"Yes, Voltaire, it is a reason. You do not know that the worst intrigues and most infernal machinations originate in their brains?"
"Well, why repeat that again? You are fond of women, and have the misfortune to live under the control of a petticoat, and cannot treat them like soldiers and slaves when they interfere in serious matters."
"Your majesty cannot think there is anything serious in this affair? You must use soporifics, and the pump-workers of miracles and adepts of magic."
"You do not know what you are talking about, M. de Voltaire. What if I told you poor La Mettrie had been poisoned?"
"So will any one be who eats more than his stomach can contain and digest. Every indigestion is poison."
"I tell you his gourmandise alone did not kill him. They gave him a _pâté_, made of an eagle, and told him it was pheasant."
"Well, the Prussian eagle is a deadly bird, but it uses lightning, not poison."
"Well, spare me your metaphors. I will bet a hundred to one it was poison. La Mettrie had faith in their extravagances, poor devil, and told to anyone who would listen, half serious half in jest, that they had shown him ghosts and devils. They crazed his incredulous and volatile mind. As, however, after being Trenck's friend, he had abandoned him, they punished him in their own way, I will now punish them, and in a way they will not forget. As for those who, under the cover of their infamous tricks, plot and deceive the vigilance of the laws----"
Here the king pushed to the door, which had not been entirely shut, and Consuelo heard no more. After waiting for a quarter of an hour in much anxiety, she saw Frederick appear. Rage had made him look frightfully old and ugly, he shut all the doors carefully, without looking at or speaking to her, and when he again approached, there was something so perfectly diabolical in his expression that she thought at first he was about to strangle her. She knew that in his moments of rage, all the savage instincts of his father returned to him, and that he did not hesitate to bruise and kick the legs of his public functionaries with his heavy boots, when he was in a bad humor. La Mettrie used to laugh at these outrages, and used to assure him that the exercise was good for the gout, with which the king was prematurely attacked.