fingers so, if the pulse were gone?" Pitsch looked mournfully steadfast.
"Herr Jesu, to thee I live; Herr Jesu, to thee I die; in life and in
death thou art my gain (DU BIST MEIN GEWINN)." These were the last words
Friedrich Wilhelm spoke in this world. He again fell into a faint. Eller
gave a signal to the Crown-Prince to take the Queen away. Scarcely
were they out of the room, when the faint had deepened into death; and
Friedrich Wilhelm, at rest from all his labors, slept with the primeval
sons of Thor.

No Baresark of them, nor Odin's self, I think, was a bit of truer human
stuff;--I confess his value to me, in these sad times, is rare
and great. Considering the usual Histrionic, Papin's-Digester,
Truculent-Charlatan and other species of "Kings," alone attainable for
the sunk flunky populations of an Era given up to Mammon and the worship
of its own belly, what would not such a population give for a Friedrich
Wilhelm, to guide it on the road BACK from Orcus a little? "Would give,"
I have written; but alas, it ought to have been "SHOULD give." What THEY
"would" give is too mournfully plain to me, in spite of ballot-boxes:
a steady and tremendous truth from the days of Barabbas downwards and
upwards!--Tuesday, 31st May, 1740, between one and two o'clock in the
afternoon, Friedrich Wilhelm died; age fifty-two, coming 15th August
next. Same day, Friedrich his Son was proclaimed at Berlin; quilted
heralds, with sound of trumpet and the like, doing what is customary on
such occasions.

On Saturday, 4th June, the King's body is laid out in state; all Potsdam
at liberty to come and see. He lies there, in his regimentals, in
his oaken coffin, on a raised place in the middle of the room; decent
mortuary draperies, lamps, garlands, banderols furnishing the room and
him: at his feet, on a black-velvet TABOURET (stool), are the chivalry
emblems, helmet, gauntlets, spurs; and on similar stools, at the right
hand and the left, lie his military insignia, hat and sash, sword,
guidon, and what else is fit. Around, in silence, sit nine veteran
military dignitaries; Buddenbrock, Waldau, Derschau, Einsiedel, and five
others whom we omit to name. Silent they sit. A grim earnest sight in
the shine of the lamplight, as you pass out of the June sun. Many went,
all day; looked once again on the face that was to vanish. Precisely at
ten at night, the coffin-lid is screwed down: twelve Potsdam Captains
take the coffin on their shoulders; fo