ments
I shall die," were perfectly true. MAIN DE MAITRE went widely abroad
over the world. The poor Prince's words and procedures were eagerly
caught up by a scrutinizing public,--and some of the former were not too
guarded. At Dresden, he said, one morning, calling on a General Finck
whom we shall hear of again: "Four such disagreeing, thin-skinned,
high-pacing (UNEINIGE, PIQUIRTE) Generals as Fouquet, Schmettau,
Winterfeld and Goltz, about you, what was to be done!" said the Prince
to Finck. [Preuss, ii. 79 n.: see ib. 60, 78.]

His Wife, when at last he came to Oranienburg, nursed him fondly; that
is one comfortable fact. Prince Henri, to the last, had privately a
grudge of peculiar intensity, on this score, against all the peccant
parties, King not excepted. As indeed he was apt to have, on various
scores, the jealous, too vehement little man.

Friedrich's humor at this time I can guess to have been well-nigh
desperate. He talks once of "a horse, on too much provocation, getting
the bit between its teeth; regardless thenceforth of chasms and
precipices:" [Letter to Wilhelmina, "Linay, 22d July" (cited
above).]--though he himself never carries it to that length; and always
has a watchful eye, when at his swiftest! From Weissenberg, that
night, he drives in the Pandours on Zittau and the Eckartsberg--but the
Austrians don't come out. And, for three weeks in this fierce necessity
of being speedy, he cannot get one right stroke at the Austrians; who
sit inexpugnable upon their Eckart's Hill, bristling with cannon; and
can in no way be manoeuvred down, or forced or enticed into Battle. A
baffling, bitterly impatient three weeks;--two of them the worst two,
he spends at Weissenberg itself, chasing Pandours, and scuffling on the
surface, till Keith and the Magazine-train come up;--even writing Verses
now and then, when the hours get unendurable otherwise!

The instant Keith and the Magazines are come he starts for Bernstadt;
56,000 strong after this junction:--and a Prussian Officer, dating
"Bernstadtel [Bernstadt on the now Maps], 21st August, 1757," sends us
this account; which also is but of preliminary nature:--

"AUGUST 15th, Majesty left Weissenberg, and marched hither, much to the
enemy's astonishment, who had lain perfectly quiet for a fortnight
past, fancying they were a mastiff on the door-sill of Silesia: little
thinking to be trampled on in this unceremonious way! General Beck, when
our hussars of the vangu