ONE:Tell your unworthy daughter, said the king to the queen, that her room is to be her prison. I shall give orders to have the guard there doubled. I shall have her examined in the most rigorous manner, and will afterward have her removed to some fit place, where she may repent of her crimes.I forget how the conversation changed. But I know that it grew so free that, seeing somebody coming to join in it, the king warned him to take care, saying that it was not safe to converse with a man doomed by the theologians to everlasting fire. I felt as if he somewhat overdid this of his being doomed, and that he boasted too much of it. Not to hint at the dishonesty of these free-thinking gentlemen, who very often are thoroughly afraid of the devil, it is at least bad taste to make display of such things. And it was with the people of bad taste whom he had about him, and some dull skeptics of his own academy, that he had acquired the habit of mocking at religion.
TWO:
ONE:As to the brave young Queen of Hungary, my admiration goes with that of all the world. Not in the language of flattery, but of evident fact, the royal qualities abound in that high274 young lady. Had they left the world, and grown to mere costume elsewhere, you might find certain of them again here. Most brave, high and pious minded; beautiful too, and radiant with good-nature, though of temper that will easily catch fire; there is, perhaps, no nobler woman then living. And she fronts the roaring elements in a truly grand, feminine manner, as if Heaven itself and the voice of Duty called her. The inheritances which my fathers left me, we will not part with these. Death if it so must be, but not dishonor.
TWO: Frederick.
ONE:The authorship of the article could not be concealed. Frederick was indignant. He angrily seized his pen, and wrote a reply, which, though anonymous, was known by all to have been written by the king. In this reply he accused the writer of the article, whom he well knew to be Voltaire, of being a manifest retailer of lies, a concocter of stupid libels, and as guilty of conduct more malicious, more dastardly, more infamous than he had ever known before.My children, said Frederick that night at parole, after such a days work you deserve rest. This day will send the renown of your name and that of the nation down to the latest posterity.
TWO:Fritz had now attained eighteen years of age, and Wilhelmina twenty-one. Fritz was very fond of music, particularly of his flute, upon which he played exquisitely, being, however, careful never to sound its notes within hearing of his father. A celebrated music-master from Dresden, by the name of Quantz, was his teacher. He came occasionally from Dresden and spent a week or two at Potsdam, secretly teaching the young prince.67 The mother of Fritz was in warm sympathy with her son, and aided him in all ways in her power in this gratification. Still it was a very hazardous measure. The fierce old king was quite uncertain in his movements. He might at any hour appear at Potsdam, and no one could tell to what lengths, in case of a discovery, he might go in the intensity of his rage. Fritz had an intimate friend in the army, a young man of about his own age, one Lieutenant Katte, who, when Fritz was with his music-teacher, was stationed on the look-out, that he might give instant warning in case there were any indications of the kings approach. His mother also was prepared, when Quantz was at Potsdam, promptly to dispatch a messenger to her son in case she suspected his father of being about to turn his steps in that direction.
