. But read that Note of the great man. "Try if you can decipher
his writing. One may have very honest sentiments, and a great deal of
ESPRIT, and yet write like a cat....

"Sire, there was once a lion and a mouse (RAT); the mouse fell in love
with the lion, and went to pay him court. The lion, tired of it, gave
him a little scrape with his paw. The mouse withdrew into his mouse-hole
(SOURICIERE); but he still loved the lion; and seeing one day a net they
were spreading out to catch the lion and kill him, he gnawed asunder one
mesh of it. Sire, the mouse kisses very humbly your beautiful claws,
in all submissiveness:--he will never die between two Capuchins, as,
at Bale, the mastiff (DOGUE) of St. Malo has done [27th July last]. He
would have wished to die beside his lion. Believe that the mouse was
more attached than the mastiff."--V. [_OEuvres de Frederic,_ xxiii. 59,
60.]

To which we saw the Answer, pair of Answers, at Sagan, in September
last. This Note from Choiseul, conveyed by Voltaire, appears to have
been the trifling well-spring from which all those wide-spread waters
of Negotiation flowed. Pitt, when applied to, on the strength of
Friedrich's hopes from this small Document of Choiseul's, was of course
ready, "How welcome every chance of a just Peace!" and agreed to the
Joint Declaration at the Hague; and took what farther trouble I know
not,--probably less sanguine of success than Friedrich. Friedrich was
ardently industrious in the affair; had a great deal of devising and
directing on it, a great deal of corresponding with Voltaire and the
Duchess, only small fractions of which are now left. He searched out, or
the Duchess of Sachsen-Gotha did it for him, a proper Secret Messenger
for Paris: Secret Messenger, one Baron von Edelsheim, properly veiled,
was to consult a certain Bailli de Froulay, a friend of Friedrich's in
Paris;--which loyal-hearted Bailli did accordingly endeavor there; but
made out nothing. Only much vague talking; part of it, or most of it,
subdolous on Choiseul's side. Pitt would hear of no Peace which did
not include Prussia as well as England: some said this was the cause
of failure;--the real cause was that Choiseul never had any serious
intention of succeeding. Light Choiseul, a clever man, but an unwise,
of the sort called "dashing," had entertained the matter merely in the
optative form,--and when it came nearer, wished to use it for making
mischief between Pitt and Friedrich, and f