"After this sale, I found myself richer than I had ever been in my life. The Prince-Royal sent me, almost daily, a groom and led horse, that I might come to him, and sometimes follow him in his excursions. At last, he had it proposed to me, by M. de Brender, and even by Prince Eugene, to accompany him to Berlin." Which, of course, I did; taking Ruppin first. "I arrived at Berlin from Ruppin, in 1734, two days after the marriage of Friedrich Wilhelm Margraf of Schwedt [Ill Margraf's elder Brother, wildest wild- beast of this camp] with the Princess Sophie,"--that is to say, 12th of November; Marriage having been on the l0th, as the Books teach us. Chasot remembers that, on the 14th, "the Crown-Prince gave, in his Berlin mansion, a dinner to all the Royal Family," in honor of that auspicious wedding. [Kurd vou Schlozer,
Thus is Chasot established with the Crown-Prince. He will turn up fighting well in subsequent parts of this History; and again duelling fatally, though nothing of a quarrelsome man, as he asserts.
CROWN-PRINCE'S VISIT TO BAIREUTH ON THE WAY HOME.
October 4th, the Crown-Prince has parted with Prince Eugene,--not to meet again in this world; "an old hero gone to the shadow of himself," says the Crown-Prince; [
Wilhelmina was in low spirits:--weak health; add funeral of the Prince of Culmbach (killed in the Battle of Parma), illness of Papa, and other sombre events:--and was by no means content with the Crown-Prince, on this occasion. Strangely altered since we met him in July last! It may be, the Crown-Prince, looking, with an airy buoyancy of mind, towards a certain Event probably near, has got his young head inflated a littie, and carries himself with a height new to this beloved Sister;--but probably the sad humor of the Princess herself has a good deal to do with it. Alas, the contrast between a heart knowing secretly its own bitterness, and a friend's heart conscious of joy and triumph, is harsh and shocking to the former of the two! Here is the Princess's account; with the subtrahend, twenty-five or seventy-five per cent, not deducted from it:--
"My Brother arrived, the 5th of October. He seemed to me put out (DECONTENANCE); and to break off conversation with me, he said he had to write to the King and Queen. I ordered him pen and paper. He wrote in my room; and spent more than a good hour in writing a couple of Letters, of a line or two each. He then had all the Court, one after the other, introduced to him; said nothing to any of them, looked merely with a mocking air at them; after which we went to dinner.
"Here his whole conversation consisted in quizzing (TURLUPINER) whatever he saw; and repeating to me, above a hundred times over, the words 'little Prince,' 'little Court.' I was shocked; and could not understand how he had changed so suddenly towards me. The etiquette of all Courts in the Empire is, that nobody who has not at the least the rank of Captain can sit at a Prince's table: my Brother put a Lieuteuant there, who was in his suite; saying to me, 'A King's Lieutenants are as good as a Margraf's Ministers.' I swallowed this incivility, and showed no sign.
"After dinner, being alone with me, he said,"--turning up the flippant side of his thoughts, truly, in a questionable way:-- "'Our Sire is going to end (TIRE A SA FIN); he will not live out this month. I know I have made you great promises; but I am not in a condition to keep them. I will give you up the Half of the sum which the late King [our Grandfather] lent you; [Supra, pp. 161, 162.] I think you will have every reason to be satisfied with that.' I answered, That my regard for him had never been of an interested nature; that I would never ask anything of him, but the continuance of his friendship; and did not wish one sou, if it would in the least inconvenience him. 'No, no,' said he, 'you shall have those 100,000 thalers; I have destined them for you.-- People will be much surprised,' continued he, 'to see me act quite differently from what they had expected. They imagine I am going to lavish all my treasures, and that money will become as common as pebbles at Berlin: but they will find I know better. I mean to increase my Army, and to leave all other things on the old footing. I will have every consideration for the Queen my Mother, and will sate her (RASSASIERAI) with honors; but I do not mean that she shall meddle in my affairs; and if she try it, she will find so.'" What a speech; what an outbreak of candor in the young man, preoccupied with his own great thoughts and difficulties,--to the exclusion of any other person's!
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