e had to take with a contrite
penitent air, a thing not easy to bring your face to at the moment. In
a word, this dog of a Franke [he died within few months, poor soul, CE
CHIEN DE FRANKE] led us the life of a set of Monks of La Trappe.

"Such excess of bigotry awakened still more gothic thoughts in the King.
He resolved to abdicate the crown in favor of my Brother. He used to
talk, He would reserve for himself 10,000 crowns a year; and retire with
the Queen and his Daughters to Wusterhausen. There, added he, I will
pray to God; and manage the farming economy, while my wife and girls
take care of the household matters. You are clever, he said to me; I
will give you the inspection of the linen, which you shall mend and
keep in order, taking good charge of laundry matters. Frederika [now
thirteen, married to ANSPACH two years hence], who is miserly, shall
have charge of all the stores of the house. Charlotte [now eleven,
Duchess of BRUNSWICK by and by] shall go to market and buy our
provisions; and my Wife shall take charge of the little children, [says
Friedrich Wilhelm], and of the kitchen." [Little children are:

1. Sophie Dorothee, now eight, who married Margraf of Schwedt, and was
unhappy;

2. Ulrique, a grave little soul of seven, Queen of Sweden afterwards;

3. August Wilhelm, age now five, became Father of a new Friedrich
Wilhelm, who was King by and by, and produced the Kings that still are;

4. Amelia, now four, born in the way we saw; and

5. HENRI, still in arms, just beginning to walk. There will be a Sixth
and no more (son of this Sixth, a Berlin ROUE was killed, in 1806, at
the Battle of Jena, or a day or two before); but the Sixth is not yet
come to hand.]

Poor Friedrich Wilhelm; what an innocent IDYLLIUM;--which cannot be
executed by a King. "He had even begun to work at an Instruction, or
Farewell Advice, for my Brother; and to point towards various steps,
which alarmed Grumkow and Seckendorf to a high degree." [Wilhelmina,
_Memoires de Bareith,_ i. 108.]

"Abdication," with a Crown-Prince ready to fall into the arms of
England, and a sudden finis to our Black-Art, will by no means
suit Seckendorf and Grumkow! Yet here is Winter coming; solitary
Wusterhausen, with the misty winds piping round it, will make matters
worse: something must be contrived; and what? The two, after study,
persuade Fieldmarshal Flemming over at Warsaw (August the Strong's chief
man, the Flemming of Voltaire's CHARLES XI