The French friends, flying each on his own track, with his own load of impediments, Voltaire with his Madame for instance, are a difficult element in such problem; and there has been, and is, much scheming and corresponding about it, within the last month especially.
Voltaire is now at Brussels, with his Du Chatelet, prosecuting that endless "lawsuit with the House of Honsbruck,"-- which he, and we, are both desirous to have done with.

He is at the Hague, too, now and then; printing, about to print, the ANTI-MACHIAVEL; corresponding, to right and left, quarrelling with Van Duren the Printer; lives, while there, in the VIEILLE COUR, in the vast dusky rooms with faded gilding, and grand old Bookshelves "with the biggest spider-webs in Europe." Brussels is his place for Law-Consultations, general family residence; the Hague and that old spider-web Palace for correcting Proof-sheets; doing one's own private studies, which we never quite neglect.

Fain would Friedrich see him, fain he Friedrich; but there is a divine Emilie, there is a Maupertuis, there are--In short, never were such difficulties, in the cooking of an egg with water boiling; and much vain correspondence has already been on that subject, as on others equally extinct.
Correspondence which is not pleasant reading at this time; the rather as no reader can, without endless searching, even understand it.
Correspondence left to us, not in the cosmic, elucidated or legible state; left mainly as the Editorial rubbish-wagons chose to shoot it; like a tumbled quarry, like the ruins of a sacked city;--avoidable by readers who are not forced into it! [Herr Preuss's edition (_OEuvres de Frederic,_ vols.xxi.xxii.

xxiii.) has come out since the above was written: it is agreeably exceptional; being, for the first time, correctly printed, and the editor himself having mostly understood it,--though the reader still cannot, on the terms there allowed.] Take the following select bricks as sample, which are of some use; the general Heading is, KING FRIEDERIC TO M.DE VOLTAIRE (at the Hague, or at Brussels).
"CHARLOTTENBURG, 12th JUNE, 1740 .-- ...

My dear Voltaire, resist no longer the eagerness I have to see you.