the Old Dessauer's
Nephew; none of the likeliest of men, intrinsically taken: he and his
Dowager Mother--the Dessauer's Sister, a high-going, tacitly obstinate
old Dowager (who dresses, if I recollect, in flagrant colors)--are
very troublesome to Wilhelmina. The flagrant Dame--she might have been
"Queen-Mother" once forsooth, had Papa and my Brother but been made away
with!--watches her time, and is diligent by all opportunities.

Chapter IV. -- DOUBLE-MARRIAGE PROJECT IS NOT DEAD.

And the Double-Marriage, in such circumstances, are we to consider it as
dead, then? In the soul of Queen Sophie and those she can influence, it
lives flame-bright; but with all others it has fallen into a very dim
state. Friedrich Wilhelm is still privately willing, perhaps in a degree
wishful; but the delays, the supercilious neglects have much disgusted
him; and he, in the mean while, entertains those new speculations.
George II., never a lover of the Prussian Majesty's nor loved by him,
has been very high and distant ever since his Accession; offensive
rather than otherwise. He also is understood to be vaguely willing for
the thing; willing enough, would it be so kind as accomplish itself
without trouble to him. But the settlements, the applications to
Parliament:--and all for this perverse Fred, who has become unlovely,
and irritates our royal mind? George pushes the matter into its
pigeon-holes again, when brought before him. Higher thoughts occupy the
soul of little George. Congress of Soissons, Convention of the Pardo,
[Or, in effect, "Treaty of Madrid," 6th March, 1728. This was the
PREFACE to Soissons; Termagant at length consenting there, "at her
Palace of the Pardo" (Kaiser and all the world urging her for ten months
past), to accept the Peace, and leave off besieging Gibraltar to no
purpose (Coxe, i. 303).] Treaty of Seville; a part to be acted on
the world-theatre, with applauses, with envies, almost from the very
demi-gods? Great Kaisers, overshadowing Nature with their Pragmatic
Sanctions, their preternatural Diplomacies, and making the Terrestrial
Balance reel hither and thither;--Kaisers to be clenched perhaps by
one's dexterity of grasp, and the Balance steadied again? Prussian
Double-Marriage!

One royal soul there is who never will consent to have the
Double-Marriage die: Queen Sophie. She had passed her own private
act-of-parliament for it; she was a very obstinate wife, to a husband
equally obstinate. "JE BOU