ers; clearly of the scoundrel genus, more than common
pickpockets are? Thereby had certain young hearts, and honest old ones
too, escaped being broken; and many a thing might have gone better than
it did. JARNI-BLEU, Herr Feldzeugmeister, though you are an orthodox
Protestant, this thousand-fold perpetual habit of distilled lying seems
to me a bad one. I do not blame an old military gentleman, with a brow
so puckered as yours, for having little of the milk of human kindness so
called: but this of breaking, by force of lies merely, and for your own
uses, the hearts of poor innocent creatures, nay of grinding them
slowly in the mortar, and employing their Father's hand to do it withal;
this--Herr General, forgive me, but there are moments when I feel as if
the extinction of probably the intensest scoundrel of that epoch might
have been a satisfactory event!--Alas, it could not be. Seckendorf is
lying abroad for his Kaiser; "the only really able man we have," says
Eugene sometimes. Snuffles and lisps; and travels in all, as they
count, about 25,000 miles, keeping his Majesty in company. Here are
some glimpses into the interior, dull but at first-hand, which are worth
clipping and condensing from Dubourgay, with their dates:--

30th JULY, 1729. To the respectable old Brigadier, this day or
yesterday, "her Majesty, all in tears, complained of her situation: King
is nigh losing his senses on account of the differences with Hanover;
goes from bed to bed in the night-time, and from chamber to chamber,
'like one whose brains are turned.' Took a fit, at two in the morning,
lately, to be off to Wusterhausen:"--about a year ago Seckendorf and
Grumkow had built a Lodge out there, where his Majesty, when he liked,
could be snug and private with them: thither his Majesty now rushed, at
two in the morning; but seemingly found little assuagement. "Since
his return, he gives himself up entirely to drink:--Seckendorf," the
snuffling Belial, "is busy, above ground and below; has been heard
saying He alone could settle these businesses, Double-Marriage and all,
would her Majesty but trust him!"--

"The King will not suffer the Prince-Royal to sit next his Majesty
at table, but obliges him to go to the lower end; where things are so
ordered," says the sympathetic Dubourgay, "that the poor Prince often
rises without getting one bit,"--woe's me! "Insomuch that the Queen was
obliged two days ago [28th July, 1729, let us date such an occurrence]