Wilhelm for it: but there is a tragic side, not so well
seen into, where tears are due to the poor King; and to certain others
horsewhips, and almost gallows-ropes, are due!--Yes, had Seckendorf and
Grumkow both been well hanged, at this stage of the affair, whereby
the affair might have soon ended on fair terms, it had been welcome to
mankind; welcome surely to the present Editor; for one; such a saving to
him, of time wasted, of disgust endured! And indeed it is a solacement
he has often longed for, in these dreary operations of his. But the
Fates appointed otherwise; we have all to accept our Fate!--

Grumkow is sworn to Imperial orthodoxy, then,--probably the vulpine MIND
(so to term it) went always rather that way, and only his interest
the other;--Grumkow is well bribed, supplied for bribing others where
needful; stands orthodox now, under peril of his very head. All
things have been got distilled into the palatable state, spiritual and
economic, for oneself and one's grand Trojan-Horse of a Grumkow; and the
adventure proceeds apace. Seckendorf sits nightly in the TABAGIE (a
kind of "Smoking Parliament," as we shall see anon); attends on all
promenades and journeys: one of the wisest heads, and so pleasant in
discourse, he is grown indispensable, and a necessary of life to us.
Seckendorf's Biographer computes, "he must have ridden, in those seven
years, continually attending his Majesty, above 5,000 German miles,"
[Anonymous (Seckendorf's Grand-Nephew) _Versuch einer Lebensbeschreibung
des Feldmarschalls Grafen von Seckendorf_ (Leipzig, 1792, 1794), i.
6.]--that is 25,000 English miles; or a trifle more than the length of
the Terrestrial Equator.

In a month or two, [13th August, 1726 (Preuss, i. 37).]
Seckendorf--since Majesty vouchsafes to honor us by wishing
it--contrives to get nominated Kaiser's Minister at Berlin: unlimited
prospects of Tabagie, and good talk, now opening on Majesty. And
impartial Grumkow, in Tabagie or wherever we are, cannot but admit, now
and then, that the Excellenz Herr Graf Ordnance-Master has a deal of
reason in what he says about Foreign Politics, about intrusive French
and other points. "Hm, Na," muses Friedrich Wilhelm to himself, "if the
Kaiser had not been so lofty on us in that Heidelberg-Protestant affair,
in the Ritter-Dienst business, in those damned 'recruiting' brabbles;
always a very high-sniffing surly Kaiser to us!" For in fact the Kaiser
has, all along, used Friedrich