horses, he fixed on him silently his
large eyes, or, if he was very gracious, inclined his head a little
towards him. The people regarded with a certain degree of respect and
awe these subordinate servants of a new principle. And not the
Silesians only; it was something new in the world. It was not as a mere
jest that Frederic II. had called himself the first servant of his
State. As on the battlefield he had taught his wild nobles that the
highest honour was to die for the Fatherland, so did his unwearied care
and high sense of duty imprint upon the soul of the meanest of his
servants on the most distant frontiers his great idea, that his first
duty was to live and labour for the good of his King and country.

Though the provinces of Prussia, in the Seven Years' War, were
compelled to do homage to the Empress Elizabeth, and remained for some
time incorporated in the Russian Empire, yet the officials of the
districts under the foreign army and government ventured secretly to
raise money and provisions for their King, and great art was required
for the passage of the transports. Many were in the secret, but there
was not one traitor; they stole in disguise through the Russian camp in
danger of their lives. They discovered afterwards that they earned
little thanks by it, for the King did not like his East Prussians; he
spoke depreciatingly of them; seldom showed them the same favour as the
other provinces; he looked like stone whenever he learnt that one of
his young officers was born between the Vistula and Memel, and never
entered his East Prussian province after the war. But the East
Prussians were not shaken in their veneration for him: they clung with
true love to their ungracious master, and his best and most
intellectual panegyrist was Emmanuel Kant.

The life in the King's service was undoubtedly a rough one: incessant
were the work and deprivations; it was difficult for the best to do
enough for so strict a master, and the greatest devotion received but
curt thanks; if a man was worn out he was probably coldly thrown aside;
the labour was without end everywhere,--new undertakings--scaffoldings
of an unfinished building. To any one who came into the country this
life did not appear cheerful, it was so austere, monotonous, and rough;
there was little of beauty or pleasure in it; and as the bachelor
household of the King, with his obedient servants and his submissive
intimates taking the air under the trees of a qu