"At worst, nothing but a little money thrown away!" thinks Friedrich: "Sure enough, this is a strange Trismegistus, this of mine: star fire-work shall we call him, or terrestrial smoke-and-soot work?
But one can fence oneself against the blind vagaries of the man; and get a great deal of good by him, in the lucid intervals." To Voltaire himself the position is most agitating; but then its glories, were there nothing more! Besides he is always thinking to quit it shortly; which is a great sedative in troubles.
What with intermittencies (safe hidings in one's MARQUISAT, or vacant interlunar cave), with alternations of offence and reconcilement; what with occasional actual flights to Paris (whitherward Voltaire is always busy to keep a postern open; and of which there is frequent talk, and almost continual thought, all along), flights to be called "visits," and privately intending to be final, but never proving so,--the Voltaire-Friedrich relation, if left to itself, might perhaps long have staggered about, and not ended as it did.
But, alas, no relation can be left to itself in this world,--especially if you have a porous skin! There were other French here, as well as Voltaire, revolving in the Court-circle; and that, beyond all others, proved the fatal circumstance to him.

"NE SAVEZ-VOUS PAS, Don't you know," said he to Chancellor Jarriges one day, "that when there are two Frenchmen in a Foreign Court or Country, one of them must die (FAUT QUE L'UN DES DEUX PERISSE) ?" [Seyfarth, ii.

191; &c.

&c.] Which shocked the mind of Jarriges; but had a kind of truth, too.

Jew Hirsch, run into for low smuggling purposes, had been a Cape of Storms, difficult to weather; but the continual leeshore were those French,--with a heavy gale on, and one of the rashest pilots! He did strike the breakers there, at last; and it is well known, total shipwreck was the issue.