the DOUANIER, head Custom-house
Personage of the Town, had the impertinence to detain the dress till
payment were made. The Princess, in a lofty indignation, sent word to
this person, To bring the dress instantly, and she would pay the dues on
it. He obeyed: but,"--mark the result,--"scarcely had the Princess got
eye on him, when she seized her Lyon Dress; and, giving the Douanier a
couple of good slaps on the face, ordered him out of her apartment and
house.

"The Douanier, thinking himself one and somewhat, withdrew in high
choler; had a long PROCES-VERBAL of the thing drawn out; and sent it to
the King with eloquent complaint, 'That he had been dishonored in
doing the function appointed him.' Friedrich replied as follows: TO
THE DOUANIER AT STETTIN: 'The loss of the Excise-dues shall fall to my
score; the Dress shall remain with the Princess; the slaps to him who
has received them. As to the pretended Dishonor, I entirely relieve
the complainant from that: never can the appliance of a beautiful hand
dishonor the face of an Officer of Customs.--F.'" [Laveaux (abridged),
iii. 229.]

Northern Tourists, Wraxall and others, passing that way, speak of this
Princess, down to recent times, as a phenomenon of the place. Apparently
a high and peremptory kind of Lady, disdaining to be bowed too low by
her disgraces. She survived all her generation, and the next and the
next, and indeed into our own. Died 18th February, 1840: at the age
of ninety-six. Threescore and eleven years of that eclipsed Stettin
Existence; this of the Lyon gown, and caitiff of a Custom-houser slapped
on the face, her one adventure put on record for us!--

She was signally blamable in that of the Divorce; but not she alone,
nor first of the Two. Her Crown-Prince, Friedrich Wilhelm, called
afterwards, as King, "DER DICKE (the Fat, or the Big)," and held in
little esteem by Posterity,--a headlong, rather dark and physical
kind of creature, though not ill-meaning or dishonest,--was himself a
dreadful sinner in that department of things; and had BEGUN the bad
game against his poor Cousin and Spouse! Readers of discursive turn
are perhaps acquainted with a certain "Grafin von Lichtenau," and her
MEMOIRS so called:--not willingly, but driven, I fish up one specimen,
and one only, from that record of human puddles and perversities:--

"From the first year of our attachment," says this precious Grafin, "I
was already the confidant of his," the Prince of Prus