d not
answer sooner; I am like Charles Twelfth's Chess-King, who was always
kept on the move. For a fortnight past, we have been continually afoot
and under way, in such weather as you never saw.

"I am too tired to reply to your charming Verses; and shivering too
much with cold to taste all the charm of them: but that will come round
again. Do not ask poetry from a man who is actually doing the work of
a wagoner, and sometimes even of a wagoner stuck in the mud. Would you
like to know my way of life? We march from seven in the morning till
four in the afternoon. I dine then; afterwards I work, I receive
tiresome visits; with these comes a detail of insipid matters of
business. 'Tis wrong-headed men, punctiliously difficult, who are to
be set right; heads too hot which must be restrained, idle fellows that
must be urged, impatient men that must be rendered docile, plunderers
to restrain within the bounds of equity, babblers to hear babbling, dumb
people to keep in talk: in fine, one has to drink with those that like
it, to eat with those that are hungry; one has to become a Jew with
Jews, a Pagan with Pagans.

"Such are my occupations;--which I would willingly make over to another,
if the Phantom they call Fame (GLOIRE) did not rise on me too often. In
truth, it is a great folly, but a folly difficult to cast away when
once you are smitten by it. [Phantom of GLOIRE somewhat rampant in
those first weeks; let us see whether it will not lay itself again,
forevermore, before long!]

"Adieu, my dear Voltaire; may Heaven preserve from misfortune the man I
should so like to sup with at night, after fighting in the morning!
The Swan of Padua [Algarotti, with his big hook-nose and dusky solemnly
greedy countenance] is going, I think, to Paris, to profit by my
absence; the Philosopher Geometer [big Maupertuis, in red wig and yellow
frizzles, vainest of human kind] is squaring curves; poor little Jordan
[with the kindly hazel eyes, and pen that pleasantly gossips to us]
is doing nothing, or probably something near it. Adieu once more, dear
Voltaire; do not forget the absent who love you. FREDERIC." [_OEuvres de
Frederic,_ xxii. 57.]

SCHWERIN AT LIEGNITZ; FRIEDRICH HUSHES UP THE GLOGAU PROBLEM, AND STARTS
WITH HIS BEST SPEED FOR BRESLAU.

Meanwhile, on the Western road, and along the foot of the snowy peaks
over yonder, Schwerin with the small Right column is going prosperously
forwards. Two columns always, as the read