ONE:The king was fond of children; he liked to have his grand-nephews about him. One day, while the king sat at work in his cabinet, the younger of the two, a boy of eight or nine, was playing ball about the room, and knocked it once and again into the kings writing operation, who twice or oftener flung it back to him, but next time put it in his pocket, and went on. Please your majesty, give it me back, begged the boy, and again begged: majesty took no notice; continued writing. Till at length came, in the tone of indignation, Will your majesty give me my ball, then? The king looked up; found the little Hohenzollern planted firm, hands on haunches, and wearing quite a peremptory562 air. Thou art a brave little fellow. They wont get Silesia out of thee? cried he, laughing, and flinging him his ball.194My friends, the disasters which have befallen us here are not unknown to you. Schweidnitz is lost. The Prince of Bevern is beaten. Breslau is gone, and all our war-stores there. A large part of Silesia is lost. Indeed, my embarrassments would be insuperable were it not that I have boundless trust in you. There is hardly one among you who has not distinguished himself by some memorable action. All these services I well know, and shall never forget.
TWO:Now thank God, one and all, With heart, with voice, with hands, Who wonders great hath done To us and to all lands.115To form an idea, he writes, of the general subversion, and how great were the desolation and discouragement, you must represent to yourself countries entirely ravaged, the very traces of the old habitations hardly discoverable. Of the towns some were ruined from top to bottom; others half destroyed by fire. Of thirteen thousand houses the very vestiges were gone. There was no field in seed, no grain for the food of the inhabitants. Sixty thousand horses were needed if there were to be plowing carried on. In the provinces generally there were half a million population less than in 1756; that is to say, upon four millions and a half the ninth man was wanting. Noble and peasant had been pillaged, ransomed, foraged, eaten out by so many different armies; nothing now left them but life and miserable rags.
