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"Ball having recommenced, Grumkow whispered to me, 'That the King was pleased with my frank kind ways to my Brother; and not pleased with my Brother's cold way of returning it: Does he simulate, and mean still to deceive me? Or IS that all the thanks he has for Wilhelmina? thinks his Majesty.
His Majesty, intent on Julich and Berg and other high matters, spends many hours next day, in earnest private dialogue with him. We mention farther, with satisfaction, that Grumkow and Ordnance-Master Seckendorf are both on the list, and all our Prussian party, down to Hacke of the Potsdam grenadiers, friend Schulenburg visibly eating among the others.
Grumkow, a cunning, greedy-hearted, long-headed fellow, of the old Pomeranian Nobility by birth, has a kind of superficial polish put upon his Hyperboreanisms; he has been in foreign countries, doing legations, diplomacies, for which, at least for the vulpine parts of which, he has a turn.
Upon which Grumkow, essentially illuminated as to the required particular, manages to get the Spectre-Scullion loose again, not quite hanged; glozing the matter off to his Majesty on his return: for the rest, ruins entirely the Creutz speculation; and has the No-maid called of Honor with whom Creutz thought to have seduced the young King also, and made the young King amenable dismissed from Court in a peremptory irrefragable manner.
To which the Crown-Prince answered with monosyllables, with many tears; "kissing his Majesty's feet;" and as the King's eyes were not dry, he withdrew into another room; revolving many things in his altered soul. These are the main points, says Grumkow, reporting next day; and the reader must interpret them as he can, A Crown-Prince with excellent histrionic talents, thinks the reader.
Go on with your sincerity, Madam; and for God's sake admonish the Crown-Prince to avoid finessing! Crown-Prince, when I did, in some interval of the dance, report this of Grumkow, and say, Why so changed and cold, then, Brother of my heart? answered, That he was still the same; and that he had his reasons for what he did." Wilhelmina continues; and cannot understand her Crown-Prince at all:
Wilhelmina had no knowledge of the magical machinery that was at work: she vaguely suspects Grumkow and Seckendorf; but does not guess, in the mad explosions of Papa, that two devils have got into Papa, and are doing the mischief.
Whereby the flame of war, ardent only in certain Spanish batteries upon the point of San Roque, does not spread hitherto, though all mortals, and Friedrich Wilhelm as much as any, can see the imminent likelihood there is. In such circumstances, what a stroke of policy to have disjoined Friedrich Wilhelm from the Hanover Alliance, and brought him over to our own! Is not Grumkow worth his pension?
It came in the wake of that Hanover Treaty, as is now guessed; the two having taken opposite sides on that measure, and got provoked into ripping up old sores in general. Dessau was AGAINST King George and the Treaty, it appears; having his reasons, family-reasons of old standing: Grumkow, a bribable gentleman, was FOR, having also perhaps his reasons.
To the respectable old Brigadier, this day or yesterday, "her Majesty, all in tears, complained of her situation: King is nigh losing his senses on account of the differences with Hanover; goes from bed to bed in the night-time, and from chamber to chamber, 'like one whose brains are turned. Took a fit, at two in the morning, lately, to be off to Wusterhausen:" about a year ago Seckendorf and Grumkow had built a Lodge out there, where his Majesty, when he liked, could be snug and private with them: thither his Majesty now rushed, at two in the morning; but seemingly found little assuagement.
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