"Well, sire, are you not anxious to see and hear him?" said La Mettrie. "I own I am."
"How so?" said the king. "Why be curious about that? The spectacle of folly is always sad."
"If it be folly, I own it. But what if it is not?"
"Listen, gentlemen," said Frederick. "This skeptic--this atheist pure--has faith in the wonderful, and believes in the eternal life of M. de Saint Germain! You need not be surprised; for La Mettrie believes in death, thunder and ghosts."
"I own that the latter is a weakness; but that my dread of death, and all that can inflict it, is but reason and wisdom. What the devil should one be anxious about, if not of safety and life?"
"I will return to Saint Germain," said La Mettrie; "Pontagruel must invite him to sup with us to-morrow."
"I will take care not to do so," said the king. "You are mad enough now, my poor friend; and were he once to put foot in my house, the superstitious imaginations which hang around us would, in a moment, fill Europe with countless strange tales. Ah! dear Voltaire, if the days of reason did but come--that is a prayer we should make every morning and evening."
"Reason!--reason," said La Mettrie, "is kind and beneficial, when it serves to excuse and legitimate my passions and vices--my appetites--call them as you please. When it becomes annoying, I wish to kick it out of doors. Damn!--I wish to know no reason which will make me pretend to be brave, when I am not; to be a stoic, when I suffer; and submissive, when I am in a rage. Away with such reason! I'll have none of it; for it is a monster and chimera of the imagination of those triflers of antiquity whom you all admire so much and know not why. I hope its reign may never come! I like absolute power of no kind; and if I were to be forced not to believe in God, which now is my state of mind, I am sure I would go straight to mass."
"You, it is well known," said D'Argens, "are capable of anything--even in believing in the philosopher's stone of the Count of Saint Germain."
"Why not? It would be pleasant, and I need such a thing."
"Well! that is true," said Poelnitz, putting his hand in his vast and empty pockets. "The sooner its reign comes the better. I pray for it every morning and night."