of his
attendants, almost the only one now left, to inquire what is in Lowen.
The answer, we know, is: "A squadron of Gens-d'Armes there; furthermore,
a Prussian Adjutant come to say, Victory at Mollwitz!" Upon which the
King mounts again;--issues into daylight, and concludes these
mythical adventures. That "in Lowen, in the shop at the corner of the
Market-place, Widow Panzern, subsequently Wife Something-else, made his
Majesty a cup of coffee, and served a roast fowl along with it," cannot
but be welcome news, if true; and that his Majesty got to Mollwitz
again before dark that same "day," [Fuchs, p. 11.] is liable to no
controversy.

In this way was Friedrich snatched by Morgante into Fairyland, carried
by Diana to the top of Pindus (or even by Proserpine to Tartarus,
through a bad sixteen hours), till the Battle whirlwind subsided.
Friendly imaginative spirits would, in the antique time, have so
construed it: but these moderns were malicious-valetish, not friendly;
and wrapped the matter in mere stupid worlds of cobweb, which require
burning. Friedrich himself was stone-silent on this matter, all his life
after; but is understood never quite to have pardoned Schwerin for the
ill-luck of giving him such advice. [Nicolai, ii. 180-195 (the one true
account); Laveaux, i. 194; Valori, i. 104; &c., &c. (the myth in various
stages). Most distractedly mythical of all, with the truth clear before
it, is the latest version, just come out, in _Was sich die Schlesier vom
alten Fritz erzahlen_ (Brieg, 1860), pp. 113-125.]

Friedrich's adventure is not the only one of that kind at Mollwitz;
there is another equally indubitable,--which will remain obscure,
half-mythical to the end of the world. The truth is, that Right Wing of
the Prussian Army was fallen chaotic, ruined; and no man, not even
one who had seen it, can give account of what went on there. The
sage Maupertuis, for example, had climbed some tree or place of
impregnability ("tree" Voltaire calls it, though that is hardly
probable), hoping to see the Battle there. And he did see it, much too
clearly at last! In such a tide of charging and chasing, on that
Right Wing and round all the Field in the Prussian rear; in such wide
bickering and boiling of Horse-currents,--which fling out, round all
the Prussian rear quarters, such a spray of Austrian Hussars for one
element,--Maupertuis, I have no doubt, wishes much he were at home,
doing his sines and tangents. An Austrian H