History of Friedrich II of Prussia Volume XXI Part 10

Here is a Historian King who uses no rouge-pot in his Narratives,--whose word, which is all we shall say of it at present, you find to be perfectly trustworthy, and a representation of the fact as it stood before himself! What follows needs no vouching for: "This acquisition was one of the most important we could make, because it joined Pommern to East Prussia [ours for ages past], and because, rendering us masters of the Weichsel River, we gained the double advantage of being able to defend that Kingdom [Ost-Preussen], and to draw considerable tolls from the Weichsel, as all the trade of Poland goes by that River."

Yes truly! Our interests are very visible: and the interests and wishes and claims of Poland,--are they nowhere worthy of one word from you, O King? Nowhere that I have noticed: not any mention of them, or allusion to them; though the world is still so convinced that perhaps they were something, and not nothing! Which is very curious. In the whole course of my reading I have met with no Autobiographer more careless to defend himself upon points in dispute among his Audience, and marked as criminal against him by many of them. Shadow of Apology on such points you search for in vain. In rapid bare summary he sets down the sequel of facts, as if a.s.sured beforehand of your favorable judgment, or with the profoundest indifference to how you shall judge them; drops his actions, as an Ostrich does its young, to s.h.i.+ft for themselves in the wilderness, and hurries on his way. This style of his, noticeable of old in regard to Silesia too, has considerably hurt him with the common kind of readers; who, in their preconceived suspicions of the man, are all the more disgusted at tracing in him, not the least anxiety to stand well with any reader, more than to stand ill, AS ill as any reader likes!

Third parties, it would seem, have small temptation to become his advocates; he himself being so totally unprovided with thanks for you!

But, on another score, and for the sake of a better kind of readers, there is one third party bound to remark: 1. That hardly any Sovereign known to us did, in his general practice, if you will examine it, more perfectly respect the boundaries of his neighbors; and go on the road that was his own, anxious to tread on no man's toes if he could avoid it: a Sovereign who, at all times, strictly and beneficently confined himself to what belonged to his real business and him. 2. That apparently, therefore, he must have considered Poland to be an exceptional case, unique in his experience: case of a moribund Anarchy, fallen down as carrion on the common highways of the world; belonging to n.o.body in particular; liable to be cut into (nay, for sanitary reasons requiring it, if one were a Rhadamanthus Errant, which one is not!)--liable to be cut into, on a great and critically stringent occasion; no question to be asked of IT; your only question the consent of by-standers, and the moderate certainty that n.o.body got a glaringly disproportionate share! That must have been, on the part of an equitable Friedrich, or even of a Friedrich accurate in Book-keeping by Double Entry, the notion silently formed about Poland.

Whether his notion was scientifically right, and conformable to actual fact, is a question I have no thought of entering on; still less, whether Friedrich was morally right, or whether there was not a higher rect.i.tude, granting even the fact, in putting it in practice. These are questions on which an Editor may have his opinion, partly complete for a long time past, partly not complete, or, in human language, completable or p.r.o.nounceable at all; and may carefully forbear to obtrude it on his readers; and only advise them to look with their own best eyesight, to be deaf to the multiplex noises which are evidently blind, and to think what they find thinkablest on such a subject. For, were it never so just, proper and needful, this is by nature a case of LYNCH LAW; upon which, in the way of approval or apology, no spoken word is permissible.

