tic
whirlwinds at Berlin, among other results. "CANAILLE ANGLAISE, English
Doggery!" and similar fine epithets, addressed to Wilhelmina and the
Crown-Prince, fly about; not to speak of occasional crockery and
other missiles. Friedrich Wilhelm has forbidden these two his presence
altogether, except at dinner: Out of my sight, ye Canaille Anglaise;
darken not the sunlight for me at all!

This is in the Wusterhausen time,--Hanover Imminency only two months
gone. And Mamma sends for us to have private dialogues in her Apartment
there, with spies out in every direction to make signal of Majesty's
return from his hunt,--who, however, surprises as on one occasion, so
that we have to squat for hours, and almost get suffocated. [Wilhelmina,
i. 172.] Whereupon the Crown-Prince, who will be eighteen in a couple
of months, and feels the indignity of such things, begs of Mamma to be
excused in future. He has much to suffer from his Father again, writes
Dubourgay in the end of November: "it is difficult to conceive the vile
stratagems that are made use of to provoke the Father against the
Son." [Dubourgay, 28th November, 1729.] Or again, take this, as perhaps
marking an epoch in the business, a fortnight farther on:--

DECEMBER 10th 1729. "His Prussian Majesty cannot bear the sight of
either the Prince or Princess Royal: The other day, he asked the Prince:
'Kalkstein makes you English; does not he?' Kalkstein, your old Tutor,
Borck, Knyphausen, Finkenstein, they are all of that vile clique!" To
which the Prince answered, 'I respect the English because I know the
people there love me;' upon which the King seized him by the collar,
struck him fiercely with his cane," in fact rained showers of blows upon
him; "and it was only by superior strength," thinks Dubourgay, "that the
poor Prince escaped worse. There is a general apprehension of something
tragical taking place before long."

Truly the situation is so violent, it cannot last. And in effect a wild
thought, not quite new, ripens to a resolution in the Crown-Prince under
such pressures: In reference to which, as we grope and guess, here is
a Billet to Mamma, which Wilhelmina has preserved. Wilhelmina omits all
trace of date, as usual; but Dubourgay, in the above Excerpt, probably
supplies that defect:--

FRIEDRICH TO HIS MOTHER (Potsdam, December, 1729).

"I am in the uttermost despair. What I had always apprehended has at
last come on me. The King has entirely forgotten that