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Their dialogues and arguings on the matter, here and elsewhere, are lost in air; or gone wholly to a single point unexpectedly preserved for us. One day, riding through some village, Priort some say his Majesty calls it, some give another name,--advocate Seckendorf, in the fervor of pleading and arguing, said some word, which went like a sudden flash of lightning through the dark places of his Majesty's mind, and never would go out of it again while he lived after. In passionate moments, his Majesty spoke of it sometimes, a clangorous pathos in his tones, as of a thing hideous, horrible, never to be forgotten, which had killed him,-- death from a friend's hand. "It was the 17th of April, 1733, [All the Books (Forster, ii. 142, for one) mention this utterance of his Majesty, on what occasion we shall see farther on; and give the date "1732," not 1733: but except as amended above, it refuses to have any sense visible at this distance. The Village of Priort is in the Potsdam region.] riding through Priort, a man said something to me: it was as if you had turned a dagger about in my heart. That man was he that killed me; there and then I got my death!"
A strange passion in that utterance: the deep dumb soul of his Majesty, of dumb-poetic nature, suddenly brought to a fatal clearness about certain things. "O Kaiser, Kaiser of the Holy Roman Empire; and this is your return for my loyal faith in you? I had nearly killed my Fritz, my Wilhelmina, broken my Feekin's heart and my own, and reduced the world to ruins for your sake. And because I was of faith more than human, you took me for a dog? O Kaiser, Kaiser!"--Poor Friedrich Wilhelm, he spoke of this often, in excited moments, in his later years; the tears running down his cheeks, and the whole man melted into tragic emotion: but if Fritz were there, the precious Fritz whom he had almost killed for their sake, he would say, flashing out into proud rage, "There is one that will avenge me, though; that one! DA STEHT EINER, DER MICH RACHEN WIRD!"[Forster, ii. 153.] Yes, your Majesty; perhaps that one. And it will be seen whether YOU were a rotatory Clothes-horse to dry their Pragmatic linen upon, or something different a good deal.
KING AUGUST MEDITATING GREAT THINGS FOR POLAND.
In the New-year's days of 1733, the topic among diplomatic gentlemen, which set many big wigs wagging, and even tremulously came out in the gray leaves of gazetteers and garreteers of the period, was a royal drama, dimly supposed to be getting itself up in Poland at this time. Nothing known about it for certain; much guessed. "Something in the rumor!" nods this wig; "Nothing!" wags that, slightly oscillating; and gazetteers, who would earn their wages, and have a peck of coals apiece to glad them in the cold weather, had to watch with all eagerness the movements of King August, our poor old friend, the Dilapidated-Strong, who is in Saxony at present; but bound for Warsaw shortly,--just about lifting the curtain on important events, it is thought and not thought. Here are the certainties of it, now clear enough, so far as they deserve a glance from us.
January l0th, 1733, August the Dilapidated-Strong of Poland has been in Saxony, looking after his poor Electorate a little; and is on the road from Dresden homewards again;--will cross a corner of the Prussian Dominions, as his wont is on such occasions. Prussian Majesty, if not appearing in person, will as usual, by some Official of rank, send a polite Well-speed-you as the brother Majesty passes. This time, however, it was more than politeness; the Polish Majesty having, as was thought, such intricate affairs in the wind. Let Grumkow, the fittest man in all ways, go, and do the greeting to his old Patroon: greeting, or whatever else may be needed.
Patroon left Dresden,--"having just opened the Carnival" or fashionable Season there, opened and nothing more,--January l0th, 1733; [Fassmann,
Many are the timea August the Strong has made this journey; many are the carousals, on such and other occasions, Grumkow and he have had. But there comes an end to all things. This was their last meeting, over flowing liquor or otherwise, in the world. Satirical History says, they drank all night, endeavoring to pump one another, and with such enthusiasm that they never recovered it; drank themselves to death at Crossen on that occasion. [
"August, by change of his religion, and other sad operations, got to be what they called the King of Poland, thirty five years ago; but, though looking glorious to the idle public, it has been a crown of stinging-nettles to the poor man,--a sedan-chair running on rapidly, with the bottom broken out! To say nothing of the scourgings he got, and poor Saxony along with him, from Charles XII., on account of this Sovereignty so called, what has the thing itself been to him? In Poland, for these thirty-five years, the individual who had least of his real will done in public matters has been, with infinite management, and display of such good-humor as at least deserves credit, the nominal Sovereign Majesty of Poland. Anarchic Grandees have been kings over him; ambitious, contentious, unmanageable;--very fanatical too, and never persuaded that August's Apostasy was more than a sham one, not even when he made his Prince apostatize too. Their Sovereignty has been a mere peck of troubles, disgraces and vexations: for those thirty-five years, an ever-boiling pot of mutiny, contradiction, insolence, hardly tolerable even to such nerves as August's.
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