THREE: Whereas the Baron De P?llnitz, born of honest parents, so far as we know, having served our grandfather as gentleman of the chamber, Madame DOrleans in the same rank, the King of Spain as colonel, the deceased Emperor Charles VI. as captain of horse, the pope as chamberlain, the Duke of Brunswick as chamberlain, the Duke of Weimar as ensign, our father as chamberlain, and, in fine, us as grand master of ceremonies, has, notwithstanding such accumulation of honors, become disgusted with the world, and requests of us a parting testimony;I was sitting quiet in my apartment, busy with work, and some one reading to me, when the queens ladies rushed in, with a torrent of domestics in their rear, who all bawled out, putting one knee to the ground, that they were come to salute the Princess of Wales. I fairly believed these poor people had lost their wits. They would not cease overwhelming me with noise and tumult; their joy was so great they knew not what they did. When the farce had lasted some time, they told me what had occurred at the dinner.
THREE:In reference to this event, the prince wrote to his mother from Potsdam, I am in the utmost despair. What I had always apprehended has at last come on me. The king has entirely forgotten that I am his son. This morning I came into his room as usual. At the first sight of me he sprang forward, seized me by the collar, and struck me a shower of blows with his rattan. I tried in vain to screen myself, he was in so terrible a rage, almost out of himself. It was only weariness that made him give up. I am driven to extremity. I have too much honor to endure such treatment, and I am resolved to put an end to it in one way or another.
THREE:
TWO:Thus deprived of all the ordinary comforts of life, the prince, in the nineteenth year of his age, was consigned to an imprisonment of absolute solitude. For weeks and months he was left to his own agitating thoughts, with the apparent blighting of every earthly hope, awaiting whatever doom his merciless father might award to him. His jailers, not unmindful of the embarrassing fact that their captive might yet become King of Prussia,102 with their fate in his hands, gradually treated him with all the secret kindness which they dared to exhibit.13
TWO: