It is darkly apprehended the Crown-Prince still meditates Flight;the maternal heart and Wilhelmina's are grieved to see Lieutenant Katte so much in his confidence--could wish him a wiser councillor in such predicaments and emergencies! Katte is greatly flattered by the Prince's confidence; even brags of it in society, with his foolish loose tongue. Poor youth, he is of dissolute ways;has plenty of it unwise intellect," little of the "wise" kind;and is still under the years of discretion. Towards Wilhelmina there is traceable in him something,--something as of almost loving a bright particular star, or of thrice-privately worshipping it for his own behoof. And Wilhelmina, during the late Radewitz time, when Mamma "gave four Apartments (or Royal Soirees)weekly," was severe upon him, and inaccessible in these Court Soirees. A rash young fool; carries a loose tongue:--still worse, has a Miniature, recognizable as Wilhelmina; and would not give it up, either for the Queen's Majesty or me!--"Thousand and thousand pardons, High Ladies both; my loose tongue shall be locked: but these two Miniatures, the Prince and Princess Royal, I copied them from two the Prince had lent me and has got back, ask me not for these;--never, oh, I cannot ever!"--Upon which Wilhelmina had to take a high attitude, and pass him speechless in the Soirees. The foolish fellow:--and yet one is not heartily angry either; only reserved in the Soirees; and anxious about one's Brother in such hands.
Friedrich Wilhelm repents much that Hotham explosion; is heard saying that he will not again treat in person with any Envoy from foreign parts, being of too hot temper, but will leave his Ministers to do it. [Dickens's Despatch, Berlin, 22d July (n.s.), 1730.] To Queen Sophie he says coldly, "Wilhelmina's marriage, then, is off; an end to IT. Abbess of Herford [good Protestant refuge for unprovided Females of Quality, which is in our gift], let her be Abbess there;"--and writes to the then extant Abbess to make Wilhelmina "Coadjutress," or Heir-Apparent to that Chief-Nunship! Nay what is still more mortifying, my Brother says, "On the whole, I had better, had not I?" The cruel Brother;but indeed the desperate!--for things are mounting to a pitch in this Household.
Queen Sophie's thoughts,--they are not yet of surrender; that they will never be, while a breath of life is left to Queen Sophie and her Project: we may fancy Queen Sophie's mood. Nor can his Majesty be in a sweet temper; his vexations lately have been many.
First, England is now off, not off-and-on as formerly:
that comfortable possibility, hanging always in one's thoughts, is fairly gone; and now we have nothing but the Kaiser to depend on for Julich and Berg, and the other elements of our salvation in this world! Then the St.-Mary-Axe discoveries, harassing shadows of suspicion that will rise from them, and the unseemly Hotham catastrophe and one's own blame in it; Womankind and Household still virtually rebellious, and all things going awry; Majesty is in the worst humor;--bullies and outrages his poor Crown-Prince almost worse than ever. There have been rattan-showers, hideous to think of, descending this very week [Guy Dickens's Despatch, 18th July, 1730.] on the fine head, and far into the high heart of a Royal Young Man; who cannot, in the name of manhood, endure, and must not, in the name of sonhood, resist, and vainly calls to all the gods to teach him WHAT he shall do in this intolerable inextricable state of matters.
Fate and these two Black-Artists have driven Friedrich Wilhelm nearly mad; and he, in turn, is driving everybody so. He more than suspects Friedrich of an intention to fly; which is horrible to Friedrich Wilhelm: and yet he bullies him occasionally, as a spiritless wretch, for bearing such treatment. "Cannot you renounce the Heir-Apparentship, then; your little Brother is a fine youth. Give it up; and go, unmolested, to the--in fact to the Devil: Cannot you?"--"If your Majesty, against the honor of my Mother, declare that I am not your eldest son: Yes, so;not otherwise, ever!" modestly but steadily persists the young man, whenever this expedient is proposed to him,--as perhaps it already sometimes is. Whereat the desperate Father can only snort indignantly futile. A case growing nearly desperate.
Desperate, yes, on all hands: unless one had the "high mast" above alluded to, with two pulleys and ropes; and could see a certain Pair of Scoundrels mount rapidly thither, what hope is there for anybody? A violent crisis does not last, however; that is one certainty in it. Either these agonistic human beings, young and old, will all die, all go to Bedlam, with their intolerable woes;or else something of explosive nature will take place among them.
The maddest boil, unless it kill you with its torments, does at length burst, and become an abscess.
Of course Captain Dickens, the instant Hotham was gone, hastened privily to see the Crown-Prince; saw Katte and him "at the Gate of the Potsdam Palace at midnight," [Wilhelmina; Ranke, i. 301.] or in some other less romantic way;--read him the Windsor Paper of "INSTRUCTIONS" known to us; and preached from that text.
No definite countenance from England, the reverse rather, your Highness sees;--how can there be? Give it up, your Highness;at least delay it!--Crown-Prince does not give it up a whit;whether he delays it, we shall see.