Book 7. Fearful Shipwreck Of The Double-Marriage Project - Chapter 8. Sequel To Crown-Prince And Friends

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_ BOOK VII. FEARFUL SHIPWRECK OF THE DOUBLE-MARRIAGE PROJECT
CHAPTER VIII. SEQUEL TO CROWN-PRINCE AND FRIENDS

As for the Crown-Prince, prosecuting his circuitous route, he arrives safe at Mittenwalde; is lodged in the old Castle there, I think, for two nights (but the date, in these indexless Books, is blown away again), in a room bare of all things, with sentries at the door; and looks out, expecting Grumkow and the Officials to make assault on him. One of these Officials, a certain "Gerber, Fiscal General," who, as head of Prussian Fiscals (kind of Public Prosecutor, or supreme Essence of Bailiffs, Catchpoles and Grand-Juries all in one), wears a red cloak,--gave the Prince a dreadful start. Red cloak is the Berlin Hangman's or Headsman's dress; and poor Friedrich had the idea his end had summarily come in this manner. Soon seeing it was otherwise, his spirits recovered, perhaps rose by the shock.

He fronted Grumkow and the Officials, with a high, almost contemptuous look; answered promptly,--if possible, without lying, and yet without telling anything;--showed self-possession, pride; retorted sometimes, "Have you nothing more to ask?" Grumkow finding there was no way made into anything, not even into the secret of the Writingcase and the Royal Women's operations there, began at last, as Wilhelmina says, to hint, That in his Majesty's service there were means of bringing out the truth in spite of refractory humors; that there was a thing called the rack, not yet abolished in his Prussian Majesty's dominions! Friedrich owned afterwards, his blood ran cold. However, he put on a high look: "A Hangman, such as you, naturally takes pleasure in talking of his tools and his trade: but on me they will not produce any effect. I have owned everything;--and almost regret to have done so. For it is not my part to stand questionings and bandy responses with a COQUIN COMME VOUS, scoundrel like you," reports Wilhelmina, [i. 280.] though we hope the actual term was slightly less candid!--Grumkow gathered his notes together; and went his ways, with the man in red cloak and the rest; thus finishing the scene in Mittenwalde. Mittenwalde, which we used to know long since, in our Wusterhausen rides with poor Duhan; little thinking what awaited us there one day.

Mittenwalde being finished, Friedrich, on Monday, 6th September, 1730, is sent forward to Custrin, a strong little town in a quiet Country, some sixty or seventy miles eastward of Berlin. On the evening of the 5th he finds himself lodged in a strong room of the Fortress there,--room consisting af bare walls lighted from far up; no furniture, not even the needfulest; everything indicating that the proud spirit and the iron laws shall here have their duel out at leisure, and see which is stronger.

His sword was taken from him at Wesel; sword, uniform, every mark of dignity, all are now gone: he is clad in brown prison-dress of the plainest cut and cloth; his diet is fixed at tenpence a day ("to be got from the cook's shop, six groschen for dinner, four for supper"); [Order, 14th September, 1730 (in Forster, i. 372).] food to be cut for him, no knife allowed. Room is to be opened, morning, noon and evening, "on the average not above four minutes each time;" lights, or single tallow-light, to be extinguished at seven P.M. Absolute solitude; no flute allowed, far from it; no books allowed, except the Bible and a Prayer-Book,--or perhaps Noltenius's MANUAL, if he took a hankering for it. There, shut out from the babble of fools, and conversing only with the dumb Veracities, with the huge inarticulate meanings of Destiny, Necessity and Eternity, let the fool of a Fritz bethink himself, if there is any thought in him! There, among the Bogs of the Oder, the very sedges getting brown all round him, and the very curlews flying off for happier climes, let him wait, till the question of his doom, rather an abstruse question, ripen in the royal breast.

