cence itself;--and, in fact, that night and
all the other nights, "they smoked above thirty pipes together," for one
item. May 21st, 1736, [Forster (i. 227), following loose Pollnitz (ii.
478), dates it 1735: a more considerable error, if looked into, than
is usual in Herr Forster; who is not an ill-informed nor inexact
man;--though, alas, in respect of method (that is to say, want of
visible method, indication, or human arrangement), probably the most
confused of all the Germans!] Ex-Majesty Stanislaus went on his
way again; towards France,--towards Meudon, a quiet Royal House in
France,--till Luneville, Nanci, and their Lorraine Palaces are quite
ready. There, in these latter, he at length does find resting-place,
poor innocent insipid mortal, after such tossings to and fro: and M.
de Voltaire, and others of mark, having sometimes enlivened the insipid
Court there, Titular King Stanislaus has still a kind of remembrance
among mankind.

Of his Prussian Majesty we said that, though the Berlin populations
reported him well again, it was not so. The truth is, his Majesty was
never well again. From this point, age only forty-seven, he continues
broken in bodily constitution; clogged more and more with physical
impediments; and his History, personal and political withal, is as
that of an old man, finishing his day. To the last he pulls steadily,
neglecting no business, suffering nothing to go wrong. Building
operations go on at Berlin; pushed more than ever, in these years, by
the rigorous Derschau, who has got that in charge. No man of money
or rank in Berlin but Derschau is upon him, with heavier and heavier
compulsion to build: which is felt to be tyrannous; and occasions an
ever-deepening grumble among the moneyed classes. At Potsdam his Majesty
himself is the Builder; and gives the Houses away to persons of merit.
[Pollnitz, ii. 469.]

Nor is the Army less an object, perhaps almost more. Nay, at one time,
old Kur-Pfalz being reckoned in a dying condition, Friedrich Wilhelm is
about ranking his men, prepared to fight for his rights in Julich and
Berg; Kaiser having openly gone over, and joined with France against
his Majesty in that matter. However, the old Kur-Pfalz did not die,
and there came nothing of fight in Friedrich Wilhelm's time. But his
History, on the political side, is henceforth mainly a commentary to
him on that "word" he heard in Priort, "which was as if you had turned
a dagger in my heart!" With the K