to shoe horses, had not imperative Nature prevailed over hindrances);—Quantz, ever from Fritz's sixteenth year, was wont to come occasionally, express from Dresden, for a week or two, and give the young man lessons on the flute. The young man's Mother, good Queen Feekin, had begged this favor for him from the Saxon Sovereignties; and pleaded hard for it at home, or at worst kept it secret there. It was one of the many good maternities, clandestine and public, which she was always ready to achieve for him where possible;—as he also knew full well in his young grateful heart, and never forgot, however old he grew! Illustrious Quantz, we say, gives Fritz lessons on the flute; and here is a scene they underwent;—they and a certain brisk young soldier fellow, Lieutenant von Katte, who was there too; of whom the reader will tragically hear more in time.
On such occasions Fritz was wont to pull off the tight Prussian coat or COATIE, and clap himself into flowing brocade of the due roominess and splendor—bright scarlet dressing-gown, done in gold, with tags and sashes complete;—and so, in a temporary manner, feel that there was such a thing as a gentleman's suitable apparel. He would take his music-lessons, follow his clandestine studies, in that favorable dress:—thus Buffon, we hear, was wont to shave, and put on clean linen, before he sat down to write, finding it more comfortable so. Though, again, there have been others who could write in considerable disorder; not to say litter, and palpable imperfection of equipment: Samuel Johnson, for instance, did some really grand writing in a room where there was but one chair, and that one incapable of standing unless you sat on it, having only three feet. A man is to fit himself to what is round him: but surely a Crown-Prince may be indulged in a little brocade in his leisure moments!—
Fritz and Quantz sat doing music, an unlawful thing, in this pleasant, but also unlawful costume; when Lieutenant Katte, who was on watch in the outer room, rushes in, distraction in his aspect: Majesty just here! Quick, double quick! Katte snatches the music-books and flutes, snatches Quantz; hurries with him and them into some wall-press, or closet for firewood, and stands quaking there. Our poor Prince has flung aside his brocade, got on his military coatie; and would fain seem busy with important or indifferent routine matters. But, alas, he cannot undo the French hairdressing; cannot change the graceful French bag into the strict Prussian queue in a moment. The French bag betrays him; kindles the paternal vigilance—alas, the paternal wrath, into a tornado pitch. For his vigilant suspecting Majesty searches about; finds the brocade article behind a screen; crams it, with loud indignation, into the fire; finds all the illicit French Books; confiscates them on the spot, confiscates all manner of contraband goods:—and there was mere sulphurous whirlwind in those serene spaces for about an hour! If his Majesty had looked into the wood-closet? His Majesty, by Heaven's express mercy, omitted that. Haude the Bookseller was sent for; ordered to carry off that poisonous French cabinet-library in mass; sell every Book of it, to an undiscerning public, at what price it will fetch. Which latter part of his order, Haude, in deep secrecy, ventured to disobey, being influenced thereto. Haude, in deep secrecy, kept the cabinet-library secure; and "lent" the Prince book after book from it, as his Royal Highness required them.
Friedrich, it is whispered in Tobacco-Parliament, has been known, in his irreverent impatience, to call the Grenadier uniform his "shroud (STERBEKITTEL, or death-clothes);" so imprisoning to the young mind and body! Paternal Majesty has heard this blasphemous rumor; hence doubtless, in part, his fury against the wider brocade garment.
It was Quantz himself that reported this explosion to authentic Nicolai, many years afterwards; confessing that he trembled, every joint of him, in the wood-closet, during that hour of hurricane; and the rather as he had on "a red dress-coat," whioh color, foremost of the flaring colors, he knew to be his Majesty's aversion, on a man's back. [Nicolai, Anekdoten (Berlin, 1790), ii. 148.] Of incomparable Quantz, and his heart-thrilling adagios, we hope to hear again, under joyfuler circumstances. Of Lieutenant von Katte—a short stout young fellow, with black eyebrows, pock-marked face, and rather dissolute manners—we shall not fail to hear.
