Visit much misunderstood in France and England, down to this day.

By no means sorted out into accuracy and intelligibility; but left as (what is saying a great deal!) probably the wastest chaos of all the Sections of Friedrich's History.

And has, alone of them, gone over the whole world; being withal amusing to read, and therefore well and widely remembered, in that mendacious and semi-intelligible state.

To lay these goblins, full of noise, ignorance and mendacity, and give some true outline of the matter, with what brevity is consistent with deciphering it at all, is now our sad task,--laborious, perhaps disgusting; not impossible, if readers will loyally assist.
Voltaire had taken every precaution that this Visit should succeed, or at least be no loss to one of the parties.

In a preliminary Letter from Paris,--prose and verse, one of the cleverest diplomatic pieces ever penned; Letter really worth looking at, cunning as the song of Apollo, Voltaire symbolically intimates: "Well, Sire, your old Danae, poor malingering old wretch, is coming to her Jove.