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During this time also, in direct disregard of a promise he had made Frederick, there appeared a supplement to "Doctor Akakia," more offensive than the main text. It was followed by a virulent correspondence with Maupertuis. Voltaire was filling up the vials of wrath of the king. On May 31 he reached Frankfort. Here the blow fell.
Voltaire laughed heartily, seized the tongs, and pushed it farther into the flames. "Sire, sire, I am the devil, and I will not allow my victim to be torn from me. My 'Akakia' was only worthy of the lower regions; you condemned it, and therefore it must suffer. I, the devil, command it to burn."
The famous Diatribe du Docteur Akakia is still fresh with a fiendish gaiety after a hundred and fifty years; but to realise to the full the skill and malice which went to the making of it, one must at least have glanced at the flat insipid production which called it forth, and noted with what a diabolical art the latent absurdities in poor Maupertuis' rêveries have been detected, dragged forth into the light of day, and nailed to the pillory of an immortal ridicule.
Disdainful, to how high a degree, of AKAKIA brabbles, and Voltaire gossip for or against! In winter went to St. Malo; found his good Father gone; but a loving Sister still there. But at St. Malo, what wars, and rumors of war, all over the world! 'Never mind, then, wrote the King: 'Improve your health; go to Italy, if you can.
His whole face glowed with flaming scorn; and his great, fiery eyes flashed amongst the crowd, greeting here and there an acquaintance. This man was Voltaire Voltaire, who had come to witness the execution of his "Akakia," which had been published in Leyden, and scattered abroad throughout Berlin.
Once more the Rhadamanthine fact is: Voltaire, as King's Chamberlain, was bound, without any promise, to forbear, and rigidly suppress such an AKAKIA against the King's Perpetual President. But withal let candid readers consider how difficult it was to do.
Beautiful interlude, or half-hour of orchestral fiddling in this Voltaire Drama; half-hour which could not last! On the heel of which there unhappily followed an Afterpiece or codicil to the Berlin Visit; which, so to speak, set the whole theatre on fire, and finished by explosion worse than AKAKIA itself.
"We, Masons, describing the deplorable estate of religion under the Jewish law, speak in figures: 'Her tomb was in the rubbish and filth cast forth of the temple, and acacia wove its branches over her monuments; akakia being the Greek word for innocence, or being free from sin; implying that the sins and corruptions of the old law, and devotees of the Jewish altar, had hid Religion from those who sought her, and she was only to be found where innocence survived, and under the banner of the Divine Lamb, and, as to ourselves, professing that we were to be distinguished by our Acacy, or as true Acacians in our religious faiths and tenets.
And now, amidst the breathless silence of the crowd, a functionary of the king read the sentence that sentence which condemned the "Akakia," that malicious and slanderous publication holding up the noble, virtuous, and renowned scholar Maupertius to the general mockery of Paris. Voltaire stood calm and smiling at the open window.
The absurd blusterous Turkey-cock, who has, every now and then, been tyrannizing over you for twenty years, here you have him filled with gunpowder, so to speak, and the train laid. Perhaps, had AKAKIA not yet been written But all lies ready there; one spark will do it, at any moment; and there are unguarded moments, and the Tempter must prevail!
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