Even in respect of the very mischief from which he had fled, the detraction and caballing of the envious, he was hardly any better off at Berlin than he had been at Paris. D’Argental, one of the wisest of his friends, had forewarned him of this, and that he had fled from enemies whom at any rate he never saw, only to find other enemies with whom he had to live day after day. This was exactly what came to pass. Voltaire often compared the system of life at Berlin and Potsdam to that of a convent, half military, half literary. The vices of conventual life came with its other features, and among them jealousy, envy, and malice. The tale-bearer, that constant parasite of such societies, had exquisite opportunities, and for a susceptible creature like Voltaire, the result was wholly fatal. The nights and suppers of the gods became, in his own phrase, suppers of Damocles. Alexander the Great was transformed into the tyrant Dionysius. The famous Diatribe of Doctor Akakia, in the autumn of 1752, brought matters to a climax, because its publication was supposed to show marked defiance of the king’s wishes. Maupertuis had been one of the earliest and most strenuous Newtonians in France, and had at his own personal risk helped to corroborate the truth of the new system. In 1735 the zeal for experimental science, which was so remarkable a trait in this century of many-sided intellectual activity, induced the academy of sciences to despatch an expedition to take the actual measure of a degree of meridian below the equator, and the curious and indefatigable De la Condamine, one of the most ardent men of that ardent time, with two other inquirers went to Peru. In 1736 Maupertuis and Clairaut under the same auspices started for the north pole, where, after undergoing the severest hardships, they succeeded in measuring their degree, and verifying by observation Newton’s demonstration of the oblate figure of the earth, a verification that was further completed by La Caille’s voyage to the Cape of Good Hope in 1750.[151] Maupertuis commemorated his share in this excellent work by having a portrait of himself executed, in which the palm of a hand gently flattens the north pole. He was extremely courageous and extremely vain. His costume was eccentric and affected, his temper more jealous and arbitrary than comports with the magnanimity of philosophers, and his manner more gloomily solemn than the conditions of human life can ever justify. With all his absurdities, he was a man of real abilities, and of a solidity of character beyond that of any of his countrymen at Frederick’s court. I would rather live with him, Frederick wrote to the princess Wilhelmina, than with Voltaire; ‘his character is surer,’ which in itself was saying little. But then, the moment he came into collision with Voltaire, his absurdities became the most important thing about him, because it was precisely these which Voltaire was sure to drag into unsparing prominence. In old days they