window; nothing particular going on. A square-built shortish steel-gray Gentleman, of military cut, past fifty, is strolling over the SCHLOSSPLATZ (spacious Square in front of the Palace), conspicuous amid the sparse populations there; pensively recreating himself, in the yellow sunlight and long shadows, as after a day's hard labor or travel. "Who is that?" inquires Friedrich Wilhelm, suspending his tobacco. Grumkow answers cautiously, after survey: He thinks it must be Ordnance-Master Seckendorf; who was with him to-day; passing on rapidly towards Denmark, on business that will not wait.—"Experienced Feldzeugmeister Graf von Seckendorf, whom we stand in correspondence with, of late, and were expecting about this time? Whom we have known at the Siege of Stralsund, nay ever since the Marlborough times and the Siege of Menin, in war and peace; and have always reckoned a solid reasonable man and soldier: Why has he not come to us?"—"Your Majesty," confesses Grumkow, "his business is so pressing! Business in Denmark will not wait. Seckendorf owned he had come slightly round, in his eagerness to see our grand Review at Tempelhof the day after to-morrow: What soldier would omit the sight (so he was pleased to intimate) of soldiering carried to the non-plus-ultra? But he hoped to do it quite incognito, among the general public;—and then to be at the gallop again: not able to have the honor of paying his court at this time."—"Court? NARREN-POSSEN (Nonsense)!" answers Friedrich Wilhelm—and opening the window, beckons Seckendorf up, with his own royal head and hand. The conversation of a man who had rational sense, and could tell him anything, were it only news af foreign parts in a rational manner, was always welcome to Friedrich Wilhelm.
And so Seckendorf, how can he help it, is installed in the Tabagie; glides into pleasant conversation there. A captivating talker; solid for religion, for the rights of Germany against intrusive French and others: such insight, orthodoxy, sense and ingenuity; pleasant to hear; and all with the due quantity of oil, though he "both snuffles and lisps;" and has privately, in case of need, a capacity of lying—for he curiously distils you any lie, in his religious alembics, till it become tolerable to his conscience, or even palatable, as elixirs are;—capacity of double-distilled lying probably the greatest of his day.—Seckendorf assists at the grand Review, 13th May, 1726; witnesses with unfeigned admiration the non-plus-ultra of manoeuvring, and, in fact, the general management, military and other, of this admirable King. [Pollnitz, ii. 235; Fassmann, pp. 367, 368.] Seckendorf, no question of it, will do his Denmark business swiftly, then, since your Majesty is pleased so to wish. Seckendorf, sure enough, will return swiftly to such a King, whose familiar company, vouchsafed him in this noble manner, he likes—oh, how he likes it!
In a week or two, Seckendorf is back to Berlin; attends his Majesty on the annual Military Tour through Preussen; attends him everywhere, becoming quite a necessary of life to his Majesty; and does not go away at all. Seckendorf's business, if his Majesty knew it, will not lead him "away;" but lies here on this spot; and is now going on; the magic-apparatus, Grumkow the mainspring of it, getting all into gear! Grumkow was once clear for King George and the Hanover Treaty, having his reasons then; but now he has other reasons, and is clear against those foreign connections. "Hm, hah—Yes, my estimable, justly powerful Herr von Grumkow, here is a little Pension of 1,600 ducats (only 500 pounds as yet), which the Imperial Majesty, thinking of the service you may do Prussia and Germany and him, graciously commands me to present;—only 500 pounds by the year as yet; but there shall be no lack of money if we prosper!" [Forster, iii. 233, 232; see also iv. 172, 121, 157, &c.]
