accordingly, there is next to nothing new confessed, and Papa's anger blazes out again, probably we may take this as the turning-point on his Son's part. With him, of course, that mood of mind could not last. There is no wildest lion but, finding his bars are made of iron, ceases to bite them. The Crown-Prince there, in his horror, indignation and despair, had a lucid human judgment in him, too; loyal to facts, and well knowing their inexorable nature, Just sentiments are in this young man, not capable of permanent distortion into spasm by any form of injustice laid on them. It is not long till he begins to discern, athwart this terrible, quasi-infernal element, that so the facts are; and that nothing but destruction, and no honor that were not dishonor, will be got by not conforming to the facts. My Father may be a tyrant, and driven mad against me: well, well, let not me at least go mad!
Grumkow is busy on the mild side of the business; of course Grumkow and all official men. Grumkow cannot but ask himself this question among others: How if the King should suddenly die upon us! Grumkow is out at Custrin, and again out; explaining to the Prince, what the enormous situation is; how inflexible, inexorable, and of peril and horror incalculable to Mother and Sister and self and royal House; and that there is one possibility of good issue, and only one: that of loyally yielding, where one cannot resist. By degrees, some lurid troublous but perceptible light-gleam breaks athwart the black whirlwind of our indignation and despair; and saner thoughts begin to insinuate themselves. "Obey, thou art not the strongest, there are stronger than thou! All men, the highest among them, are called to learn obedience."
Moreover, the first sweep of royal fury being past, his Majesty's stern regulations at Custrin began to relax in fulfilment; to be obeyed only by those immediately responsible, and in letter rather than in spirit even by those. President von Munchow who is head of the Domain-Kammer, chief representative of Government at Custrin, and resides in the Fortress there, ventures after a little, the Prince's doors being closed as we saw, to have an orifice bored through the floor above, and thereby to communicate with the Prince, and sympathetically ask, What he can do for him? Many things, books among others, are, under cunning contrivance, smuggled in by the judicious Munchow, willing to risk himself in such a service. For example, Munchow has a son, a clever boy of seven years old; who, to the wonder of neighbors, goes into child's-petticoats again; and testifies the liveliest desire to be admitted to the Prince, and bear him company a little! Surely the law of No-company does not extend to that of an innocent child? The innocent child has a row of pockets all round the inside of his long gown; and goes laden, miscellaneously, like a ship of the desert, or cockboat not forbidden to cross the line. Then there are stools, one stool at least indispensable to human nature; and the inside of this, once you open it, is a chest-of-drawers, containing paper, ink, new literature and much else. No end to Munchow'a good-will, and his ingenuity is great. [Preuss, i. 46.]
A Captain Fouquet also, furthered I think by the Old Dessauer, whose man he is, comes to Custrin Garrison, on duty or as volunteer, by and by. He is an old friend of the Prince's;—ran off, being the Dessauer's little page, to the Siege of Stralsund, long ago, to be the Dessauer's little soldier there:—a ready-witted, hot-tempered, highly estimable man; and his real duty here is to do the Prince what service may be possible. He is often with the Prince; their light is extinguished precisely at seven o'clock: "Very well, Lieutenant," he would say, "you have done your orders to the Crown-Prince's light. But his Majesty has no concern with Captain Fouquet's candles!" and thereupon would light a pair. Nay, I have heard of Lieutenants who punctually blew out the Prince's light, as a matter of duty and command; and then kindled it again, as a civility left free to human nature. In short, his Majesty's orders can only be fulfilled to the letter; Commandant Lepel and all Officers are willing not to see where they can help seeing. Even in the letter his Majesty's orders are severe enough.
SENTENCE OF COURT-MARTIAL.
Meanwhile the Court-Martial, selected with intense study, installs itself at Copenick; and on the 25th of October commences work. This Deserter Crown-Prince and his accomplices, especially Katte his chief accomplice, what is to be done with them? Copenick lies on the road to Custrin, within a morning's drive of Berlin; there is an ancient Palace here, and room for a Court-Martial. "QUE FAIRE? ILS ONT DES CANONS!" said the old Prussian Raths, wandering about in these woods, when Gustavus and his Swedes were at the door. "QUE FAIRE?" may the new military gentlemen think to themselves, here again, while the brown leaves rustle down upon them, after a hundred years!
