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Updated: May 10, 2025
Boom!" dexterous Grumkow has drawn a Humming-top from his pocket, and suddenly sent it spinning. There it hums and caracoles, through the bottles and glasses; reckless what dangerous breakage and spilth it may occasion. Friedrich Wilhelm looked aside to it indignantly. "What is that?" inquired he, in metallic tone still high.
How he lived, for a year or two after this, erudite pen and braggart tongue his only resources, were tragical to say. A very Dictionary of a man; who knows, in a manner, all things; and is by no means ignorant that he knows them: Would not this man suit his Majesty? thought Grumkow; and brought him to Majesty, to read the Newspapers and explain everything.
This is no other than the celebrated "Cipher Correspondence between Grumkow and Reichenbach;" Grumkow covertly instructing his slave Reichenbach what the London news shall be: Reichenbach answering him, To hear is to obey! The reader shall see specimens by and by; and he will find it unimportant enough, and unspeakably stupid to him.
"Who is that?" inquires Friedrich Wilhelm, suspending his tobacco. Grumkow answers cautiously, after survey: He thinks it must be Ordnance-Master Seckendorf; who was with him to-day; passing on rapidly towards Denmark, on business that will not wait. "Experienced Feldzeugmeister Graf von Seckendorf, whom we stand in correspondence with, of late, and were expecting about this time?
Gunpowder Dessau, black as a silent thunder-cloud, draws his sword: and Grumkow does not draw his; presents it undrawn, with unconditional submission and apology: "Slay me, if you like, old Friend, whom I have injured!" Better to drill men to perfection, and invent iron ramrods, against the day they shall be needed, than go jostling, on such terms, with cattle of the Grumkow kind!
It is here that Grumkow, after a pleasant morning's drive of thirty miles with the sun on his back, finds Kaiser Karl VI.; and makes his announcements, and diplomatic inquiries what next. Had Friedrich Wilhelm been in Potsdam or Wusterhausen, and heard that Kaiser Karl was within thirty miles of him, Friedrich Wilhelm would have cried, with open arms, Come, come!
Native politeness he knows on occasion; to etiquette, so far as concerns his own pretensions, he feels callous altogether, dimly sensible that the Eighteenth Century is setting in, and that solid musketeers and not goldsticks are now the important thing. "I felt mad to see him so humiliate himself," said Grumkow afterwards to Wilhelmina, "J'ENRAGEAIS DANS MA PEAU:" why not?
And impartial Grumkow, in Tabagie or wherever we are, cannot but admit, now and then, that the Excellenz Herr Graf Ordnance-Master has a deal of reason in what he says about Foreign Politics, about intrusive French and other points.
As there was no performance, nor an intention of any, in that Julich-Berg matter, Excellenz Seckendorf had the task henceforth of keeping, by art-magic or the PRETERnatural method, that is, by mere help of Grumkow and the Devil, his Prussian Majesty steady to the Kaiser nevertheless. Always well divided from the English especially. Which the Excellency Seckendorf managed to do.
Entering, announcing themselves, with dreadful solemnity, these gentlemen, Grumkow the spokesman, in soft phrase, but with strict clearness, made it apparent to her, That marry she must, the Hereditary Prince of Baireuth, and without the consent of both her parents, which was unattainable at present, but peremptorily under the command of one of them, whose vote was the supreme.
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