ONE:As you pass through Neisse, please present my compliments to Marshal Neipperg; and you can say, your excellency, that I hope to have the pleasure of calling upon him one of these days.On the first of May, 1747, Frederick took formal possession of this beautiful chateau. The occasion was celebrated by quite a magnificent dinner of two hundred covers. Here, for the next forty years, he spent most of his leisure time. He had three other palaces, far surpassing Sans Souci in splendor, which he occasionally visited on days of royal festivities. Berlin and Charlottenburg were about twenty miles distant. The New Palace, so called, at Potsdam, was but about a mile from Sans Souci. He had also his palace at Rheinsberg, some thirty miles north of Berlin, where he had spent many of his early days.
TWO:Take them freely. The empress sends me as much money as I wish. I assure you that by this means I get rid of the demon of poverty as soon as I find him approaching me.Olmütz was ninety miles from Troppau, in Silesia, where Frederick had established his base of supplies. This was a long line of communication to protect. General Daun, with a numerous Austrian army, all whose movements were veiled by clouds of those fleet and shaggy horsemen called Pandours, was forty miles to the west, at Leutomischel. Cautious in the extreme, nothing could draw him into a general battle. But he watched his foe with an eagle eye, continually assailing his line of communication, and ever ready to strike his heaviest blows upon any exposed point.
FORE:328 The minister for foreign affairs was charged to hasten my departure. A pretext, however, was necessary. I took that of my quarrel with the Bishop Mirepoix. I wrote accordingly to the King of Prussia that I could no longer endure the persecutions of this monk, and that I should take refuge under the protection of a philosophical sovereign, far from the disputes of this bigot. When I arrived at Berlin the king lodged me in his palace, as he had done in my former journeys. He then led the same sort of life which he had always done since he came to the throne. He rose at five in summer and six in winter.75 A single servant came to light his fire, to dress and shave him. Indeed, he dressed himself almost without any assistance. His bedroom was a handsome one. A rich and highly ornamented balustrade of silver inclosed apparently a bed hung with curtains, but behind the curtains, instead of a bed, there was a library. As for the royal couch, it was a wretched truckle-bed, with a thin mattress, behind a screen, in one corner of the room. Marcus Aurelius and Julian, his favorite heroes, and the greatest men among the Stoics, were not worse lodged. You will have passports for the post-horses, and whatever else you may ask. I hope to see you on Wednesday. I shall then profit by the few moments of leisure which remain to me, to enlighten myself by the blaze of your powerful genius. I entreat you to believe I shall always be the same toward you. Adieu.
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