e all in tears; looking back through the gulfs of
the Past, upon such a Father now rapt away forever. Sad all, and soft in
the moonlight of memory,--the lost Loved One all in the right as we
now see, we all in the wrong!--this, it appears, was the Son's fixed
opinion. Seven years hence, here is how Friedrich concludes the HISTORY
of his Father, written with a loyal admiration throughout: "We have left
under silence the domestic chagrins of this great Prince: readers must
have some indulgence for the faults of the Children, in consideration
of the virtues of such a Father." [_OEuvres,_ i. 174 (_Memoires de
Brandebourg:_ finished about 1747).] All in tears he sits at present,
meditating these sad things.

In a little while the Old Dessauer, about to leave for Dessau, ventures
in to the Crown-Prince, Crown-Prince no longer; "embraces his knees;"
offers, weeping, his condolence, his congratulation;--hopes withal that
his sons and he will be continued in their old posts, and that he,
the Old Dessauer, "will have the same authority as in the late reign."
Friedrich's eyes, at this last clause, flash out tearless, strangely
Olympian. "In your posts I have no thought of making change: in your
posts, yes;--and as to authority, I know of none there can be but what
resides in the King that is sovereign!" Which, as it were, struck
the breath out of the Old Dessauer; and sent him home with a painful
miscellany of feelings, astonishment not wanting among them.

At an after hour, the same night, Friedrich went to Berlin; met by
acclamation enough. He slept there, not without tumult of dreams, one
may fancy; and on awakening next morning, the first sound he heard was
that of the Regiment Glasenap under his windows, swearing fealty to
the new King. He sprang out of bed in a tempest of emotion; bustled
distractedly to and fro, wildly weeping. Pollnitz, who came into the
anteroom, found him in this state, "half-dressed, with dishevelled hair,
in tears, and as if beside himself." "These huzzaings only tell me what
I have lost!" said the new King.--"HE was in great suffering," suggested
Pollnitz; "he is now at rest." "True, he suffered; but he was here with
us: and now--!" [Ranke (ii. 46, 47)], from certain Fragments, still, in
manuscript, of Pollnits's _Memoiren._

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of History of Friedrich II. of Prussia,
Vol. X. (of XXI.), by Thomas Carlyle

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF FRI