Lynch being so dangerous a Lawgiver, even when an indispensable one!--

For, granting that the Nation of Poland was for centuries past an Anarchy doomed by the Eternal Laws of Heaven to die, and then of course to get gradually buried, or eaten by neighbors, were it only for sanitary reasons,--it will by no means suit, to declare openly on behalf of terrestrial neighbors who have taken up such an idea (granting it were even a just one, and a true reading of the silent but inexorably certain purposes of Heaven), That they, those volunteer terrestrial neighbors, are justified in breaking in upon the poor dying or dead carca.s.s, and flaying and burying it, with amicable sharing of skin and shoes! If it even were certain that the wretched Polish Nation, for the last forty years hastening with especial speed towards death, did in present circ.u.mstances, with such a howling canaille of Turk Janissaries and vultures of creation busy round it, actually require prompt surgery, in the usual method, by neighbors,--the neighbors shall and must do that function at their own risk. If Heaven did appoint them to it, Heaven, for certain, will at last justify them; and in the mean while, for a generation or two, the same Heaven (I can believe) has appointed that Earth shall pretty unanimously condemn them. The shrieks, the foam-lipped curses of mistaken mankind, in such case, are mankind's one security against over-prompt.i.tude (which is so dreadfully possible) on the part of surgical neighbors.

Alas, yes, my articulate-speaking friends; here, as so often elsewhere, the solution of the riddle is not Logic, but Silence. When a dark human Individual has filled the measure of his wicked blockheadisms, sins and brutal nuisancings, there are Gibbets provided, there are Laws provided; and you can, in an articulate regular manner, hang him and finish him, to general satisfaction. Nations too, you may depend on it as certain, do require the same process, and do infallibly get it withal; Heaven's Justice, with written Laws or without, being the most indispensable and the inevitablest thing I know of in this Universe. No doing without it; and it is sure to come:--and the Judges and Executioners, we observe, are NOT, in that latter case, escorted in and out by the Sheriffs of Counties and general ringing of bells; not so, in that latter case, but far otherwise!--

And now, leaving that vexed question, we will throw one glance--only one is permitted--into the far more profitable question, which probably will one day be the sole one on this matter, What became of poor West-Preussen under Friedrich? Had it to sit, weeping unconsolably, or not? Herr Dr. Freytag, a man of good repute in Literature, has, in one of his late Books of Popular History, [G. Freytag, _Neue Bilder aus dem Leben des deutschen Volkes_ (Leipzig, 1862).] gone into this subject, in a serious way, and certainly with opportunities far beyond mine for informing himself upon it:--from him these Pa.s.sages have been excerpted, labelled and translated by a good hand:--

ACQUISITION OF POLISH PRUSSIA. "During several Centuries, the much-divided Germans had habitually been pressed upon, and straitened and injured, by greedy conquering neighbors; Friedrich was the first Conqueror who once more pushed forward the German Frontier towards the East; reminding the Germans again, that it was their task to carry Law, Culture, Liberty and Industry into the East of Europe. All Friedrich's Lands, with the exception only of some Old-Saxon territory, had, by force and colonization, been painfully gained from the Sclave. At no time since the migrations of the Middle Ages, had this struggle for possession of the wide Plains to the east of Oder ceased. When arms were at rest, politicians carried on the struggle."

PERSECUTION OF GERMAN PROTESTANTS IN POLAND. "In the very 'Century of Enlightenment' the persecution of the Germans became fanatical in those Countries: one Protestant Church after the other got confiscated; pulled down; if built of wood, set on fire: its Church once burnt, the Village had lost the privilege of having one. Ministers and schoolmasters were driven away, cruelly maltreated. 'VEXA LUTHERANURN, DABIT THALERUM (Wring the Lutheran, you will find money in him),' became the current Proverb of the Poles in regard to Germans. A Protestant Starost of Gnesen, a Herr von UNRUH of the House of Birnbaum, one of the largest proprietors of the country, was condemned to die, and first to have his tongue pulled out and his hands cut off,--for the crime of having copied into his Note-book some strong pa.s.sages against the Jesuits, extracted from German Books. Patriotic 'Confederates of Bar,' joined by all the plunderous vagabonds around, went roaming and ravaging through the country, falling upon small towns and German villages. The Polish n.o.bleman, Roskowski [a celebrated "symbolical" n.o.bleman, this], put on one red boot and one black, symbolizing FIRE and DEATH; and in this guise rode about, murdering and burning, from places to place; finally, at Jastrow, he cut off the hands, feet, and lastly the head of the Protestant Pastor, Willich by name, and threw the limbs into a swamp.

This happened in 1768."

