gave D'Alembert a pension; it had but lately been Louis XIV.

who thus lavished kindnesses on foreign scholars: he made an offer to the Encyclopaedists to go and finish their vast undertaking at Berlin.
Catherine II.

made the same offers, asking D'Alembert, besides, to take charge of the education of her son.

"I know your honesty too well," she wrote, "to attribute your refusals to vanity; I know that the cause is merely love of repose in order to cultivate literature and friendship.
But what is to prevent your coming with all your friends?
I promise you and them too all the comforts and every facility that may depend upon me; and perchance you will find more freedom and repose than you have at home.

You do not yield to the entreaties of the King of Prussia, and to the gratitude you owe him, it is true, but then he has no son.