s Ball at Monbijou; the Crown-Prince
and others busy dancing there, as if nothing special lay ahead.
Nevertheless, at three in the morning he has changed his ball-dress
for a better, he and certain more; and is rushing southward, with his
volunteer Generals and Margraves, full speed, saluted by the rising
sun, towards Philipsburg and the Seat of War. And the same night, King
Stanislaus, if any of us cared for him, is on flight from Dantzig,
"disguised as a cattle-dealer;" got out on the night of Sunday last,
Town under such a rain of bombshells being palpably too hot for him: got
out, but cannot get across the muddy intricacies of the Weichsel; lies
painfully squatted up and down, in obscure alehouses, in that Stygian
Mud-Delta,--a matter of life and death to get across, and not a boat
to be had, such the vigilance of the Russian. Dantzig is capitulating,
dreadful penalties exacted, all the heavier as no Stanislaus is to be
found in it; and search all the keener rises in the Delta after him.
Through perils and adventures of the sort usual on such occasions,
[Credible modest detail of them, in a LETTER from Stanislaus himself
(_History of Stanislaus,_ already cited, pp. 235-248).] Stanislaus
does get across; and in time does reach Preussen; where, by Friedrich
Wilhelm's order, safe opulent asylum is afforded him, till the Fates
(when this War ends) determine what is to become of the poor Imaginary
Majesty. We leave him, squatted in the intricacies of the Mud-Delta,
to follow our Crown-Prince, who in the same hour is rushing far
elsewhither.

Margraves, Generals and he, in their small string of carriages, go
on, by extra-post, day and night; no rest till they get to Hof, in the
Culmbach neighborhood, a good two hundred miles off,--near Wilhelmina,
and more than half-way to Philipsburg. Majesty Friedrich Wilhelm is
himself to follow in about a week: he has given strict order against
waste of time: "Not to part company; go together, and NOT by Anspach or
Baireuth,"--though they lie almost straight for you.

This latter was a sore clause to Friedrich, who had counted all along
on seeing his dear faithful Wilhelmina, as he passed: therefore, as
the Papa's Orders, dangerous penalty lying in them, cannot be literally
disobeyed, the question rises, How see Wilhelmina and not Baireuth?
Wilhelmina, weak as she is and unfit for travelling, will have to meet
him in some neutral place, suitablest for both. After various shiftings,