When I am dead, he said, petulantly, you will see Berlin full of madmen and freethinkers, and the sort of people who walk about the streets. As God often, by wondrous guidance, strange paths, and thorny steps, will bring men into the kingdom of Christ, so may our divine Redeemer help that this prodigal son be brought into his communion; that his godless heart be beaten until it is softened and changed, and so he be snatched from the claws of Satan. This grant us, the Almighty God and Father, for our Lord Jesus Christ and his passion and deaths sake. Amen.
Director
It is a fact worthy of mention, as illustrative of the neglect with which the king had regarded his own German language in his devotion to the French tongue, that in these three lines there were eleven words wrongly spelled.We have now reached the year 1726. The Emperor of Germany declares that he can never give his consent to the double marriage with the English princes. Frederick William, who is not at all fond of his wifes relatives, and is annoyed by the hesitancy which his father-in-law has manifested in reference to it, is also turning his obstinate will against the nuptial alliance. A more imperative and inflexible man never breathed. This year the unhappy wife of George I. died, unreconciled, wretched, exasperated, after thirty years captivity in the castle of Ahlden. Darker and darker seemed the gloom which enveloped the path of Sophie Dorothee. She still clung to the marriages as the dearest hope of her heart. It was with her an ever-present thought. But Frederick William was the most obdurate and obstinate of mortals. The whole country, my dear country, lies one frightful waste, presenting only objects to excite terror, pity, and despair. The business of the husbandman and the shepherd are quite discontinued. The husbandman and shepherd are become soldiers themselves, and help to ravage the soil they formerly occupied. The towns are inhabited by old men, women, and children. Perhaps here and there a warrior, rendered unfit for service by wounds and want of limbs, is left at his door. His little children hang round him, ask a history of every wound, and grow themselves soldiers before they find strength for the field.I am abandoned by all. Hostile invasion threatens the kingdom of Hungary, our person, our children, our crown. I have no resource but in your fidelity and valor. I invoke the ancient Hungarian virtue to rise swiftly and save me.