Noting the alarm in Washington’s voice the professor

"POTSDAM, SEPTEMBER 3Oth, 1734. Yesterday, for half an hour, the King could get no breath: he keeps them continually rolling him about" in his Bath-chair, "over the room, and cries 'LUFT, LUFT (Air, air)!'

"OCTOBER 2d. The King is not going to die just yet; but will scarcely see Christmas. He gets on his clothes; argues with the Doctors, is impatient; won't have people speak of his illness;--is quite black in the face; drinks nothing but MOLL [which we suppose to be small bitter beer], takes physic, writes in bed.

"OCTOBER 5th. The Nigger tells me things are better. The King begins to bring up phlegm; drinks a great deal of oatmeal water [HAFERGRUTZWASSER, comfortable to the sick]; says to the Nigger: 'Pray diligently, all of you; perhaps I shall not die!'"

October 5th: this is the day the Crown-Prince arrives at Baireuth; to be called away by express four days after. How valuable, at Vienna or elsewhere, our dark friend the Lackey's medical opinion is, may be gathered from this other Entry, three weeks farther on,--enough to suffice us on that head:--

"The Nigger tells me he has a bad opinion of the King's health. If you roll the King a little fast in his Bath-chair, you hear the water jumble in his body,"--with astonishment! "King gets into passions; has beaten the pages [may we hope, our dark friend among the rest?], so that it was feared apoplexy would take him."

This will suffice for the physiological part; let us now hear our poor friend on the Crown-Prince and his arrival:--

"OCTOBER 12th. Return of the Prince-Royal to Potsdam; tender reception.--OCTOBER 21st. Things look ill in Potsdam. The other leg is now also begun running; and above a quart (MAAS) of water has come from it. Without a miracle, the King cannot live,"-- thinks our dark friend. "The Prince-Royal is truly affected (VERITABLEMENT ATTENDRI) at the King's situation; has his eyes full of water, has wept the eyes out of his head: has schemed in all ways to contrive a commodious bed for the King; wouldn't go away from Potsdam. King forced him away; he is to return Saturday afternoon. The Prince-Royal has been heard to say, 'If the King will let me live in my own way, I would give an arm to lengthen his life for twenty years.' King always calls him Fritzchen. But Fritzchen," thinks Seckendorf Junior, "knows nothing about business. The King is aware of it; and said in the face of him one day: 'If thou begin at the wrong end with things, and all go topsy-turvy after I am gone, I will laugh at thee out of my grave!'" [Seckendorf (BARON), Journal Secret; cited in Forster, ii. 142.]

So Friedrich Wilhelm; laboring amid the mortal quicksands; looking into the Inevitable, in various moods. But the memorablest speech he made to Fritzchen or to anybody at present, was that covert one about the Kaiser and Seckendorf, and the sudden flash of insight he got, from some word of Seckendorf's, into what they had been meaning with him all along. Riding through the village of Priort, in debate about Vienna politics of a strange nature, Seckendorf said something, which illuminated his Majesty, dark for so many years, and showed him where he was. A ghastly horror of a country, yawning indisputable there; revealed to one as if by momentary lightning, in that manner! This is a speech which all the ambassadors report, and which was already mentioned by us,--in reference to that opprobrious Proposal about the Crown-Prince's Marriage, "Marry with England, after all; never mind breaking your word!" Here is the manner of it, with time and place:--

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