When you sent me, enclosed in your Letter, those Verses (among which there are some of charming and inimitable turn) for our Marcus Aurelius of the North, I did well design to pay my court to him with them.

He was at that time to have come to Brussels incognito: we expected him there; but the Quartan Fever, which unhappily he still has, deranged all his projects.

He sent me a courier to Brussels,"-- mark that point, my Cideville;--"and so I set out to find him in the neighborhood of Cleve.
"It was there I saw one of the amiablest men in the world, who forms the charm of society, who would be everywhere sought after if he were not King; a philosopher without austerity; full of sweetness, complaisance and obliging ways (AGREMENS); not remembering that he is King when he meets his friends; indeed so completely forgetting it that he made me too almost forget it, and I needed an effort of memory to recollect that I here saw sitting at the foot of my bed a Sovereign who had an Army of 100,000 men.

That was the moment to have read your amiable Verses to him:"-- yes; but then?
--"Madame du Chatelet, who was to have sent them to me, did not, NE L'A PA FAIT." Alas, no, they are still at Brussels, those charming Verses; and I, for a month past, am here in my cobweb Palace! But I swear to you, the instant I return to Brussels, I, &c.

&c.
[Voltaire, lxii.