The second occurrence, although originating in a single person, roused even more attention than the action of the English Parliament towards the Jews. This person was Arouet de Voltaire, king in the domain of literature in the eighteenth century, who with his demoniacal laughter blew down like a house of cards the stronghold of the Middle Ages. He, who believed neither in Providence nor in the moral progress of mankind, was a mighty instrument of history in the advancement of progress. Voltaire--in his writings an entrancing wizard, a sage, in his life a fool, the slave of base passions--picked a quarrel with the Jews, and sneered at them and their past. His hostility arose from personal ill-humor and irritability. He maintained that during his stay in London he lost eighty per cent of a loan of 25,000 francs, through the bankruptcy of a Jewish capitalist named Medina. He cannot, however, always be believed.
"Medina told me that he was not to blame for his bankruptcy: that he was unfortunate, that he had never been a son of Belial. He moved me, I embraced him, we praised God together, and I lost my money. I have never hated the Jewish nation; I hate nobody."
Yet, a low-minded Harpagon, who clung to his money, Voltaire, on account of this large or small loss, hated not only this Jew, but all Jews on earth. A second incident excited him still more against them. When Voltaire was in Berlin and Potsdam as court poet, literary mentor, and attendant of King Frederick, who both admired and detested this diabolical genius, he gave a filthy commission to a Jewish jeweler, named Hirsch, or Hirschel (1750), which he afterwards, at the instigation of a rival in the trade, named Ephraim Veitel, wished to withdraw. Friction arose between Voltaire and Hirschel, until some arrangement was made, which the former afterwards desired to evade. In a word, Voltaire practiced a series of mean tricks upon his Jewish tradesman: cheated him about some diamonds, abused him, lied, forged documents, and acted as if he were the injured party. At length a complicated lawsuit sprang from these proceedings. King Frederick, who had obtained information of all this from the legal documents, and from a pamphlet, written ostensibly by Hirsch, in reality by Voltaire's enemies, was highly enraged with the poet and philosopher scamp. He resolved to banish him from Prussia, and wrote against him a comedy in French verse, called "Tantalus in the Lawsuit." Voltaire's quarrel with the Prussian Jew created a sensation, and provided ample material for the mischievous delight of his opponents.