Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 12, 2025
Before long Le Docteur Akakia appeared at Berlin, arriving modestly from Dresden by post; people fought for the pamphlet, and everybody laughed; the satire was spread over all Europe. In vain did Frederick have it burned on the Place d'Armes by the hands of the common hangman; he could not assuage the despair of Maupertuis.
"But I, the angel of mercy, will redeem the poor 'Akakia," cried the king, trying to obtain possession of the tongs. "Truly this 'Akakia' is too lusty and witty a boy to be laid, like the Emperor Guatimozin, upon the gridiron. It was enough to deny him a public exhibition it was not necessary to destroy him." "Sire, I am a poor, weak man!
"And you have really no copy?" said the king, whose distrust was awakened by Voltaire's too ready compliance. "Was this the only manuscript of the 'Akakia?" "Sire, if you do not believe my word, send your servants and let them search my room. Here are my keys; they shall bring you every scrap of written paper; your majesty will then be convinced.
With the exception of his letters, of Candide, of Akakia, and of a few other of his shorter pieces, the vast mass of his productions has been already consigned to oblivion. How many persons now living have travelled through La Henriade or La Pucelle? How many have so much as glanced at the imposing volumes of L'Esprit des Moeurs?
He saw the executioner throw great piles of his "Akakia" into the fire. He saw the mad flames whirling up into the heavens, and his countenance was clear, and his eyes did not lose their lustre. Higher and higher flashed the flames! broader and blacker the pillars of smoke! but Voltaire smiled peacefully. Conversation and laughter were silenced the crowd looked on breathlessly.
But this is one whose grandly silent, and then occasionally fulminant procedures, Akakia controversies, Olympian solemnities and flamy pirouettings under the contradiction of sinners, we once saw; and think with a kind of human pathos that we shall see no more.
"I judged rightly," said he, with a grimace; "the king wished to sacrifice me to Maupertius. I think this was a master-stroke. I have truly burned the original manuscript, but a copy of it was sent to Leyden eight days since. While the king thinks I am such a good-humored fool as to yield the contest to the proud beggar Maupertius, my 'Akakia' will be published in Leyden.
Voltaire fled from Prussia, giving to the world before he did so one of the most amusing jeux d'esprit ever written the celebrated Diatribe du Docteur Akakia and, after some hesitation, settled down near the Lake of Geneva. A few years later he moved into the château of Ferney, which became henceforward his permanent abode. Voltaire was now sixty years of age. His position was an enviable one.
The credible account is, it soon cracked asunder; and, after the conceivable sputterings, sparklings and flashings of various complexion, issued in lambent airs of "tacit mutual understanding; and in reading of AKAKIA together, with peals of laughter from the King," as the common French Biographers assert.
The Friedrich-Voltaire relation is evidently under sore stress of weather, in those winter-autumn months of 1752, brown leaves, splashy rains and winds moaning outwardly withal. And, alas, the irrepressibly electric Voltaire, still far from having ended, still only just beginning his Anti-Maupertuis discharges, has, in the interim, privately got his DOCTOR AKAKIA ready.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking