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Updated: June 12, 2025
Voltaire was not proud; he readily heaped apology upon apology; but he was irritable and vain; his ill-humor against Maupertuis came out in a pamphlet, as bitter as it was witty, entitled La Diatribe du Docteur Akakia; copies were circulating in Berlin; the satire was already printed anonymously, when the Great Frederick suddenly entered the lists.
I entreat you to do this, as you will not believe my simple word." The king fixed his eyes steadfastly upon Voltaire. "I believe you. It would be unworthy of you to deceive me, and unworthy of me to mistrust you. I believe you; but I will make assurance doubly sure. The 'Akakia' is no longer upon paper, but it is in your head, and I fear your head more than I do all the paper in the world.
He wrote a pamphlet, full of wit and as full of bitterness, called "La diatribe du docteur Akakia," so evidently satirizing Maupertuis that the king grew furious. It was printed anonymously, and circulated surreptitiously in Berlin, but a copy soon fell into Frederick's hand, who knew at once that but one man in the kingdom was capable of such a production.
Then or later, sure enough, AKAKIA does blaze aloft about that time; and all Berlin, and all the world, is in conversation over Maupertuis and it, 30,000 copies sold in Paris: and Friedrich naturally was in a towering passion at his Chamberlain. Nothing for the Chamberlain but to fly his presence; to shriek, piteously, "Accident, your Majesty! VOLTAIRE. "AH, MON DIEU, Sire, in the state I am in!
"Look here! this is my manuscript, you know my hand-writing, you see that the ink is scarcely dry, the work just completed. Well, then, see now, sire, what I make of the 'Akakia." He took the manuscript and cast it into the fire before which they were both sitting. "What are you doing?" cried the king, hastily; and, without regarding the flames, ho stretched out his hand to seize the manuscript.
Even Frederick the Great was forced to see at last in the Patriarch of Ferney something more than a monkey with a genius for French versification. He actually came to respect the author of Akakia, and to cherish his memory. 'Je lui fais tous les matins ma prière, he told d'Alembert, when Voltaire had been two years in the grave; 'je lui dis, Divin Voltaire, ora pro nobis.
He proposed, also, that a hole should be dug to the centre of the earth, in order to discover its condition and quality; also that the brain of Pythagoras should be searched for and opened, in order to ascertain the nature of the soul. These ridiculous and fabulous propositions Voltaire replied to under the name of Dr. Akakia; he asserted that he was only anxious to heal the unhappy Maupertius.
Frederic had, by playing for his own amusement on the feelings of the two jealous and vainglorious Frenchmen, succeeded in producing a bitter enmity between them. Voltaire resolved to set his mark a mark never to be effaced; on the forehead of Maupertuis, and wrote the exquisitely ludicrous Diatribe of Doctor Akakia.
The king, to whom Voltaire had shown his manuscript, felt this; and although he had listened to the "Akakia" with the most lively pleasure, and often interrupted the reading by loud laughter and applause, he asked Voltaire to destroy the manuscript.
Suddenly a loud and derisive laugh was heard, and a powerful voice cried out: "Look at the spirit of Maupertius, which is dissolving into smoke! Oh, the thick, black smoke! How much wood consumed in vain! The 'Akakia' is immortal you burn him here, but he still lives, and the whole world will know and appreciate him. So said Voltaire, as he dashed the window down, and stepped back in the room.
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