se of ours, lying westward,
known to readers]; there to stay overnight. I was for setting out
thither,--Culmbach is twenty miles from Berneck; but the roads are
frightful," White Mayn, still a young River, dashing through the
rock-labyrinths there, "and full of precipices:--everybody rose in
opposition, and, whether I would or not, they put me into the carriage
for Himmelkron [partly on the road thither], which is only about ten
miles off. We had like to have got drowned on the road; the waters were
so swoln [White Mayn and its angry brooks], the horses could not cross
but by swimming.

"I arrived at last, about one in the morning. I instantly threw myself
on a bed. I was like to die with weariness; and in mortal terrors that
something had happened to my Brother or the Hereditary Prince. This
latter relieved me on his own score; he arrived at last, about four
o'clock,--had still no news farther of my Brother. I was beginning to
doze a little, when they came to warn me that 'M. von Knobelsdorf wished
to speak with me from the Prince-Royal.' I darted out of bed, and ran to
him. He," handing me a Letter, "brought word that"--

But let us now give Letter Second, which has turned up lately, and which
curiously completes the picture here. Friedrich, on rising refreshed
with sleep at Hof, had taken a cheerfuler view; and the Generals still
lagging rearward, he thinks it possible to see Wilhelmina after all.
Possible; and yet so very dangerous,--perhaps not possible? Here is a
second Letter written from Munchberg, some fifteen miles farther on, at
an after period of the same Friday: purport still of a perplexed nature,
"I will, and I dare not;"--practical outcome, of itself uncertain, is
scattered now by torrents and thunderstorms. This is the Letter, which
Knobelsdorf now hands to Wilhelmina at that untimely hour of Saturday:--

2. TO PRINCESS WILHELMINA (by Knobelsdorf).

"MUNCHBERG, 2d July, 1754.

"MY DEAREST SISTER,--I am in despair that I cannot satisfy my impatience
and my duty,--to throw myself at your feet this day. But alas, dear
Sister, it does not depend on me: we poor Princes, "the Margraves and
I," are obliged to wait here till our Generals [Bredow, Schulenburg and
Company] come up; we dare not go along without them. They broke a wheel
in Gera [fifty miles behind us]; hearing nothing of them since, we are
absolutely forced to wait here. Judge in what a mood I am, and
what sorrow must be mine! Express order no