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Updated: June 15, 2025
But one heart was broken, one heart was bleeding from unseen pain. It was the heart of Elizabeth, the heart of that poor rejected woman who was called the reigning queen, the wife of Frederick. The king, on returning from his excursion to Strasburg, had reminded her of her promise to follow him with her court to Rheinsberg.
But when Frederic was at Rheinsberg, Voltaire was still a courtier; and, though he could not always curb his petulant wit, he had as yet published nothing that could exclude him from Versailles, and little that a divine of the mild and generous school of Grotius and Tillotson might not read with pleasure.
On grand fete days, when etiquette demands it, we shall dine together, but preside at separate tables. And you must forgive me if I never address you. We are dead to one another; and the dead do not speak. In the summer I shall live at Rheinsberg; the king presented it to me on my marriage with you, and I think I have paid dearly enough for it to be allowed to spend my time there alone.
The Crown Prince is aware of that. He sends you therefore, as a beginning, a member of his Rheinsberg circle, a talkative but very learned little man, a Frenchman, Laharpe by name All instructors of the French language have been banished from Berlin by strictest order. Laharpe will come to you without his identity becoming known. That is impossible.
The courtiers, however, saw only the outward signs of that agony that had almost distracted the count in the last four days. For four days, since their last meeting in the garden of Rheinsberg, the prince had not spoken to him. It was in vain he had written and implored an audience. The prince returned his letters unopened.
Two short journeys performed with his father, and a visit to the army which Prince Eugene commanded on the Rhine in 1734, formed the only interruption to the tranquil and philosophical life of Rheinsberg.
Madame von Brandt, who had accompanied the court to Rheinsberg, said, in one of her secret meetings with Count Manteuffel: "The king is unfaithful to his last sweetheart, he has abandoned and rejected his flute." "But with what does the king occupy himself the entire day?" asked the count. "What is it that takes him from his friends and fills up all his time?"
And now he sends to you from Rheinsberg his friend, the Prince Hereditary of Baireuth, to be a support and protection to you and to the Queen so that here in this Court where they drum, trumpet, and parade all day long, you may not finally, in your despair, seize a musket yourself and join the Potsdam Guards! You have a sense of humor, my dear Sonnsfeld.
Ten years ago I wished to have your 'Death of Caesar' given at Rheinsberg, and I had selected a role; just then the Emperor of Germany died, and fate called me out upon the great theatre of the world, where I have since then tried to play my part worthily, and I must consecrate to this all my strength and ability. I can play no other part!
Her silence, however, excited his displeasure, and his brow darkened. He offered her his arm; and, exchanging glances with Madame Morien, he conducted his wife to the dining-saloon, to the magnificently arranged and glittering table. "The gardener of Rheinsberg, Frederick of Hohenzollern, invites his friends to partake of what he has provided.
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