not in their province
to touch upon; this is what the military code says: and they leave it
there.

The Junius Brutus of a Royal Majesty had answered in his own heart
grimly, Well then! But his Councillors, Old Dessauer, Grumkow,
Seckendorf, one and all interpose vehemently. "Prince of the Empire,
your Majesty, not a Lieutenant-Colonel only! Must not, cannot;"--nay
good old Buddenbrock, in the fire of still unsuccessful pleading, tore
open his waistcoat: "If your Majesty requires blood, take mine; that
other you shall never get, so long as I can speak!" Foreign Courts
interpose; Sweden, the Dutch; the English in a circuitous way, round
by Vienna to wit; finally the Kaiser himself sends an Autograph; [Date,
11th October, 1730 (Forster, i. 380).] for poor Queen Sophie has applied
even to Seckendorf, will be friends with Grumkow himself, and in her
despair is knocking at every door. Junius Brutus is said to have
had paternal affections withal. Friedrich Wilhelm, alone against the
whispers of his own heart and the voices of all men, yields at last in
this cause. To Seckendorf, who has chalked out a milder didactic plan of
treatment, still rigorous enough, [His Letter to the King, 1st November,
1730 (in Forster, i. 375, 376).] he at last admits that such plan is
perhaps good; that the Kaiser's Letter has turned the scale with him;
and the didactic method, not the beheading one, shall be tried. That
Donhof and Schwerin, with their talk of mercy, with "their eyes upon
the Rising Sun," as is evident, have done themselves no good, and shall
perhaps find it so one day. But that, at any rate, Friedrich's life
is spared; Katte's execution shall suffice in that kind. Repentance,
prostrate submission and amendment,--these may do yet more for the
prodigal, if he will in heart return. These points, some time before the
8th of November, we find to be as good as settled.

The unhappy prodigal is in no condition to resist farther. Chaplain
Muller had introduced himself with Katte's dying admonition to the
Crown-Prince to repent and submit. Chaplain Muller, with his wholesome
cooling-powders, with his ghostly counsels, and considerations of
temporal and eternal nature,--we saw how he prospered almost beyond
hope. Even on Predestination, and the real nature of Election by Free
Grace, all is coming right, or come, reports Muller. The Chaplain's
Reports, Friedrich Wilhelm's grimly mollified Responses on the same:
they are written, and in c