And so there are now two Black-Artists, of the first quality, busy on the unconscious Friedrich Wilhelm; and Seckendorf, for the next seven years, will stick to Friedrich Wilhelm like his shadow; and fascinate his whole existence and him, as few wizards could have done. Friedrich Wilhelm, like St. Paul in Melita, warming his innocent hands at the fire of dry branches here kindled for him—that miracle of a venomous serpent is this that has fixed itself upon his finger? To Friedrich Wilhelm's enchanted sense it seems a bird-of-paradise, trustfully perching there; but it is of the whip-snake kind, or a worse; and will stick to him tragically, if also comically, for years to come. The world has seen the comedy of it, and has howled scornful laughter upon Friedrich Wilhelm for it: but there is a tragic side, not so well seen into, where tears are due to the poor King; and to certain others horsewhips, and almost gallows-ropes, are due!—Yes, had Seckendorf and Grumkow both been well hanged, at this stage of the affair, whereby the affair might have soon ended on fair terms, it had been welcome to mankind; welcome surely to the present Editor; for one; such a saving to him, of time wasted, of disgust endured! And indeed it is a solacement he has often longed for, in these dreary operations of his. But the Fates appointed otherwise; we have all to accept our Fate!—
Grumkow is sworn to Imperial orthodoxy, then—probably the vulpine MIND (so to term it) went always rather that way, and only his interest the other;—Grumkow is well bribed, supplied for bribing others where needful; stands orthodox now, under peril of his very head. All things have been got distilled into the palatable state, spiritual and economic, for oneself and one's grand Trojan-Horse of a Grumkow; and the adventure proceeds apace. Seckendorf sits nightly in the TABAGIE (a kind of "Smoking Parliament," as we shall see anon); attends on all promenades and journeys: one of the wisest heads, and so pleasant in discourse, he is grown indispensable, and a necessary of life to us. Seckendorf's Biographer computes, "he must have ridden, in those seven years, continually attending his Majesty, above 5,000 German miles," [Anonymous (Seckendorf's Grand-Nephew) Versuch einer Lebensbeschreibung des Feldmarschalls Grafen von Seckendorf (Leipzig, 1792, 1794), i. 6.]—that is 25,000 English miles; or a trifle more than the length of the Terrestrial Equator.
In a month or two, [13th August, 1726 (Preuss, i. 37).] Seckendorf—since Majesty vouchsafes to honor us by wishing it—contrives to get nominated Kaiser's Minister at Berlin: unlimited prospects of Tabagie, and good talk, now opening on Majesty. And impartial Grumkow, in Tabagie or wherever we are, cannot but admit, now and then, that the Excellenz Herr Graf Ordnance-Master has a deal of reason in what he says about Foreign Politics, about intrusive French and other points. "Hm, Na," muses Friedrich Wilhelm to himself, "if the Kaiser had not been so lofty on us in that Heidelberg-Protestant affair, in the Ritter-Dienst business, in those damned 'recruiting' brabbles; always a very high-sniffing surly Kaiser to us!" For in fact the Kaiser has, all along, used Friedrich Wilhelm bitterly ill; and contemplates no better usage of him, except in show. Usage? thinks the Kaiser: A big Prussian piece of Cannon, whom we wish to enchant over to us! Did LAZY PEG complain of her "usage"?—So that the Excellenz and Grumkow have a heavy problem of it; were they not so diligent, and the Cannon itself well disposed. "Those BLITZ FRANZOSEN (blasted French)!" growls Friedrich Wilhelm sometimes, in the Tobacco-Parliament: [Forster, ii. 12, &c.] for he hates the French, and would fain love his Kaiser; being German to the bone, and of right loyal heart, though counted only a piece of cannon by some. For one thing, his Prussian Majesty declines signing that Treaty of Hanover a second time: now when the Dutch accede to it, after almost a year's trouble with them, the Prussian Ambassador, singular to observe, "has no orders to sign;" leaves the English with their Hollanders and Blitz Franzosen to sign by themselves, this time. [9th August, 1726. (Boyer, The Political State of Great Rrilain, a monthly periodical, vol. xxxii. p. 77, which is the number for July, 1726.)] "We will wait, we will wait!" thinks his Prussian Majesty:—"Who knows?"
"But then Julich and Berg!" urges he always; "Britannic Majesty and the Blitz Franzosen were to secure me the reversion there. That was the essential point!"—For this too Excellenz has a remedy; works out gradually a remedy from headquarters, the amiable dexterous man: "Kaiser will do the like, your Majesty; Kaiser himself will secure it you!"—In brief, some three months after Seckendorf's instalment as Kaiser's Minister, not yet five months since his appearance in the Schlossplatz that May evening—it is now Hunting-season, and we are at Wusterhausen; Majesty, his two Black-Artists and the proper satellites on both sides all there—a new and opposite Treaty, in extreme privacy, on the 12th of October, 1726, is signed at that sequestered Hunting-Schloss: "Treaty of Wusterhausen" so called; which was once very famous and mysterious, and caused many wigs to wag. Wigs to wag, in those days especially, when knowledge of it was first had; the rather as only half knowledge could be had of it;—or can, mourns Dryasdust, who has still difficulties about some "secret articles" in the Document. [Buchholz, i. 94 n.] Courage, my friend; they are now of no importance
