nfortunate Schlubhut dies
the thief's death, few hours hence, speaking or thinking what, no man
reports to me. Death was certain for him; inevitable as fate. And so he
vibrates there, admonitory to the other Raths for days,--some say for
weeks,--till by humble petition they got the gallows removed. The
stumps of it, sawed close by the stones, were long after visible in that
Schlossplatz of Konigsberg. Here is prompt justice with a witness! Did
readers ever hear of such a thing? There is no doubt about the fact,
[Benekendorf (Anonymous), _Karakterzuge aus dem Leben Konig Friedrich
Wilhelm I._ (Berlin, 1788), vii. 15-20; Forster (ii. 268), &c. &c.]
though in all Prussian Books it is loosely smeared over, without the
least precision of detail; and it was not till after long searching
that I could so much as get it dated: July, 1731, while Friedrich
Crown-Prince is still in eclipse at Custrin, and some six weeks after
Wilhelmina's betrothal. And here furthermore, direct from the then
Schlubhut precincts, is a stray Note, meteorological chiefly; but worth
picking up, since it is authentic. "Wehlau," we observe, is on the road
homewards again,--on our return from uttermost Memel,--a day's journey
hitherwards of that place, half a day's thitherwards of Konigsberg:--

"TUESDAY, 10th JULY, 1731. King dining with General Dockum at
Wehlau,"--where he had been again reviewing, for about forty hours, all
manner of regiments brought to rendezvous there for the purpose, poor
"General Katte with his regiment" among them;--King at dinner with
General Dockum after all that, "took the resolution to be off to
Konigsberg; and arrived here at the stroke of midnight, in a deluge of
rain." This brings us within a day, or two days, of Schlubhut's death,
Terrible "combat of Bisons (URI, or AUEROCHSEN, with such manes, such
heads), of two wild Bisons against six wild Bears," then ensued; and the
Schlubhut human tragedy; I know not in what sequence,--rather conjecture
the Schlubhut had gone FIRST. Pillau, road to Dantzig, on the narrow
strip between the Frische Haf and Baltic, is the next stage homewards;
at Pillau, General Finkenstein (excellent old Tutor of the Crown-Prince)
is Commandant, and expects his rapid Majesty, day and hour given, to
me not known, Majesty goes in three carriages; Old Dessauer, Grumkow,
Seckendorf, Ginkel are among his suite; weather still very electric:--

"At Fischhausen, half-way to Pillau, Majesty had a bout of elk-h