When you sent me, inclosed in your letter, those verses for our Marcus Aurelius of the North, I fully intended to pay my court to him with them. He was at that time to have come to Brussels incognito. But the quartan fever, which unhappily he still has, deranged all his projects. He has sent me a courier to Brussels, and so I set out to find him in the neighborhood of Cleves.In the town of Zulich there was a very tall young carpenter by the name of Zimmerman. A Prussian recruiting officer, in disguise, Baron von Hompesch, entered the shop and ordered a stout chest to be made, six feet six inches in length, at leastat all events, longer than yourself, Mr. Zimmerman. Mind you, he added, if too short it will be of no service to me. At the appointed time he called for the chest. Looking at it, he exclaimed, in apparent disappointment, Too short, as I dreaded! I am certain it is over six feet six, said the carpenter, taking out his rule. But I said that it was to be longer than yourself, was the reply. Well, it is, rejoined the carpenter. To prove it, he jumped into the chest. Hompesch slammed down the lid, locked it, whistled, and three stout fellows came in, who shouldered the chest and carried it through the streets to a remote place outside of the town. Here the chest was opened, and poor Zimmerman was found dead, stifled to death.
FORE:There was no end to the panegyrics which Voltaire, in his correspondence with Frederick, now lavished upon him. He greeted him with the title of Frederick the Great.He condemned all pleasures; damnable all of them, he said. You were to speak of nothing but the Word of God only. All other conversation was forbidden. It was always he who carried on the improving talk at table, where he did the office of reader, as if it had been a refectory of monks. The king treated us to a sermon every afternoon. His valet de chambre gave out a psalm, which we all sang. You had to listen to this sermon with as much devout attention as if it had been an apostles. My brother and I had all the mind in the world to laugh. We tried hard to keep from laughing, but often we burst out. Thereupon reprimand, with all the anathemas of the Church hurled on us, which we had to take with a contrite, penitent aira thing not easy to bring your face to at the moment.
ONE:A spy was sent to Saxony, who reported that there were but twenty thousand troops there. All necessary information was promptly and secretly obtained in reference to roads and fortresses. It required three weeks to receive an answer from Vienna.404 The reply was evasive, as Frederick knew that it would be. In the mean time, his Prussian majesty, with characteristic energy, had mustered on the frontier an army numbering in the aggregate nearly one hundred and fifty thousand men. These troops, in three divisions, with two thousand pieces of artillery, were to make a rush upon Saxony. Among the directions given by Frederick to the leaders of these divisions were the following:
TWO:Lord Hyndford here came to the rescue of his colleague, and said, meekly,Many anecdotes are related illustrative of the kind feelings of378 the king toward the peasants. He was much interested in ameliorating their condition, and said to the Bishop of Varmia, Believe me, if I knew every thingif I could read every thing myselfall my subjects should be happy. But alas! I am but a man.
THREE:You do not know, said he to M. Bielfeld, what I have lost in losing my father.
FORE:35 At nine oclock he brings my son down to me, who goes to church and dines with me at twelve oclock. The rest of the day is his own. At half past nine in the evening he shall come and bid me good-night; shall then go directly to his room; very rapidly get off his clothes, wash his hands, and, as soon as that is done, Duhan shall make a prayer on his knees and sing a hymn, all the servants being there again. Instantly after which my son shall get into bed; shall be in bed at half past ten.
In that pleasure-camp of Mühlberg, where the eyes of many86 strangers were directed to him, the Crown Prince was treated like a disobedient boy, and at one time even with blows, to make him feel that he was such. The enraged king, who never weighed the consequences of his words, added mockery to his manual outrage. Had I been so treated, he said, by my father, I would have blown my brains out. But this fellow has no honor. He takes all that comes.461 Immediately after the battle Sir Andrew Mitchell called upon the king to congratulate him upon his great victory. General Seidlitz, who had led the two decisive cavalry charges, was in the royal tent. The king, in reply to the congratulations of the English minister, pointed to General Seidlitz and said,234 Adieu, dear Swan of Padua. Think, I pray, sometimes of those who are getting themselves cut in slices for the sake of glory here; and, above all, do not forget your friends who think a thousand times of you.
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