mortals gain there, by intensely attending to it?'

"Voltaire got almost nothing by his Books, which he generally had
to disavow, and denounce as surreptitious supposititious scandals,
when some sharp-set Book-seller, in whose way he had laid the
savory article as bait, chose to risk his ears for the profit of
snatching and publishing it. Next to nothing by his Books; but by
his fine finance-talent otherwise, he had become possessed of
ample moneys. Which were so cunningly disposed, too, that he had
resources in every Country; and no conceivable combination of
confiscating Jesuits and dark fanatic Official Persons could throw
him out of a livelihood, whithersoever he might be forced to run.
A man that looks facts in the face; which is creditable of him.
The vulgar call it avarice and the like, as their way is: but
M. de Voltaire is convinced that effects will follow causes;
and that it well beseems a lonely Ishmaelite, hunting his way
through the howling wildernesses and confused ravenous populations
of this world, to have money in his pocket. He died with a revenue
of some 7,000 pounds a year, probably as good as 20,000 pounds at
present; the richest literary man ever heard of hitherto, as well
as the remarkablest in some other respects. But we have to mark
the second phasis of his life [in which Friedrich now sees him],
and how it grew out of this first one.

"PHASIS SECOND (1728-1733).--Returning home as if quietly
triumphant, with such a talent in him, and such a sanction put
upon it and him by a neighboring Nation, and by all the world,
Voltaire was warmly received, in his old aristocratic circles, by
cultivated France generally; and now in 1728, in his thirty-second
year, might begin to have definite outlooks of a sufficiently