es
she cared next to nothing about. "I was so little moved by it, that I
answered, going on with my work, 'Is that all?' Which greatly surprised
them. A while afterwards my Sisters and several Ladies came also to
congratulate me. I was much loved; and I felt more delighted at the
proofs each gave me of that than at what occasioned them. In the evening
I went to the Queen's: you may readily conceive her joy. On my first
entrance, she called me 'her dear Princess of Wales;' and addressed
Madam de Sonsfeld as 'Milady.' This latter took the liberty of hinting
to her, that it would be better to keep quiet; that the King having
yet given no notice of this business, might be provoked at such
demonstration, and that the least trifle could still ruin all her hopes.
The Countess Finkenstein joining her remonstrances to Sonsfeld's, the
Queen, though with regret, promised to moderate herself." [Wilhelmina,
i. 215.]

This is the effulgent flaming-point of the long-agitated English Match,
which we have so often caught in a bitterly smoking condition. "The King
indeed spoke nothing of it to us, on his return to Berlin in a day
or two," says Wilhelmina; "which we thought strange." But everybody
considered it certain, nothing but the details left to settle. "Hotham
had daily conferences with the King." "Every post brought letters from
the Prince of Wales:" of which Wilhelmina saw several,--this for one
specimen, general purport of the whole: "I conjure you, my dear Hotham,
get these negotiations finished! I am madly in love (AMOUREUX COMME UN
FOU), and my impatience is unequalled." [Ib. i. 218.] Wilhelmina thought
these sentiments "very, romantic" on the part of Prince Fred, "who had
never seen me, knew me only by repute:"--and answered his romances and
him with tiffs of laughter, in a prettily fleecing manner.

Effulgent flame-point;--which was of very brief duration indeed, and
which sank soon into bitterer smoke than ever, down almost to the
choking state. There are now six weeks of Diplomatic History at
the Court of Berlin, which end far otherwise than they began. Weeks
well-nigh indecipherable; so distracted are they, by black-art and
abstruse activities above ground and below, and so distractedly recorded
for us: of which, if it be humanly possible, we must try to convey some
faint notion to mankind.

Chapter II. -- LANGUAGE OF BIRDS: EXCELLENCY HOTHAM PROVES UNAVAILING.

Already next morning, after that grand Dinner at