VOLTAIRE. 83 



compliments of Venus. But he had not been four 

 months at Potsdam when he had a fresh illustration 

 of his great friend's character, and one all the more 

 important for his own government that it related to 

 Frederick's treatment of his dependents whom he most 

 favoured with his professions of esteem. M. Darget's 

 wife died ; the king wrote him a letter, " touching, 

 pathetic, even highly Christian," on the sad occur- 

 rence; and on the same day amused himself with writing 

 an epigram abusing the deceased. That accounts of the 

 dissolute life secretly led by the philosophic sovereign 

 had reached the poet cannot be doubted, as he plainly 

 avows that had he lived in the court of Pasiphae he 

 would not have troubled himself about her amours.* 

 He afterwards entered fully into this most nauseous 

 subject in his ' Memoirs.' Be the account there given 

 of other parties of Frederick's day exaggerated or exact, 

 this is plain, for here Voltaire speaks as an eye- 

 witness, and speaks against himself: the suppers of 

 Sans Souci (the nodes ccenceque Deuni), so much the 

 subject of jealousy among the scientific and literary 

 men of the court, were disgraced by the exhibition of 

 such brutal indecencies in the ornaments of the royal 

 table, that it requires no small courage in any one to 

 confess having been present a second time after once 

 witnessing those enormities. 



But after about thirteen months had elapsed of 

 what appears to have been uninterrupted enjoyment 

 in spite of these wrongs and these drawbacks, an 

 enjoyment not broken by the indications he perceived 



* Cor. Gen., iii. 443 (17 Nov., 1750). 



G2 



