Paragraph of tragic compliments to Grumkow we omit. Letter ends in this way:--"Your Baireuth News is very interesting; I hope, in September next [time of a grand problem coming there for Wilhelmina], my Sister will recover her first health. If I go travelling, I hope to have the consolation of seeing her for a fortnight or three weeks;I love her more than my life; and for all my obediences to the King, surely I shall deserve that recompense. The diversions for the Duke of Lorraine are very well schemed; but"--but what mortal can now care about them? Close, and seal. [Forster, iii. 160-162; OEuvres de Frederic, xvi, 37-39.]
As to this Duke of Lorraine just coming, he is Franz Stephan, a pleasant young man of twenty-five, son of that excellent Duke Leopold Joseph, whom young Lyttelton of Hagley was so taken with, while touring in those parts in the Congress-of-Soissons time.
Excellent Duke Leopold Joseph is since dead; and this Franz has succeeded to him,--what succession there was; for Lorraine as a Dukedom has its neck under the foot of France this great while, and is evidently not long for this world. Old Fleury, men say, has his eye upon it. And in fact it was, as we shall see, eaten up by Fleury within four years' time; and this Franz proved the last of all the Dukes there. Let readers notice him: a man of high destiny otherwise, of whom we are to hear much. For ten years past he has lived about Vienna, being a born Cousin of that House (Grandmother was Kaiser Leopold's own Sister); and it is understood, nay it is privately settled he is to marry the transcendent Archduchess, peerless Maria Theresa herself; and is to reap, he, the whole harvest of that Pragmatic Sanction sown with such travail of the Universe at large. May be King of the Romans (which means successor to the Kaisership) any day; and actual Kaiser one day.
We may as well say here, he did at length achieve these dignities, though not quite in the time or on the terms proposed. King of the Romans old Kaiser Karl never could quite resolve to make him,--having always hopes of male progeny yet; which never came. For his peerless Bride he waited six years still (owing to accidents), "attachment mutual all the while;" did then wed, 1738, and was the happiest of men and expectant Kaisers:--but found, at length, the Pragmatic Sanction to have been a strange sowing of dragon's-teeth, and the first harvest reapable from it a world of armed men!--For the present he is on a grand Tour, for instruction and other objects; has been in England last; and is now getting homewards again, to Vienna, across Germany; conciliating the Courts as he goes. A pacific friendly eupeptic young man;Crown-Prince Friedrich, they say, took much to him in Berlin;did not quite swear eternal friendship; but kept up some correspondence for a while, and "once sends him a present of salmon."--But to proceed with the utterances to Grumkow.
Utterance SECOND is probably of prior date; but introducible here, being an accidental Fragment, with the date lost:--TO THE FELDMARSCHALL VON GRUMKOW (from the Crown-Prince; exact date lost).
"... As to what you tell me of the Princess of Mecklenburg," for whom they want a Brandenburg Prince,--"could not I marry her?
Let her come into this Country, and think no more of Russia:
she would have a dowry of two or three millions of roubles,--only fancy how I could live with that! I think that project might succeed. The Princess is Lutheran; perhaps she objects to go into the Greek Church?--I find none of these advantages in this Princess of Bevern; who, as many people, even of the Duke's Court, say, is not at all beautiful, speaks almost nothing, and is given to pouting (FAISANT LA FACHEE). The good Kaiserinn has so little herself, that the sums she could afford her Niece would be very moderate." [Fragment given in Sechendorfs Leben, iii. 249 u.]
"Given to pouting," too! No, certainly; your Insipidity of Brunswick, without prospects of ready money; dangerous for CAGOTAGE; "not a word to say for herself in company, and given to pouting:" I do not reckon her the eligible article!--Seckendorf, Schulenburg, Grumkow and all hands are busy in this matter: geeho-ing the Crown-Prince towards the mark set before him. With or without explosion, arrive there he must; other goal for him is none!--In the mean while, it appears, illustrious Franz of Lorraine, coming on, amid the proper demonstrations, through Magdeburg and the Prussian Towns, has caught some slight illness and been obliged to pause; so that Berlin cannot have the happiness of seeing him quite so soon as it expected. The high guests invited to meet Duke Franz, especially the high Brunswicks, are already there. High Brunswicks, Bevern with Duchess, and still more important, with Son and with Daughter:--insipid CORPUSDELICTI herself has appeared on the scene; and Grumkow, we find, has been writing some description of her to the Crown-Prince.
Description of an unfavorable nature; below the truth, not above it, to avert disappointment, nay to create some gleam of inverse joy, when the actual meeting occurs. That is his art in driving the fiery little Arab ignominiously yoked to him; and it is clear he has overdone it, for once. This is Friedrich's THIRD utterance to him; much the most emphatic there is:--TO THE GENERAL FELDMARSCHALL VON GRUMKOW.
"CUSTRIN, 19th February, 1732.
"Judge, my dear General, if I can have been much charmed with the description you give of the abominable object of my desires!
For the love of God, disabuse the King in regard to her [show him that she is a fool, then]; and let him remember well that fools commonly are the most obstinate of creatures.
"Some months ago he wrote a Letter to Walden," the obsequious Goldstick, "of his giving me the choice of several Princesses: