Heiress of all the Russias; something of a match truly!
"But there will be difficulties; your Highness to change your religion, for one thing?—PRINCE: Won't, by any means:—SCHULENBURG: And give up the succession to Prussia?—PRINCE: A right fool if I did!—SCHULENBURG: Then this marriage comes to nothing.—Thereupon next he said, If the Kaiser is so strong for us, let him give me his second Daughter;" lucky Franz of Lorraine is to get the first.—"SCHULENBURG: Are you serious?—PRINCE: Why not? with a Duchy or two it would do very well.—SCHULENBURG: No Duchies possible under the Pragmatic Sanction, your Highness: besides, your change of religion?—PRINCE: Oh, as to that, never!—Then this marriage also comes to nothing Of the English, and their Double-Marriage, and their Hotham brabble, he spoke lightly, as of an extinct matter—in terms your Excellency will like.
"But, said I, since you speak so much of marriages, I suppose you wish to be married?—PRINCE: No; but if the King absolutely will have it, I will marry to obey him. After that, I will shove my wife into the corner (PLANTERAI LA MA FEMME), and live after my own fancy.—SCHULENBURG: Horrible to think of! For, in the first place, your Highness, is it not written in the Law of God, Adulterers shall not inherit the Kingdom of Heaven?" And in the second place; and in the third and fourth place!—To all which he answered as wild young fellows do, especially if you force marriage on them. "I can perceive, if he marries, it will only be to have more liberty than now. It is certain, if he had his elbows free, he would strike out (S'EN DONNERAIT A GAUCHE). He said to me several times: 'I am young; I want to profit by my youth.'" A questionable young fellow, Herr General; especially if you force marriage on him.
"This conversation done," continues the General, "he set to talking with the Madam Wreech," and her complexion of lily and rose; "but he did not stay long; drove off about five [dinner at the stroke of twelve in those countries], inviting me to see him again at Custrin, which I promised."
And so the Prince is off in the Autumn sunset, driving down the peaty hollow of the Warta, through unpicturesque country, which produces Wreechs and incomparable flowers nevertheless. Yes; and if he look a six miles to the right, there is the smoke of the evening kettles from Zorndorf, rising into the sky; and across the River, a twenty miles to the left, is Kunersdorf: poor sleepy sandy hamlets; where nettles of the Devil are to be plucked one day!—
"The beautiful Wreech drove off to Tamsel," her fine house; I to this wretched tavern; where, a couple of hours after that conversation, I began writing it all down, and have nothing else to do for the night. Your Excellency's most moral, stiff-necked, pipe-clayed and extremely obedient,
"VON SCHULENBUBG."
[Forster, iii. 65–71.]
This young man may be orthodox on Predestination, and outwardly growing all that a Papa could wish; but here are strange heterodoxies, here is plenty of mutinous capricious fire in the interior of him, Herr General! In fact, a young man unfortunately situated; already become solitary in Creation; has not, except himself, a friend in the world available just now. Tempestuous Papa storms one way, tempestuous Mamma Nature another; and between the outsids and the inside there are inconsistencies enough.
Concerning the fair Wreech of Tamsel, with her complexion of lily and rose, there ensued by and by much whispering, and rumoring underbreath; which has survived in the apocryphal Anecdote-Books, not in too distinct a form. Here, from first hand, are three words, which we may take to be the essence of the whole. Grumkow reporting, in a sordid, occasionally smutty, spy manner, to his Seckendorf, from Berlin, eight or ten months hence, has this casual expression: "He [King Friedrich Wilhelm] told me in confidence that Wreech, the Colonel's Wife, is—to P. R. (Prince-Royal); and that Wreech vowed he would not own it for his. And his Majesty in secret is rather pleased," adds the smutty spy. [Grumkow to Seckendorf, Berlin, 20th August, 1732 (Forster, iii. 112).] Elsewhere I have read that the poor object, which actually came as anticipated (male or female, I forget), did not live long;—nor had Friedrich, by any opportunity, another child in this world. Domestic Tamsel had to allay itself as it best could; and the fair Wreech became much a stranger to Friedrich—surprisingly so to Friedrich the KING, as perhaps we may see.—
Predestination, GNADENWAHL, Herr General: what is orthodoxy on Predestination, with these accompaniments! [For Wreech, see Benekendorf, v. 94; for Schulenburg, ib. 26;—and Militair-Lexikon, iii. 432, 433, and iv. 268, 269. Vacant on the gossiping points; cautiously official, both these.] We go now to the Second Letter and the Third—from Landsberg about a fortnight later:—
No. 2. TO HIS EXCELLENCY (shovelful of titles) VON GRUMKOW, IN BERLIN.
