ONE: ��I hope to speak to you with open heart at Berlin. You may think, too, how I shall be embarrassed in having to act the lover without being it, and to feign a passion for mute ugliness; for I have not much faith in Count Seckendorf��s taste in this article. Monsieur, once more get this princess to learn by heart the Ecole des Maris and the Ecole des Femmes. That will do her much more good than True Christianity by the late Arndt. If, beside, she would learn steadiness of humor, learn music, become rather too free than too virtuous��ah! then, my dear general, then I should feel some liking for her; and a Colin marrying a Phillis, the couple would be in accordance. But if she is stupid, naturally I renounce the devil and her. THREE:Frederick found himself plunged into the midst of difficulties and perils which exacted to the utmost his energies both of body and of mind. Every moment was occupied in strengthening his posts, collecting magazines, recruiting his forces, and planning to circumvent the foe. From the calm of Reinsberg he found himself suddenly tossed by the surges of one of the most terrible tempests of conflict which a mortal ever encountered. Through night and storm, almost without sleep and without food, drenched and chilled, he was galloping over the hills and through the valleys,244 climbing the steeples, fording the streams, wading the morasses, involved in a struggle which now threatened even the crown which he had so recently placed upon his brow. Had Frederick alone suffered, but few tears of sympathy would have been shed in his behalf; but his ambition had stirred up a conflict which was soon to fill all Europe with the groans of the dying, the tears of the widow, the wailings of the orphan.
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