The Court consists of a President, Lieutenant-General Schulenburg, an elderly Malplaquet gentleman of good experience; one of the many Schulenburgs conspicuous for soldiering, and otherwise, in those times. He is nephew of George I.'s lean mistress; who also was a Schulenburg originally, and conspicuous not for soldiering. Lean mistress we say; not the Fat one, or cataract of tallow, with eyebrows like a cart-wheel, and dim coaly disks for eyes, who was George I.'s half-sister, probably not his mistress at all; and who now, as Countess of Darlington so called, sits at Isleworth with good fat pensions, and a tame raven come-of-will—probably the SOUL of George I. in some form. [See Walpole, Reminiscences.] Not this one, we say:—but the thread-paper Duchess of Kendal, actual Ex-mistress; who tore her hair on the road when apoplexy overtook poor George, and who now attends chapel diligently, poor old anatomy or lean human nail-rod. For the sake of the English reader searching into what is called "History," I, with indignation, endeavor to discriminate these two beings once again; that each may be each, till both are happily forgotten to all eternity. It was the latter, lean may-pole or nail-rod one, that was Aunt of Schulenburg, the elderly Malplaquet gentleman who now presides at Copenick. And let the reader remember him; for he will turn up repeatedly again.
The Court consisted farther of three Major-Generals, among whom I name only Grumkow (Major-General by rank though more of a diplomatist and black-artist than a soldier), and Schwerin, Kurt von Schwerin of Mecklenburg (whom Madam Knyphausen regrets, in her now exile to the Country); three Colonels, Derschau one of them; three Lieutenant-Colonels, three Majors and three Captains, all of whom shall be nameless here. Lastly come three of the "Auditor" or the Judge-Advocate sort: Mylius, the Compiler of sad Prussian Quartos, known to some; Gerber, whose red cloak has frightened us once already; and the Auditor of Katte's regiment. A complete Court-Martial, and of symmetrical structure, by the rule of three;—of whose proceedings we know mainly the result, nor seek much to know more. This Court met on Wednesday, 25th October, 1730, in the little Town of Copenick; and in six days had ended, signed, sealed and despatched to his Majesty; and got back to Berlin on the Tuesday next. His Majesty, who is now at Wusterhausen, in hunting time, finds conclusions to the following effect:—
Accomplices of the Crown-Prince are two: FIRST, Lieutenant Keith, actual deserter (who cannot be caught): To be hanged in effigy, cut in four quarters, and nailed to the gallows at Wesel:—GOOD, says his Majesty. SECONDLY, Lieutenant Katte of the Gens-d'Armes, intended deserter, not actually deserting, and much tempted thereto: All things considered, Perpetual Fortress Arrest to Lieutenant Katte:—NOT GOOD this; BAD this, thinks Majesty; this provokes from his Majesty an angry rebuke to the too lax Court-Martial. Rebuke which can still be read, in growling, unlucid phraseology; but with a rhadamanthine idea clear enough in it, and with a practical purport only too clear: That Katte was a sworn soldier, of the Gens-d'Armes even, or Body-guard of the Prussian Majesty; and did nevertheless, in the teeth of his oath, "worship the Rising Sun" when minded to desert; did plot and colleague with foreign Courts in aid of said Rising Sun, and of an intended high crime against the Prussian Majesty itself on Rising Sun's part; far from at once revealing the same, as duty ordered Lieutenant Katte to do. That Katte's crime amounts to high-treason (CRIMEN LOESOE MAJESTATIS); that the rule is, FIAT JUSTITIA, ET PEREAT MUNDUS;—and that, in brief, Katte's doom is, and is hereby declared to be, Death. Death by the gallows and hot pincers is the usual doom of Traitors; but his Majesty will say in this case, Death by the sword and headsman simply; certain circumstances moving the royal clemency to go so far, no farther. And the Court-Martial has straightway to apprise Katte of this same: and so doing, "shall say,
