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 again went to him, leaving Madame Denis and Longchamp in charge of his house. He left Paris June 15th, and reached, July 10th, Sans-Souci, near Potsdam, the country place of the king, seventeen miles from Berlin. Here everybody courted him, and all that the king had was at his disposal. At a grand celebration in Berlin, Voltaire's appearance caused more enthusiasm than did the king's. Frederick was now thirty-eight years of age, had finished his first war and was devoting himself to making Berlin—a city of 90,000 people—attractive and famous. At his nightly concerts were Europe's most famous artists. At his suppers were, besides Voltaire, many of the choice spirits of the literary world. Here, after thirty years of storms, Voltaire felt that he had found a port. Here was no Mirepoix to be despised and feared, no Bull Unigenitus, no offensive body of clergy and courtiers seeking fat preferment, no billets de confession, nor lettres de cachet, no Frérons to irritate authors, no cabals to damn a play, no more semblance of a king. Here for a time Voltaire was so happy that the long prospected trip to Italy was forgotten, but ere the year was out Paris, in the distance, to our Frenchman grew even more attractive and beautiful than before; several disagreeable things happened as a result of the decided attachment of Frederick for Voltaire,—jealousy and all forms of littleness ever present at court were repugnant to Voltaire. At this time he had an unhappy misunderstanding with Lessing, and in this and the following year he did much work on his "Age of Louis XIV."

In November his propensity for speculation led him into the most deplorable lawsuit of his life. He supplied a Berlin jeweller named Abraham Hirsch with money and sent him to Dresden to buy depreciated banknotes at a large discount. Hirsch attended to his private business, it seems, and neglected Voltaire's. He was recalled and the speculation abandoned; but the wily agent was not easily shaken off, as Voltaire found to his cost. Voltaire had a constitutional persistence that made it all but impossible for him to submit to imposition, and he fought in this