th extreme talent and success, we shall
hope to hear almost nothing more of him. Majesty, while Crown-Prince,
when he first got his regiment from Papa, had found this Creutz
"Auditor" in it; a poor but handsome fellow, with perhaps seven
shillings a week to live upon; but with such a talent for arranging, for
reckoning and recording, in brief for controlling finance, as more and
more charmed the royal mind. [Mauvillon ("Elder Mauvillon," ANONYMOUS),
_Histoire de Frederic Guillaume I.,_ par M. de M--(Amsterdam et Leipzig,
1741), i. 47. A vague flimsy compilation;--gives abundant "State-Papers"
(to such as want them), and echoes of old Newspaper rumor. Very copious
on Creutz.]

One of Majesty's first acts was to appoint him Finance-Minister; [4th
May, 1713: Preuss, i. 349. n.] and there he continued steady, not to
be overset by little flaws of wind like this of the Spectre-Scullion's
raising. It is certain he did, himself, become rich; and helped well to
make his Majesty so. We are to fancy him his Majesty's bottle-holder in
that battle with the Finance Nightmares and Imbroglios, when so much had
to be subjugated, and drilled into step, in that department. Evidently a
long-headed cunning fellow, much of the Grumkow type;--standing very low
in Wilhelmina's judgment; and ill-seen, when not avoidable altogether,
by the Queen's Majesty. "The man was a poor Country Bailiff's
(AMTMANN'S, kind of Tax-manager's) son: from Auditor of a regiment,"
Papa's own regiment, "he had risen to be Director of Finance, and
a Minister of State. His soul was as low as his birth; it was an
assemblage of all the vices," [Wilhelmina, i. 16.] says Wilhelmina, in
the language of exaggeration.--Let him stand by his budgets; keep well
out of Wilhelmina's and the Queen's way;--and very especially beware of
coming on Grumkow's field again.

Chapter VI. -- THE LITTLE DRUMMER.

This Siege of Stralsund, the last military scene of Charles XII., and
the FIRST ever practically heard of by our little Fritz, who is now
getting into his fourth year, and must have thought a great deal about
it in his little head,--Papa and even Mamma being absent on it, and such
a marching and rumoring going on all round him,--proved to be otherwise
of some importance to little Fritz.

Most of his Tutors were picked up by the careful Papa in this Stralsund
business. Duhan de Jandun, a young French gentleman, family-tutor to
General Count Dohna (a cousin of our Minister