ering himself
on the other side, Baronay, we can fancy, gave a grin of various
expression, as he got into saddle again: 'The arrow so near killing was
feathered from one's own wing, too!'--And indeed, a day or two after, he
wrote Ziethen a handsome Letter to that effect." [_Helden-Geschichte,_
i. 927; Orlich, i. 120. _The Life of General de Zieten_ (English
Translation, very ill printed, Berlin, 1803), BY FRAU VON BLUMENTHAL
(a vaguish eloquent Lady, but with access to information, being a
connection of Z.'s), p. 84.]

Ziethen, for minor good feats, had been made Lieutenant-Colonel, the
very day he marched; his Commission dates May 16th, 1741; and on the
morrow he handsels it in this pretty manner. He is now forty-two; much
held down hitherto; being a man of inarticulate turn, hot and abrupt
in his ways,--liable always to multifarious obstruction, and unjust
contradiction from his fellow-creatures. But Winterfeld's report on this
occasion was emphatic; and Ziethen shoots rapidly up henceforth;
Colonel within the year, General in 1744; and more and more esteemed by
Friedrich during their subsequent long life together.

Though perhaps the two most opposite men in Nature, and standing so far
apart, they fully recognized one another in their several spheres. For
Ziethen too had good eyesight, though in abstruse sort:--rugged simple
son of the moorlands; nourished, body and soul, on orthodox frugal
oatmeal (so to speak), with a large sprinkling of fire and iron
thrown in! A man born poor: son of some poor Squirelet in the Ruppin
Country;--"used to walk five miles into Ruppin on Saturday nights," in
early life, "and have his hair done into club, which had to last him
till the week following." [_Militair-Lexikon,_ iv. 310.] A big-headed,
thick-lipped, decidedly ugly little man. And yet so beautiful in his
ugliness: wise, resolute, true, with a dash of high uncomplaining sorrow
in him;--not the "bleached nigger" at all, as Print-Collectors sometimes
call him! No; but (on those oatmeal terms) the Socrates-Odysseus, the
valiant pious Stoic, and much-enduring man. One of the best Hussar
Captains ever built. By degrees King Friedrich and he grew to
be,--with considerable tiffs now and then, and intervals of gloom and
eclipse,--what we might call sworn friends. On which and on general
grounds, Ziethen has become, like Friedrich himself, a kind of mythical
person with the soldiery and common people; more of a demi-god than any
othe