In self-defence, I have demanded to see the Original of said Excerpt; and the Honorable Member in question does not produce it.

What say you ?' 'Shame to him!' say they all [there seem to be but few Scientific Members, and most of them, it is insinuated, have Pensions from the King through their Perpetual President];--and determine to make a Star-chamber matter of it! "Accordingly, next day, OCTOBER 8th) Secretary Formey writes officially to Konig, 'Produce that Letter within one month,'-- and has got his Majesty to order, That our Prussian Minister at the Hague shall take charge of delivering such message, and shall mark on what day.

Thing serious, you see!--Prussian Minister at the Hague delivers, and dockets accordingly.

To Konig's astonishment; who is in a scene of deep trouble at this time; Royal Highness the Stadtholder suddenly dead, or dying: 'died October 22d; leaving a very young Heir, and a very sorrowful Widow and Country.' Much to think of, that lies apart from the Maupertuis matter! Which latter, however, is so very serious too, his Prussian Majesty's Minister at Berne is now charged to make new perquisition for the Leibnitz Original there: In short, within one month that Document is peremptorily wanted at Berlin." High proceedings these;--and calculated to have one result, if no other.
Namely, that, at this point, as readers can fancy, the idler Public, seeing a street-quarrel in progress, began to take interest in the Question of MINIMUM; and quasi-scientific gentlemen to gather round, and express, with cheery capable look, their opinions,--still legible in the vanished JUGEMENS LIBRES (of Hamburg), GAZETTE DE SAVANS (Leipzig), and other poor Shadows of JOURNALS, if you daringly evoke them from the other side of Styx.

Which, the whole matter being now so indisputably extinct, shadowy, Stygian, we will not here be guilty of doing; but hasten to the catastrophes, that have still a memorability.
"Konig, having in fact nothing more to say about the Leibnitz Excerpt, was in no breathless haste to obey his summons; he sat almost two months before answering anything.