This is the effulgent flaming-point of the long-agitated English Match, which we have so often caught in a bitterly smoking condition. "The King indeed spoke nothing of it to us, on his return to Berlin in a day or two," says Wilhelmina; "which we thought strange." But everybody considered it certain, nothing but the details left to settle. "Hotham had daily conferences with the King." "Every post brought letters from the Prince of Wales:" of which Wilhelmina saw several,--this for one specimen, general purport of the whole: "I conjure you, my dear Hotham, get these negotiations finished! I am madly in love (AMOUREUX COMME UN FOU), and my impatience is unequalled." {Ib. i. 218.] Wilhelmina thought these sentiments "very, romantic" on the part of Prince Fred, "who had never seen me, knew me only by repute:"--and answered his romances and him with tiffs of laughter, in a prettily fleering manner.
Effulgent flame-point;--which was of very brief duration indeed, and which sank soon into bitterer smoke than ever, down almost to the choking state. There are now six weeks of Diplomatic History at the Court of Berlin, which end far otherwise than they began.
Weeks well-nigh indecipherable; so distracted are they, by black-art and abstruse activities above ground and below, and so distractedly recorded for us: of which, if it be humanly possible, we must try to convey some faint notion to mankind.
Chapter II.
LANGUAGE OF BIRDS: EXCELLENCY HOTHAM PROVES UNAVAILING.
Already next morning, after that grand Dinner at Charlottenburg, Friedrich Wilhelm, awakening with his due headache, thought, and was heard saying, He had gone too far! Those gloomy looks of Hotham and Dubourgay, on the occasion; they are a sad memento that our joyance was premature. The English mean the Double-Marriage;and Friedrich Wilhelm is not ready, and never fairly was, for more than the Single. "Wilhelmina Princess of Wales, yes with all my heart; but Friedrich to an English Princess--Hm, na;"--and in a day more: ["Instruction to his Ministers, 5th April," cited by Ranke, i. 285 n.] plainly "No." And there it finally rests; or if rocked about, always settles there again.
And why, No?--Truly, as regarded Crown-Prince Friedrich's marriage, the question had its real difficulties: and then, still more, it had its imaginary; and the subterranean activities were busy! The witnesses, contemporaneous and other, assign three reasons, or considerations and quasi-reasons, which the Tobacco-Parliament and Friedrich Wilhelm's lively fancy could insist upon it till they became irrefragable:--FIRST, his rooted discontent with the Crown-Prince, some even say his jealousy of the Crown-Prince's talents, render it unpleasant to think of promoting him in any way. SECOND, natural German loyalty, enlivened by the hope of Julich and Berg, attaching Friedrich Wilhelm to the Kaiser's side of things, repels him with a kind of horror from the Anti-Kaiser or French-English side.
"Marry my Daughter, if you like; I shall be glad to salute her as Princess of Wales; but no union in your Treaty-of-Seville operations: in politics go you your own road, if that is it, while I go mine; no tying of us, by Double or other Marriages, to go one road." THIRD, the magnificence of those English. "Regardless of expense," insinuates the Tobacco-Parliament; "they will send their grand Princess hither, with no end of money; brought up in grandeur to look down on the like of us. She can dazzle, she can purchase: in the end, may there not be a Crown-Prince Party, capable of extinguishing your Majesty here in your own Court, and makiug Prussia a bit of England; all eyes being turned to such sumptuous Princess and her Crown-Prince,--Heir-Apparent, or 'Rising Sun' as we may call him!"--These really are three weighty almost dreadful considerations to a poetic-tempered King and Smoking Parliament. Out of which there is no refuge except indeed this plain fourth one: "No hurry about Fritz's marriage; [Friedrich Wilhelm to Reichenbach (13th May), infra.] he is but eighteen gone; evidently too young for housekeeping. Thirty is a good time for marrying. 'There is, thank God, no lack of royal lineage; I have two other Princes,'"--and another just at hand, if I knew it.
To all which there is to be added that ever-recurring invincible gravitation towards the Kaiser, and also towards Julich and Berg, by means of him,--well acted on by the Tobacco-Parliament for the space of those six weeks. During which, accordingly, almost from the first day after that Hotham Dinner of April 3d, the answer of the royal mind, with superficial fluctuations, always is:
"Wilhelmina at once, if you choose; likely enough we might agree about Crown-Prince Friedrich too, if once all were settled; but of the Double-Marriage, at this present time, HORE NIT, [Ranke, i. 285 n.] I will have nothing to say." And as the English answer steadily, "Both or none!"--meaning indeed to draw Prussia away from the Kaiser's leading-strings, and out of his present enchanted condition under the two Black-Artists he has about him, the Negotiation sinks again into a mere smoking, and extinct or plainly extinguishing state.