he 10th of February, but there is no date
at all] was despatched to Dresden with that fine project, Polish Majesty
for Kaiser: is authorized to offer 60,000 men, with money corresponding,
and no end of brilliant outlooks;--must keep back his offers, however,
if he find the people indisposed. Which he did, to an extreme degree;
nothing but vague talk, procrastination, hesitation on the part of
Bruhl. This wretched little Bruhl has twelve tailors always sewing for
him, and three hundred and sixty-five suits of clothes: so many suits,
all pictured in a Book; a valet enters every morning, proposes a suit,
which, after deliberation, with perhaps amendments, is acceded to, and
worn at dinner. Vainest of human clothes-horses; foolishest coxcomb
Valori has seen: it is visibly his notion that it was he, Bruhl, by his
Saxon auxiliaries, by his masterly strokes of policy, that checkmated
Friedrich, and drove him from Bohemia last Year; and, for the rest, that
Friedrich is ruined, and will either shirk out of Silesia, or be cut to
ribbons there by the Austrian force this Summer. To which Valori hints
dissent; but it is ill received. Valori sees the King; finds him, as
expected, the fac-simile of Bruhl in this matter; Jesuit Guarini the
like: how otherwise? They have his Majesty in their leash, and lead him
as they please.

"At four every morning, this Guarini, Jesuit Confessor to the King and
Queen, comes to Bruhl; Bruhl settles with him what his Majesty shall
think, in reference to current business, this day; Guarini then goes,
confesses both Majesties; confesses, absolves, turns in the due way
to secular matters. At nine, Bruhl himself arrives, for Privy Council:
'What is your Majesty pleased to think on these points of current
business?' Majesty serenely issues his thoughts, in the form of orders;
which are found correct to pattern. This is the process with his
Majesty. A poor Majesty, taking deeply into tobacco; this is the way
they have him benetted, as in a dark cocoon of cobwebs, rendering the
whole world invisible to him. Which cunning arrangement is more and more
perfected every year; so that on all roads he travels, be it to mass,
to hunt, to dinner, any-whither in his Palace or out of it, there are
faithful creatures keeping eye, who admit no unsafe man to the least
glimpse of him by night or by day. In this manner he goes on; and before
the end of him, twenty years hence, has carried it far. Nothing but
disgust to be ha