s Father,
had not been intended to accompany; was to stay at Potsdam and
diligently drill: nevertheless an estafette came for him from the
gallant Polish Majesty;--Wilhelmina had spoken a word to good Suhm, who
wrote to his King, and the hospitable message came. Friedrich made no
loitering,--to Dresden is but a hundred miles, one good day;--he arrived
there on the morrow after his Father; King "on the 14th January, 1728,"
dates Fassmann; "Crown-Prince on the 15th," which I find was Thursday.
The Crown-Prince lodged with Fieldmarshal Flemming; Friedrich Wilhelm,
having come in no state, refused King August's pressings, and took up
his quarters with "the General Fieldmarshal Wackerbarth, Commandant in
Dresden,"--pleasant old military gentleman, who had besieged Stralsund
along with him in times gone. Except Grumkow, Derschau and one or two
of less importance, with the due minimum of Valetry, he had brought no
retinue; the Crown-Prince had Finkenstein and Kalkstein with him, Tutor
and Sub-Tutor, officially there. And he lodges with old Count Flemming
and his clever fashionable Madam,--the diligent but unsuccessful
Flemming, a courtier of the highest civility, though iracund, and "with
a passion for making Treaties," whom we know since Charles XII.'s time.

Amongst the round of splendors now set on foot, Friedrich Wilhelm had,
by accident of Nature, the spectacle of a house on fire,--rather a
symbolic one in those parts,--afforded him, almost to start with. Deep
in the first Saturday night, or rather about two in the morning of
Sunday, Wackerbarth's grand house, kindling by negligence somewhere
in the garrets, blazed up, irrepressible; and, with its endless
upholsteries, with a fine library even, went all into flame: so that
his Majesty, scarcely saving his CHATOULLE (box of preciosities), had to
hurry out in undress;--over to Flemming's where his Son was; where they
both continued thenceforth. This was the one touch of rough, amid
so much of dulcet that occurred: no evil, this touch, almost rather
otherwise, except to poor Wackerbarth, whose fine House lay wrecked by
it.

The visit lasted till February 12th, four weeks and a day. Never
was such thrice-magnificent Carnival amusements: illuminations,
cannon-salvoings and fire-works; operas, comedies, redoubts,
sow-baitings, fox and badger-baiting, reviewing, running at the
ring:--dinners of never-imagined quality, this, as a daily item, needs
no express mention.

To the