hope. “I was destined to run from king to king, although I loved liberty to idolatry.... He was well assured that in reality his verse and prose were superior to my verse and prose; though as to the former, he thought there was a certain something that I, in quality of academician, might give to his writings, and there was no kind of flattery, no seduction, he did not employ to engage me to come.”