As for Wilhelmina, she is close prisoner in her apartments in the Berlin Palaoe, sentries pacing at every outlet, for many months to come. Wilhelmina almost rather likes it, such a dog of an existence has she had hitherto, for want of being well let alone. She plays, reads; composes music; smuggles letters to and from Mamma,--one in Pencil, from my Brother even, O Heavens! Wilhelmina weeps, now and then, with her good Sonsfeld; hopes nevertheless there will be some dawn to this RAGNAROK, or general "twilight of the gods." Friedrich Wilhelm, convinced that England has had a hand in this treason, signifies officially to his Excellency Captain Dickens, That the English negotiationa are concluded; that neither in the way of Single-Marriage nor of Double-Marriage will he have anything more to do with England. "Well," answers England, "who can help it? Negotiation was not quite of our seeking. Let it so end!" [Dickens's Despatch, 25th September, 1730; and Harrington's Answer to it, of 6th October: Seckendorf (in Forster, iii. 9), 23d September.]--Nay at dinner one day (Seckendorf reports, while Fritz was on the road to Custrin) he proposes the toast, "Downfall of England!" [Seckendorf (in Forster, iii. 11).] and would have had the Queen drink it; who naturally wept, but I conjecture could not be made to drink. Her Majesty is a weeping, almost broken-hearted woman; his Majesty a raging, almost broken-hearted man. Seckendorf and Grumkow are, as it were, too victorious; and now have their apprehensions on that latter score. But they look on with countenanoes well veiled, and touch the helm judiciously in Tobacco-Parliament, intent on the nearest harbor of refuge.

Her Majesty nevertheless steadily persists; merely sinks deeper out of sight with her English schemes; ducking till the wave go by. Messages, desperate appeals still go, through Mamsell Bulow, Wilhelmina's Hofdame, and other channels; nay Wilhelmina thinks there were still intentions on the part of England, and that the non-fulfilment of them at the last moment turned on accident; English "Courier arrived some hours too late," thinks Wilhelmina. [Wilhelmina (i. 369, 384), and Preuss and others after her.] But that is a mistake. The negotiation, in spite of her Majesty's endeavors, was essentially out; England, after such a message, could not, nor did, stir farther in the matter.

In that Writing-case his Majesty found what we know; nothing but mysterious effects of female art, and no light whatever. It is a great source of wrath and of sorrow to him, that neither in the Writing-case, nor in Katte's or the Prince's so-called "Confessions," can the thing be seen into. A deeper bottom it must have, thinks his Majesty, but knows not what or where. To overturn the Country, belike; and fling the Kaiser, and European Balance of Power, bottom uppermost? Me they presumably meant to poison! he tells Seckendorf one day. [Dickens's Despatch, 16th September, 1730.] Was ever Father more careful for his children, soul and body? Anxious, to excess, to bring them up in orthodox nurture and admonition: and this is how they reward me, Herr Feldzeugmeister! "Had he honestly confessed, and told me the whole truth, at Wesel, I would have made it up with him quietly there. But now it must go its lengths; and the whole world shall be judge between us." [Seckendorf (Forster, ubi supra), 23d September.]

His Majesty is in a flaming height. He arrests, punishes and banishes, where there is trace of cooperation or connection with Deserter Fritz and his schemes. The Bulows, brother and sister, brother in the King's service, sister in Wilhelmina's, respectable goldstick people, originally of Hanover, are hurled out to Lithuania and the world's end: let them live in Memel, and repent as they can. Minister Knyphausen, always of English tendencies, he, with his Wife,--to whom it is specially hard, while General Schwerin, gallant witty Kurt, once of Mecklenburg, stays behind,-- is ordered to disappear, and follow his private rural business far off; no minister, ever more. The Lieutenant Spaen of the Giant Regiment, who kept false watch, and did not tell of Katte, gets cashiering and a year in Spandau. He wandered else-whither, and came to something afterwards, poor Spaen. [Preuss, i. 63, 66.] Bookseller Hanau with this bad Fritz's Books: To Memel with him also; let him deal in more orthodox kinds of Literature there.

