was French by inclination, in literature and in philosophy; he was a bad German scholar; he always wrote and spoke in French, and his court was the resort of the cultivated French wits too bold in their views to live in peace at Paris.

Maupertuis, La Mettrie, and the Marquis of Argens had preceded Voltaire to Berlin.

He was received there with enthusiasm and as sovereign of the little court of philosophers.

"A hundred and fifty thousand victorious soldiers," he wrote in a letter to Paris, "no attorneys, opera, plays, philosophy, poetry, a hero who is a philosopher and a poet, grandeur and graces, grenadiers and muses, trumpets and violins, Plato's symposium, society and freedom! Who would believe it?
It is all true, however!" Voltaire found his duties as chamberlain very light.

"It is Caesar, it is Marcus Aurelius, it is Julian, it is sometimes Abbe Chaulieu, with whom I sup; there is the charm of retirement, there is the freedom of the country, with all those little delights of life which a lord of a castle who is a king can procure for his very obedient humble servants and guests.