His flight meant the beginning of a period of long walks and short meals. First of all he went to Berlin where he spent several years writing badly paid articles for a number of theatrical papers. Then he engaged himself as private secretary to a rich friend who was going to take a trip around the world. But no sooner had they started than the Seven Years’ war must break out. The friend, obliged to join his regiment, had taken the first post-chaise for home and Lessing, once more without a job, found himself stranded in the city of Leipzig. But he was of a sociable nature and soon found a new friend in the person of one Eduard Christian von Kleist, an officer by day and a poet by night, a sensitive soul who gave the hungry ex-theologian insight into the new spirit that was slowly coming over this world. But von Kleist was shot to death in the battle of Kunersdorf and Lessing was driven to such dire extremes of want that he became a columnist. Then followed a period as private secretary to the commander of the fortress of Breslau where the boredom of garrison life was mitigated by a profound study of the works of Spinoza which then, a hundred years after the philosopher’s death, were beginning to find their way to foreign countries. All this, however, did not settle the problem of the daily Butterbrod. Lessing was now almost forty years old and wanted a home of his own. His friends suggested that he be appointed keeper of the Royal Library. But years before, something had happened that had made Lessing persona non grata at the Prussian court. During his first visit to Berlin he had made the acquaintance of Voltaire. The French philosopher was nothing if not generous and being a person without any idea of “system” he had allowed the young man to borrow the manuscript of the “Century of Louis XIV,” then ready for publication. Unfortunately, Lessing, when he hastily left Berlin, had (entirely by accident) packed the manuscript among his own belongings. Voltaire, exasperated by the bad coffee and the hard beds of the penurious Prussian court, immediately cried out that he had been robbed. The young German had stolen his most important manuscript, the police must watch the frontier, etc., etc., etc., after the manner of an excited Frenchman in a foreign country. Within a few days the postman returned the lost document, but it was accompanied by a letter from Lessing in which the blunt young Teuton expressed his own ideas of people who would dare to suspect his honesty. This storm in a chocolate-pot might have easily been forgotten, but the eighteenth century was a period when chocolate-pots played a great rôle in the lives of men and women and Frederick, even after a lapse of almost twenty years, still loved his pesky French friend and would not hear of having Lessing at his court.