It is dangerous to have lent the Crown-Prince money, contrary to the Royal Edict; lucky if loss of your money will settle the account. Witness French Montholieu, for one; Count, or whatever he styled himself; nailed to the gallows (in effigy) after he had fled. It is dangerous to have spoken kindly to the Crown-Prince, or almost to have been spoken to by him. Doris Ritter, a comely enough good girl, nothing of a beauty, but given to music, Potsdam CANTOR'S (Precentor's) daughter, has chanced to be standing in the door, perhaps to be singing within doors, once or twice, when the Prince passed that way: Prince inquired about her music, gave her music, spoke a civility, as young men will,--nothing more, upon my honor; though his Majesty believes there was much more; and condemns poor Doris to be whipt by the Beadle, and beat hemp for three years. Rhadamanthus is a strict judge, your Majesty; and might be a trifle better informed!--Poor Doris got out of this sad Pickle, on her own strength; and wedded, and did well enough, --Prince and King happily leaving her alone thenceforth. Voltaire, twenty years after, had the pleasure of seeing her at Berlin: "Wife of one Shommers, Clerk of the Hackney-Coach Office,"--read, Schomer, FARMER of the Berlin Hackney-Coach Enterprise in general; decidedly a poor man. Wife, by this time, was grown hard enough of feature: "tall, lean; looked like a Sibyl; not the least appearance how she could ever have deserved to be whipt for a Prince." [Voltaire, OEuvres (calumnious Vie Privee du Roi de Prusse ), ii. 51, 52. Preuss, i. 64, 66.]

The excellent Tutor of the Crown-Prince, good Duhan de Jandun, for what fault or complicity we know not, is hurled off to Memel; ordered to live there,--on what resources is equally unknown. Apparently his fault was the general one, of having miseducated the Prince, and introduced these French Literatures, foreign poisonous elements of thought and practice into the mind of his Pupil, which have ruined the young man. For his Majesty perceives that there lies the source of it; that only total perversion of the heart and judgment, first of all, can have brought about these dreadful issues of conduct. And indeed his Majesty understands, on credible information, that Deserter Fritz entertains very heterodox opinions; opinion on Predestination, for one;--which is itself calculated to be the very mother of mischief, in a young mind inclined to evil. The heresy about Predestination, or the "FREIE GNADENWAHL (Election by Free Grace)," as his Majesty terms it, according to which a man is preappointed from all Eternity either to salvation or the opposite (which is Fritz's notion, and indeed is Calvin's, and that of many benighted creatures, this Editor among them), appears to his Majesty an altogether shocking one; nor would the whole Synod of Dort, or Calvin, or St. Augustine in person, aided by a Thirty-Editor power, reconcile his Majesty's practical judgment to such a tenet. What! May not Deserter Fritz say to himself, even now, or in whatever other deeps of sin he may fall into, "I was foredoomed to it: how could I, or how can I, help it?" The mind of his Majesty shudders, as if looking over the edge of an abyss. He is meditating much whether nothing can be done to save the lost Fritz, at least the soul of him, from this horrible delusion:--hurls forth your fine Duhan, with his metaphysics, to remote Memel, as the first step. And signifies withal, though as yet only historically and in a speculative way, to Finkenstein and Kalkstein themselves, That their method of training up a young soul, to do God's will, and accomplish useful work in this world, does by no means appear to the royal mind an admirable one! [His Letter to them (3d December, 1730) in Forster, ii. 382.] Finkenstein and Kalkstein were always covertly rather of the Queen's party, and now stand reprimanded, and in marked disfavor.

That the treasonous mystery of this Crown-Prince (parricidal, it is likely, and tending to upset the Universe) must be investigated to the very bottom, and be condignly punished, probably with death, his Majesty perceives too well; and also what terrible difficulties, formal and essential, there will be, But whatever become of his perishable life, ought not, if possible, the soul of him to be saved from the claws of Satan! "Claws of Satan;" "brand from the burning;" "for Christ our Saviour's sake;" "in the name of the most merciful God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, Amen:"--so Friedrich Wilhelm phrases it, in those confused old documents and Cabinet Letters of his; [Forster, i. 374, 379, &c.] which awaken a strange feeling in the attentive reader; and show us the ruggedest of human creatures melted into blubbering tenderness, and growling huskily something which we perceive is real prayer. Here has a business fallen out, such as seldom occurred before!-- _

Read next: Book 7. Fearful Shipwreck Of The Double-Marriage Project: Chapter 9. Court-Martial On Crown-Prince And Consorts

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