109 The body of Katte remained upon the scaffold during the short wintry day, and at night was buried in one of the bastions of the fortress. This cruel tragedy was enacted more than a century ago; but there are few who even now can read the record without having their eyes flooded, through the conflicting emotions of sympathy for the sufferers and indignation against the tyrant who could perpetrate such crimes.
ONE:Ah! said the king, gayly, we must have them back from him again.
Scarcely any thing can be more sad than the record of the last days and hours of this extraordinary man. Few of the children of Adam have passed a more joyless life. Few have gone down to a grave shrouded with deeper gloom. None of those Christian hopes which so often alleviate pain, and take from death its571 sting, cheered his dying chamber. To him the grave was but the portal to the abyss of annihilation.The Russians, triumphantly advancing, entered Silesia, and reached Crossen, on the Oder, within a hundred miles of Fredericks encampment.GRUMKOWS CONFERENCE WITH WILHELMINA.