"LANDSBERG, 19th October, 1731.
"The day before yesterday [that is, Wednesday, 17th October] I received an Order, To have only fifty Horse at that post, and"—Order which shows us that there has fallen out some recruiting squabble on the Polish Frontier hereabouts; that the Polack gentlemen have seized certain Corporals of ours, but are about restoring them; Order and affair which we shall omit. "Corporals will be got back: but as these Polack gentlemen: will see, by the course taken, that we have no great stomach for BITING, I fancy they will grow more insolent; then, 'ware who tries to recruit there for the future!
"On the same day I was apprised, from Custrin, That the Prince-Royal had resolved on an excursion to Carzig, and thence to the Bailliage of Himmelstadt [digging and stubbing now on foot at Himmelstadt too], which is but a couple of miles ["DEMI-MILLE" German.] from this; that there would be a little hunt between the two Bailliages; and that if I chose to come, I might, and the Prince would dine with me."—Which I did; and so, here again, Thursday, 18th October, 1731, in those remote Warta-Oder Countries, is a glimpse of his Royal Highness at first hand. Schulenburg continues; not even taking a new paragraph, which indeed he never does:—
"They had shut up a couple of SPIESSER (young roes), and some stags, in the old wreck of a SAUGARTEN [Boar-park, between Carzig and Himmelstadt; FAST RUINIRTEN SAUGARTEN, he calls it, daintily throwing in a touch of German here]: the Prince shot one or two of them, and his companions the like; but it does not seem as if this amusement were much to his taste. He went on to Himmelstadt; and at noon he arrived here," in my poor Domicile at Landsberg.
"At one o'clock we went to table, and sat till four. He spoke only of very indifferent things; except saying to me: 'Do you know, the King has promised 400,000 crowns (60,000 pounds) towards disengaging those Bailliages of the Margraf of Baireuth's,'"—old Margraf, Bailliages pawned to raise ready cash; readers remember what interminable Law-pleading there was, till Friedrich Wilhelm put it into a liquid state, "Pay me back the moneys, then!" [Supra, pp. 161–163.]—"'400,000 thalers to the old Margraf, in case his Prince (Wilhelmina's now Bridegroom) have a son by my Sister.' I answered, I had heard nothing of it.—'But,' said he, 'that is a great deal of money! And some hundred thousands more have gone the like road, to Anspach, who never will be able to repay. For all is much in disorder at Anspach. Give the Margraf his Heron-hunt (CHASSE AU HERON), he cares for nothing; and his people pluck him at no allowance.' I said: That if these Princes would regulate their expenditure, they might, little by little, pay off their debts; that I had been told at Vienna the Baireuth Bailliages were mortgaged on very low terms, those who now held them making eight or ten per cent of their money;"—that the Margraf ought to make an effort; and so on. "I saw very well that these Loans the King makes are not to his mind.
"Directly on rising from table, he went away; excusing himself to me, That he could not pass the night here; that the King would not like his sleeping in the Town; besides that he had still several things to complete in a Report he was sending off to his Majesty. He went to Nassin, and slept there. For my own share, I did not press him to remain; what I did was rather in the way of form. There were with him President Munchow," civil gentleman whom we know, "an Engineer Captain Reger, and the three Gentlemen of his Court," Wolden, Rohwedel, Katzmer who once twirled his finger in a certain mouth, the insipid fellow.
