ONE:What do you mean? exclaimed the king, with an air of real or affected surprise. Then, turning to his secretary, M. Podewils, he inquired, How much of Guelderland is theirs, and not ours already?On Tuesday, the 16th, the King and Queen of Prussia left Salzdahlum to return to Potsdam. At the close of the week the Crown Prince and his bride, escorted by a brilliant retinue of Brunswick notabilities, set out on their return. In most of the intervening towns they were received with great pomp. On151 the 27th, the last day of the next week, the bridal pair had a grand entrance into Berlin. The troops were all out upon parade. The clang of bells, the roar of cannon, and peals of martial music filled the air. All the inhabitants of Berlin and the surrounding region were in the streets, which were spanned by triumphal arches, and garlanded with flowers. Gladly would the princess have exchanged all this for one loving word from her husband. But that word was not uttered. Two days before the grand reception at Berlin the princess arrived at Potsdam. Here Wilhelmina, for the first time, met her cruelly-wronged and heart-crushed sister-in-law. In the following terms she describes the interview:
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ONE:Never mind, said the king; it is a cheap price to pay for escaping an attack from Pandours in the rear, while such a battle was raging in front.I have nothing to add to this. I will only inform your curiosity that we passed the Elbe the day before yesterday; that to-morrow we march toward Leipsic, where I hope to be on the 31st, where I hope we shall have a battle, and whence you shall receive news of us as it occurs.
FORE:The king, in still very calm and measured words, rejoined, You would be right if I did not intend this desperate method for a good object. Listen to me. Great lords dont feel it in their scalp when their subjects are torn by the hair. One has to grip their own locks as the only way to give them pain.
FORE:Early the next morning Frederick commenced the vigorous pursuit of the retiring foe. A storm arose. For twelve hours the rain fell in torrents. But the Prussian army was impelled onward, through the mud, and through the swollen streams, inspired by the almost supernatural energy which glowed in the bosom of its king. It seemed as if no hardships, sufferings, or perils could induce those iron men, who by discipline had been converted into mere machines, to wander from the ranks or to falter on the way. As we have mentioned, there were throughout all this region two religious parties, the Catholics and the Protestants. They were strongly antagonistic to each other. Under the Austrian sway, the Catholics, having the support of the government, had enjoyed unquestioned supremacy. They had often very cruelly persecuted the Protestants, robbing them of their churches, and, in their zeal to defend what they deemed the orthodox faith, depriving them of their children, and placing them under the care of the Catholic priests to be educated.
FORE: I am too tired to reply to your delightful verses, and shivering too much with cold to taste all the charm of them. But that will come round again. Do not ask poetry from a man who is actually doing the work of a wagoner, and sometimes even of a wagoner stuck in the mud. Would you like to know my way of life? We march from seven in the morning till four in the afternoon. I dine then; afterward I workI receive tiresome visits; with these comes a detail of insipid matters of business. Tis wrong-headed men, punctiliously difficult, who are to be set right; heads too hot which must be restrained, idle fellows that must be urged, impatient men that must be rendered docile, plunderers to be restrained within the bounds of equity, babblers to hear babbling, dumb people to keep in talk; in fine, one has to drink with those that like it, to eat with those who are hungry; one has to become a Jew with Jews, a pagan with pagans. Such are my occupations, which I would willingly make over to another if the phantom they call glory did not rise on me too often. In truth, it is a great folly, but a folly difficult to cast away when once you are smitten by it.
FORE:
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