ng in every joint of him;--and good news was almost
at the door, had afflicted Nosti known it. Grumkow's strain (suppressed
by us here), all this while, is in general, almost ever since the blaze
of that Hotham Dinner went off into repentant headache: 'Pshaw, don't
fear!' Nay after a fortnight or so, it is again: 'Steady! we are
all right?' Tobacco-Parliament and the Royal Imagination making such
progress. This is still but the third week since that grand Dinner at
Charlottenburg:--

TO THE EXCELLENZ REICHENBACH AT LONDON (from Grumkow).

BERLIN, 22d APRIL. 'King wants to get rid of the Princess' Wilhelmina,
'who is grown lean, ugly, with pimples on her face (_qui est devenue
maigre, laide, couperosee,'_ [This is one of the sentences Wilhelmina
has got hold of (Wilhelmina, i. 234).]--dog: will nobody horsewhip that
lie out of him!)--'judge what a treat that will be to a Prince of Wales,
who has his amourettes!' All is right, Nosti, is it not?

BERLIN, 25th APRIL. "King declared to Seckendorf yesterday again, He
might write to the Kaiser, That while he lived, nothing should ever
part his Majesty from the Kaiser and his Cause; that the French dare
not attack Luxembourg, as is threatened; and if they do--! Upon which
Seckendorf despatched a Courier to Vienna.

"As to Hotham, he explains himself upon nothing,"--stalks about with his
nose in the air, as if there were nothing farther to be explained. "I
spoke yesterday of the Single Match, Wilhelmina and Prince of Wales;
King answered, even of the Single Match, Devil fly away with it!"--or a
still coarser phrase.

'Meanwhile the Queen, though at the end of her eighth month, is cheery
as a fish in water; [Wilhelmina has this too, in a disfigured state (i.
233).] and always forms grand project of totally ruining Seckendorf, by
Knyphausen's and other help.' "Hotham yesterday, glancing at Nosti no
doubt, said to the SIEUR DE POTSDAM [cant phrase for the King], 'That
great Princes were very unlucky to have ministers that durst not show
themselves in good society; for the result was, they sent nothing but
false news and rumors picked up in coffee-houses.'"

"Coffee-houses?" answers Reichenbach, by and by: "Reichenbach is in
English society of the first distinction, and receives visits from Lords
and Dukes. This all the world knows"--to be nothing like the case, as
Townshend too has occasionally mentioned.

At any rate, continues Grumkow, "the Queen's Husband said, aside, t