Ha, well, my AU work was done back when my creative brain still worked, which was before we (or at least I) quite grasped the intensity of that relationship. So no work has been done in that direction. When my brain last saw our heroes, I had just started trying to work out the Katte-Fredersdorf dynamic. Also, there's only one "Katte lives" AU of the 4 in progress where this may become relevant, but depending on how it develops, that question may become very relevant, so if I ever expand that fic, that problem's going to have to be solved. (I would like to be able to write fic again, sigh.)

In Voltaire's memoirs, he says that Fritz said it to La Mettrie, who was Fritz's reader at the time. MacDonogh says that recent research has cast doubt on this episode, but gives no source. He does point out a passage that I think I had mentioned to you, where Fritz wrote to Algarotti that Voltaire was the worst, the ABSOLUTE WORST, but that that was irrelevant to why Fritz was desperately trying to get him at his court.