ho conceived that he made ample
atonement to Heaven for his brutality by holding the softer passions in
detestation. The Prince Royal, too, was not one of those who are content
to take their religion on trust. He asked puzzling questions, and
brought forward arguments which seemed to savor of something different
from pure Lutheranism. The King suspected that his son was inclined to
be a heretic of some sort or other, whether Calvinist or Atheist his
Majesty did not very well know. The ordinary malignity of Frederic
William was bad enough. He now thought malignity a part of his duty as a
Christian man, and all the conscience that he had stimulated his
hatred. The flute was broken; the French books were sent out of the
palace; the Prince was kicked and cudgelled, and pulled by the hair. At
dinner the plates were hurled at his head; sometimes he was restricted
to bread and water; sometimes he was forced to swallow food so nauseous
that he could not keep it on his stomach. Once his father knocked him
down, dragged him along the floor to a window, and was with difficulty
prevented from strangling him with the cord of the curtain. The Queen,
for the crime of not wishing to see her son murdered, was subjected to
the grossest indignities. The Princess Wilhelmina, who took her
brother's part, was treated almost as ill as Mrs. Brownrigg's
apprentices. Driven to despair, the unhappy youth tried to run away.
Then the fury of the old tyrant rose to madness. The Prince was an
officer in the army: his flight was therefore desertion; and in the
moral code of Frederic William, desertion was the highest of all crimes.
"Desertion," says this royal theologian, in one of his half crazy
letters, "is from hell. It is a work of the children of the Devil. No
child of God could possibly be guilty of it." An accomplice of the
Prince, in spite of the recommendation of a court martial, was
mercilessly put to death. It seemed probable that the Prince himself
would suffer the same fate. It was with difficulty that the intercession
of the States of Holland, of the Kings of Sweden and Poland, and of the
Emperor of Germany, saved the House of Brandenburg from the stain of an
unnatural murder. After months of cruel suspense, Frederic learned that
his life would be spared. He remained, however, long a prisoner; but he
was not on that account to be pitied. He found in his jailers a
tenderness which he had never found in his father; his table was not
sumptuo