Voltaire is, by nature, an attached or attachable creature; flinging out fond boughs to every kind of excellence, and especially holding firm by old ties he had made.

One fancies in him a mixed set of emotions, direct and reflex,--the consciousness of safe shelter, were there nothing more; of glory to oneself, derived and still derivable from this high man:--in fine, a sum-total of actual desire to live with King Friedrich, which might, surely, have almost sufficed even for Voltaire, in a quieter element.

But the element was not quiet,--far from it; nor was Voltaire easily sufficeable! PERPETUAL PRESIDENT MAUPERTUIS HAS A VISIT FROM ONE KONIG, OUT OF HOLLAND, CONCERNING THE INFINITELY LITTLE.
Whether Maupertuis, in red wig with yellow bottom, saw these high gauderies of the Carrousel, the Plays in Princess Amelia's Antechamber, and the rest of it, I do not know: but if so, he was not in the top place; nor did anybody take notice of him, as everybody did of Voltaire.
Meanwhile, I have something to quote, as abridged and distilled from various sources, chiefly from Formey; which will be of much concernment farther on.
Some four weeks after those Carrousel effulgencies, Perpetual President Maupertuis had a visit (September 21st, just while the Sun was crossing the Line; thanks to Formey for the date, who keeps a Note-book, useful in these intricacies): visit from Professor Konig, an effective mathematical man from the Dutch parts.

Whom readers have forgotten again; though they saw him once: in violent quarrel, about the Infinitely Little, with Madame du Chatelet, Voltaire witnessing with pain;--it was just as they quitted Cirey together, ten years ago, for these new courses of adventure.

Do readers recall the circumstance?
Maupertuis, referee in that quarrel, had, with a bluntness offensive to the female mind, declared Konig indisputably in the right; and there had followed a dryness between the divine Emilie and the Flattener of the Earth, scarcely to be healed by Voltaire's best efforts.
Konig has gone his road since then; become a fine solid fellow; Professor in a Dutch University; more latterly Librarian to the Dutch Stadtholder: still frank of speech, and with a rugged free-and-easy turn, but of manful manners; really a person of various culture, and as is still noticeable, of a solid geometric turn of mind.