I could not otherwise suit myself to it; as I always thought I had a gracious Papa, and now have to see the contrary. I take confidence, then, and hope that my dear Papa will consider all this, and again be gracious to me. And, in the mean while, Iassure him that I will never, all my days, fail with my will;and, notwithstanding his disfavor to me, remain "My dear Papa's "Most faithful and obedient Servant and Son, "FRIEDRICH."To which Friedrich Wilhelm, by return of messenger, writes what follows. Very implacable, we may perceive;--not calling his Petitioner "Thou," as kind Paternity might have dictated;infinitely less by the polite title "They (SIE)," which latter indeed, the distinguished title of "SIC," his Prussian Majesty, we can remark, reserves for Foreigners of the supremest quality, and domestic Princes of the Blood; naming all other Prussian subjects, and poor Fritz in this place, "He (ER)," in the style of a gentleman to his valet,--which style even a valet of these new days of ours would be unwilling to put up with. "ER, He," "His"and the other derivatives sound loftily repulsive in the German ear; and lay open impassable gulfs between the Speaker and the Spoken-to. "His obstinate"--But we must, after all, say THY and THOU for intelligibility's sake:--"Thy obstinate perverse disposition [KOPF, head], which does not love thy Father,--for when one does everything [everything commanded] and really loves one's Father, one does what the Father requires, not while he is there to see it, but when his back is turned too [His Majesty's style is very abstruse, ill-spelt, intricate, and in this instance trips itself, and falls on its face here, a mere intricate nominative without a verb!]--For the rest, thou know'st very well that I can endure no effeminate fellow (EFEMINIRTEN KERL), who has no human inclination in him;who puts himself to shame, cannot ride nor shoot; and withal is dirty in his person; frizzles his hair like a fool, and does not cut it off. And all this I have, a thousand times, reprimanded;but all in vain, and no improvement in nothing (KEINE BESSERUNG INNITS IST). For the rest, haughty, proud as a churl; speaks to nobody but some few, and is not popular and affable; and cuts grimaces with his face, as if he were a fool; and does my will in nothing unless held to it by force; nothing out of love;--and has pleasure in nothing but following his own whims [own KOPF],--no use to him in anything else. This is the answer.
"FRIEDRICH WILHELM."
[Preuss, i. 27; from Cramer, pp. 33, 34.]
DOUBLE-MARRIAGE PROJECT RE-EMERGES IN AN OFFICIAL SHAPE.
These are not favorable outlooks for the Double-Marriage.
Nevertheless it comes and goes; and within three weeks later, we are touched almost with a kind of pity to see it definitely emerging in a kind of Official state once more. For the question is symbolical of important political questions. The question means withal, What is to be done in these dreadful Congress-of-Soissons complexities, and mad reelings of the Terrestrial Balance?
Shall we hold by a dubious and rather losing Kaiser of this kind, in spite of his dubieties, his highly inexplicit, procedures (for which he may have reasons) about the Promise of Julich and Berg?
Or shall we not clutch at England, after all,--and perhaps bring him to terms? The Smoking Parliament had no Hansard; but, we guess its Debates (mostly done in dumb-show) were cloudy, abstruse and abundant, at this time! The Prussian Ministers, if they had any power, take different sides; old Ilgen, the oldest and ablest of them, is strong for England.
Enough, in the beginning of October, Queen Sophie, "by express desire of his Majesty," who will have explicit, Yes or No on that matter, writes to England, a Letter "PRIVATE AND OFFICIAL," of such purport,--Letter (now invisible) which Dubourgay is proud to transmit. [Despatch, 5th October, 1728, in State-Paper Office.]
Dubourgay is proud; and old Ilgen, her Majesty informed me on the morrow, "wept for joy," so zealous was he on that side. Poor old gentleman,--respectable rusty old Iron Safe with seven locks, which nobody would now care to pick,--he died few weeks after, at his post as was proper; and saw no Double-Marriage, after all.
But Dubourgay shakes out his feathers; the Double-Marriage being again evidently alive.
For England answers, cordially enough, if not, with all the hurry Friedrich Wilhelm wanted, "Yea, we are willing for the thing;"--and meets, with great equanimity and liberality, the new whims, difficulties and misgivings, which arose on Friedrich Wilhelm's part, at a wearisome rate, as the negotiation went on; and which are always frankly smoothed away again by the cooler party.