t him.

He had other loads laid upon him, poor youth: his kind pious Mother
died, his elder Brother died, he at the age of seventeen saw himself
Heir-Apparent;--and had got a Stepmother with new heirs, if he
should disappear. Sorrows enough in that one fact, with the venomous
whisperings, commentaries and suspicions, which a Court population,
female and male, in little Berlin Town, can contrive to tack to it. Does
not the new Sovereign Lady, in her heart, wish YOU were dead, my Prince?
Hope it perhaps? Health, at any rate, weak; and, by the aid of a little
pharmacy--ye Heavens!

Such suspicions are now understood to have had no basis except in the
waste brains of courtier men and women; but their existence there can
become tragical enough. Add to which, the Great Elector, like all the
Hohenzollerns, was a choleric man; capable of blazing into volcanic
explosions, when affronted by idle masses of cobwebs in the midst of his
serious businesses! It is certain, the young Prince Friedrich had at one
time got into quite high, shrill and mutually minatory terms with his
Stepmother; so that once, after some such shrill dialogue between them,
ending with "You shall repent this, Sir!"--he found it good to fly
off in the night, with only his Tutor or Secretary and a valet, to
Hessen-Cassel to an Aunt; who stoutly protected him in this emergency;
and whose Daughter, after the difficult readjustment of matters, became
his Wife, but did not live long. And it is farther certain the same
Prince, during this his first wedded time, dining one day with his
Stepmother, was taken suddenly ill. Felt ill, after his cup of coffee;
retired into another room in violent spasms, evidently in an alarming
state, and secretly in a most alarmed one: his Tutor or Secretary, one
Dankelmann, attended him thither; and as the Doctor took some time to
arrive, and the symptoms were instant and urgent, Secretary Dankelmann
produced "from a pocket-book some drug of his own, or of the
Hessen-Cassel Aunt," emetic I suppose, and gave it to the poor
Prince;--who said often, and felt ever after, with or without notion
of poison, That Dankelmann had saved his life. In consequence of
which adventure he again quitted Court without leave; and begged to
be permitted to remain safe in the country, if Papa would be so good.
[Pollnitz, _ Memoiren, _ i. 191-198.]

Fancy the Great Elector's humor on such an occurrence; and what a
furtherance to him in his heavy continual