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That was what began it, carrying away my thoughts. Dessauer rode behind me, letting his horse follow mine, nose to tail. For, being used to the visitation of the city outposts, I knew the ground thoroughly. At every hundred yards we were halted, and I answered. For I had posted the men myself, making sure that Plassenburg should not again be taken by surprise.
And this bred a mighty wondering what manner of man he might be who was so wise. And I think, if I had gone on, Dessauer and I might both have found ourselves in the Bishop's prison, on suspicion of being the devil and one of his ministrants. But suddenly, as with a kind of recoil or back stroke, all that I had drunken must have come upon me.
"January 8th, 1745, before the Old Dessauer got ranked in Schlesien against Traun, there had concluded itself at Warsaw, by way of counterpoise to the 'Frankfurt Union, a 'Union of Warsaw, called also 'Quadruple Alliance of Warsaw; the Parties to which were Polish Majesty, Hungarian ditto, Prime-Movers, and the two Sea-Powers as Purseholders; stipulating, to the effect: 'We Four will hold together in affairs of the Reich VERSUS that dangerous Frankfurt Union; we will' do a variety of salutary things; and as one practical thing, 'There shall be, this Season, 30,000 Saxons conjoined to the Austrian Force, for which we Sea-Powers will furnish subsidy. This was the one practical point stipulated, January 8th; and farther than this the Sea-Powers did not go, now or afterwards, in that affair.
But when the representatives of the cities of the Princedom, and the delegates from Thorn and the Mark, had been received with due honor, the Prince bade his Chancellor recount all he had learned from my father, and all that he had discovered in the archives of Plassenburg. Then, when Dessauer had finished, Karl the Prince arose. "I am," he said, "a plain, brusque man.
If I let him into the secret, the Prince would be most likely to stride straight into the Princess's rooms with the brusque words: "Gottfried has seen a letter come to you from your father what were its contents?" And that would not suit us at all. So, rightly or wrongly, I kept the matter from my master, speaking of it only to Dessauer.
So lay it to heart, as I have done." "Glad am I," said Dessauer, courteously, as if he had been turning a phrase on the terrace at Plassenburg "glad am I that in your hour you are to be mindful of old friends, for they are like old wine, which grows better and mellower with the years." "It is indeed well," said Otho von Reuss, ironically.
Which, as it were, struck the breath out of the Old Dessauer; and sent him home with a painful miscellany of feelings, astonishment not wanting among them. At an after hour, the same night, Friedrich went to Berlin; met by acclamation enough.
Leopold, the Young Dessauer, is cautious; wants petards if he must storm, wants two new battalions if he must open trenches; he gets these requisites, and is still cunctatory.
Weissenfels will do; either Weissenfels or else the Margraf of Schwedt, thinks Friedrich Wilhelm; somebody shall marry the baggage out of hand, and let us have done with that. Grumkow, as we know, was very anxious for it; calculating thereby to out the ground from under the Old Dessauer, and make this Weissenfels Generalissimo of Prussia; a patriotic thought.
Do not give Dessauer many particulars about me; do not tell him that you are looking for rooms, nor Anthony either, for he will mention it to Mdlle. de Rozieres, and she is a babbler and makes the least thing a subject for gossip. Some of her gossipings have already reached me here in a strange way.
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