ial Majesty denies it, who would shudder at the lie direct.

Poor Imperial Majesty: who can tell her troubles and straits in this
abstruse time! Heaven itself ordering her to get back the Silesia of her
Fathers, if she could;--yet Heaven always looking dubious, surely, upon
this method of doing it. By solemn Public Treaties signed in sight
of all mankind; and contrariwise, in the very same moments, by Secret
Treaties, of a fell nature, concocted underground, to destroy the life
of these! Imperial Majesty flatters herself it may be fair: "Treaty of
Dresden, Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle; Treaties wrung from me by force, the
tyrannic Sea-Powers screwing us; Kaunitz can tell! A consummate Kaunitz;
who has provided remedies. Treaties do get broken. Besides, I will
not go to War, unless HE the Bad One of Prussia do!"--Alas, your noble
Majesty, plain it at least is, your love of Silesia is very strong. And
consummate Kaunitz and it have led you into strange predicaments. The
Pompadour, for instance: who was it that answered, "JE NE LA CONNAIS
PAS; I don't know her!"? How gladly would the Imperial Maria Theresa,
soul of Propriety, have made that answer! But she did not; she had to
answer differently. For Kaunitz was imperative: "A kind little Note to
the Pompadour; one, and then another and another; it is indispensable,
your Imperial Majesty!" And Imperial Majesty always had to do it. And
there exist in writing, at this hour, various flattering little Notes
from Imperial Majesty to that Address; which begin, "MA COUSINE,"
"PRINCESSE ET COUSINE," say many witnesses; nay "MADAME MA TRES CHERE
SOEUR," says one good witness: [Hormayr (cited in Preuss, i. 433 n.),--as
are Duclos; Montgaillard; MEMOIRES DE RICHELIEU; &c.]--Notes which ought
to have been printed, before this, or given at least to the Museums.
"My Cousin," "Princess and Cousin," "Madame my dearest Sister:" Oh,
high Imperial Soul, with what strange bed-fellows does Misery of various
kinds bring us acquainted!

Friedrich was blamably imprudent in regard to Pompadour, thinks Valori:
"A little complaisance might have--what might it not have done!--" But
his Prussian Majesty would not. And while the Ministers of all the
other Powers allied with France "went assiduously to pay their court
to Madame, the Baron von Knyphausen alone, by his Master's order, never
once went." ["Don't! JE NE LA CONNAIS PAS"],--while the Empress-Queen
was writing her the most flattering letters. The P