As the king dismissed, with a friendly wave of the hand, his confidential minister, he passed into his cabinet, remaining an hour with his counsellors. At dinner appeared some of the generals, weather-worn and bent, with wrinkled faces and dull eyes. Souvenirs of the glorious years of fame and victory. The king nodded kindly to them, but during the entire meal, he only let some indifferent questions fall from his lips, which were devotedly and tediously answered by some one of the old generals. As their dry, peevish voices resounded through the high, vaulted room, it seemed to reawaken in Frederick's heart the souvenirs of memory and become the echo of vanished days. He gazed up at the little Cupids, in the varied play of bright colors, looking down from the clouds, and the goddesses trumpeting through their long tubes the fame of the immortal, the same as formerly, when they smiled from the clouds upon the beaming face of the young king, dining in the distinguished circle of his friends Voltaire, D'Argens, Algarotti, La Melbrie, and Keith.
The Cupids were fresh as ever, and the goddesses had not removed the trumpets from their lips. But where were the of the merry round-table? Returned to dust. The jests and poesy have died away--all have sunken to decay and darkness. The king silently raised his glass of Tokay, gazing up to the clouds and Cupids, draining it slowly in sacrifice for the dead. Then with a vehement, contemptuous movement, he threw the glass over his shoulder, shivering it into a thousand pieces. The old generals, after dessert, had gently sunk into their afternoon nap, and now started, frightened, looking wildly around, as if they expected the enemy were approaching.
Alkmene crept from under the king's chair muffing with her long, delicate nose, the glistening pieces of glass, and the footman bent himself to carefully pick them up.
The king rose silently, saluting the old generals, pointing with his staff to the large folding-doors which led to the garden.
The footmen hastened forward to open them, and stand in stiff, military order upon each side. Frederick walked slowly out, mounting the two steps which led to the upper terrace, signing to the attendants to close the doors.
He was alone. Only Windspiel was there to spring about joyfully, barking, and turning to meet him, who wandered on the border of the terrace, where he had formerly walked with his friends. Now he stopped to gaze up the broad, deserted steps which led from terrace to terrace, as if he could re-people them with the well-known forms, and could see them approach and greet him with the look of endless love and constancy. Then he raised his eyes to heaven, as if to seek there those he in vain sought upon earth.
"Do you not see me, my friends?" he asked, in a gentle but sad voice. "Do you not look down wonderingly where you saw a cheerful, smiling king, upon the now bent, shrunken old man, cold and phlegmatic, who seldom speaks, and then causes every one to yawn?
Oh, where have you fled, beautiful spring-time of life--wherein once we used to enliven our conversations with the wit of the Athenians, and the jest fluttered upon our lips as we glided through life in the bold enjoyment of youth? Banished is the dance, and I creep about, leaning upon my staff, enfeebled in body, and with saddened heart! Oh, awful change, unhappy old age! What does it aid me that Iam a king? I have won many a battle, but now I am vanquished by age and death and am alone!" [Footnote: The king's words.--See "Posthumous Works," vol. x., p. 100.]
A slight breeze rustled through the trees, fanning, caressingly, the cheeks of the king. The perfume of sweet flowers rose from the terrace, and below rushed the cascade. The marble groups around the fountain glistened in the golden rays of the sun, and in the dark foliage fluttered and sang the merry birds of summer.
Suddenly the wind wafted from the church at Potsdam the clear tones of a bell, announcing to the king the hour of four, the death of Voltaire.
The king walked along to the rose-arbor, to the temple of friendship, where the bust of his sister Frederika was placed. He seated himself near the entrance, listening to the ringing voice of the bell, and recalling that the death-mass had now commenced in Berlin.
The service sacred to memory! The prayer for the immortal soul! As the lonely king sat there, calm and bowed down, a solemn prayer and holy mass rose from his own soul. He bowed lower his head, and, without realizing it himself, traced letters in the sand at his feet, with no witness but the blue heavens above him, and Windspiel who curiously eyed the lines. Thinking of the prayer for Voltaire's undying soul, the king had written the word of profoundest mystery and revelation, of hope and prophecy--" Immortality."The wind gently rustled in the trees, wafting the perfume of flowers. Sweet stillness reigned around, and lowly sang the birds as if not to waken the king, who slept by the marble form of his beloved sister--Windspiel upon his knees, and in the sand at his feet the word traced by his own hand, "Immortality."