Chapter VIII. — CROWN-PRINCE GETTING BEYOND HIS DEPTH IN TROUBLE.
It is not certain that the late Imminency of Duel had much to do with such explosions. The Hanover Imminency, which we likened to a tropical waterspout, or sudden thunderous blotting-out of the sky to the astonished Gazetteers, seems rather to have passed away as waterspouts do—leaving the earth and air, if anything, a little REFRESHED by such crisis. Leaving, that is to say, the two Majesties a little less disposed for open quarrel, or rash utterance of their ill humor in time coming. But, in the mean while, all mutual interests are in a painful state of suspended animation: in Berlin there is a privately rebellious Spouse and Household, there is a Tobacco-Parliament withal;—and the royal mind, sensitive, imaginative as a poet's, as a woman's, and liable to transports as of a Norse Baresark, is of uncertain movement. Such a load of intricacies and exaggerated anxieties hanging on it, the royal mind goes like the most confused smoke-jack, sure only to HAVE revolutions; and we know how, afar from Soissons, and at home in Tobacco-Parliament, the machine is influenced! Enough, the explosive procedures continue, and are on the increasing hand.
Majesty's hunting at Wusterhausen was hardly done, when that alarming Treaty of Seville came to light (9th November, 1729), France and England ranked by the side of Spain, disposing of Princes and Apanages at their will, and a Kaiser left sitting solitary—which awakens the domestic whirlwinds at Berlin, among other results. "CANAILLE ANGLAISE, English Doggery!" and similar fine epithets, addressed to Wilhelmina and the Crown-Prince, fly about; not to speak of occasional crockery and other missiles. Friedrich Wilhelm has forbidden these two his presence altogether, except at dinner: Out of my sight, ye Canaille Anglaise; darken not the sunlight for me at all!
This is in the Wusterhausen time—Hanover Imminency only two months gone. And Mamma sends for us to have private dialogues in her Apartment there, with spies out in every direction to make signal of Majesty's return from his hunt—who, however, surprises as on one occasion, so that we have to squat for hours, and almost get suffocated. [Wilhelmina, i. 172.] Whereupon the Crown-Prince, who will be eighteen in a couple of months, and feels the indignity of such things, begs of Mamma to be excused in future. He has much to suffer from his Father again, writes Dubourgay in the end of November: "it is difficult to conceive the vile stratagems that are made use of to provoke the Father against the Son." [Dubourgay, 28th November, 1729.] Or again, take this, as perhaps marking an epoch in the business, a fortnight farther on:—
DECEMBER 10th 1729. "His Prussian Majesty cannot bear the sight of either the Prince or Princess Royal: The other day, he asked the Prince: 'Kalkstein makes you English; does not he?' Kalkstein, your old Tutor, Borck, Knyphausen, Finkenstein, they are all of that vile clique!" To which the Prince answered, 'I respect the English because I know the people there love me;' upon which the King seized him by the collar, struck him fiercely with his cane," in fact rained showers of blows upon him; "and it was only by superior strength," thinks Dubourgay, "that the poor Prince escaped worse. There is a general apprehension of something tragical taking place before long."
Truly the situation is so violent, it cannot last. And in effect a wild thought, not quite new, ripens to a resolution in the Crown-Prince under such pressures: In reference to which, as we grope and guess, here is a Billet to Mamma, which Wilhelmina has preserved. Wilhelmina omits all trace of date, as usual; but Dubourgay, in the above Excerpt, probably supplies that defect:—
FRIEDRICH TO HIS MOTHER (Potsdam, December, 1729).
"I am in the uttermost despair. What I had always apprehended has at last come on me. The King has entirely forgotten that I am his Son. This morning I came into his room as usual; at the first sight of me," or at the first passage of Kalkstein-dialogue with me, "he sprang forward, seized me by the collar, and struck me a shower of cruel blows with his rattan. I tried in vain to screen myself, he was in so terrible a rage, almost out of himself; it was only