IN WHAT STATE FRIEDRICH FOUND THE POLISH PROVINCES. "Some few only of the larger German Towns, which were secured by walls, and some protected Districts inhabited exclusively by Germans,--as the NIEDERUNG near Dantzig, the Villages under the mild rule of the Cistercians of Oliva, and the opulent German towns of the Catholic Ermeland,--were in tolerable circ.u.mstances. The other Towns lay in ruins; so also most of the Hamlets (HOFE) of the open Country. Bromberg, the city of German Colonists, the Prussians found in heaps and ruins: to this hour it has not been possible to ascertain clearly how the Town came into this condition. [_"Neue Preussische Provinzialblotter,_ Year 1854, No. 4, p.

259."] No historian, no doc.u.ment, tells of the destruction and slaughter that had been going on, in the whole District of the NETZE there, during the last ten years before the arrival of the Prussians, The Town of Culm had preserved its strong old walls and stately churches; but in the streets, the necks of the cellars stood out above the rotten timber and brick heaps of the tumbled houses: whole streets consisted merely of such cellars, in which wretched people were still trying to live. Of the forty houses in the large Market-place of Culm, twenty-eight had no doors, no roofs, no windows, and no owners. Other Towns were in similar condition."

"The Country people hardly knew such a thing as bread; many had never in their life tasted such a delicacy; few Villages possessed an oven. A weaving-loom was rare, the spinning-wheel unknown. The main article of furniture, in this bare scene of squalor, was the Crucifix and vessel of Holy-Water under it [and "POLACK! CATHOLIK!" if a drop of gin be added].--The Peasant-n.o.ble [unvoting, inferior kind] was hardly different from the common Peasant: he himself guided his Hook Plough (HACKEN-PFLUG), and clattered with his wooden slippers upon the plankless floor of his hut.... It was a desolate land, without discipline, without law, without a master. On 9,000 English square miles lived 500,000 souls: not 55 to the square mile."

SETS TO WORK. "The very rottenness of the Country became an attraction for Friedrich; and henceforth West-Preussen was, what hitherto Silesia had been, his favorite child; which, with infinite care, like that of an anxious loving mother, he washed, brushed, new-dressed, and forced to go to school and into orderly habits, and kept ever in his eye. The diplomatic squabbles about this 'acquisition' were still going on, when he had already sent [so early as June 4th, 1772, and still more on September 13th of that Year [See his new DIALOGUE with Roden, our Wesel acquaintance, who was a princ.i.p.al Captain in this business (in PREUSS, iv. 57, 58: date of the Dialogue is "11th May, 1772;"--Roden was on the ground 4th June next; but, owing to Austrian delays, did not begin till September 13th).]] a body of his best Official People into this waste-howling scene, to set about organizing it. The Landschaften (COUNTIES) were divided into small Circles; in a minimum of time, the land was valued, and an equal tax put upon it; every Circle received its LANDRATH, Law-Court, Post-office and Sanitary Police. New Parishes, each with its Church and Parson, were called into existence as by miracle; a company of 187 Schoolmasters--partly selected and trained by the excellent Semler [famous over Germany, in Halle University and SEMINARIUM, not yet in England]--were sent into the Country: mult.i.tudes of German Mechanics too, from brick-makers up to machine-builders.

Everywhere there began a digging, a hammering, a building; Cities were peopled anew; street after street rose out of the heaps of ruins; new Villages of Colonists were laid out, new modes of agriculture ordered.

In the first Year after taking possession, the great Ca.n.a.l [of Bromberg]

was dug; which, in a length of fifteen miles, connects, by the Netze River, the Weichsel with the Oder and the Elbe: within one year after giving the order, the King saw loaded vessels from the Oder, 120 feet in length of keel," and of forty tons burden, "enter the Weichsel. The vast breadths of land, gained from the state of swamp by drainage into this Ca.n.a.l, were immediately peopled by German Colonists.

"As his Seven-Years Struggle of War may be called super-human, so was there also in his present Labor of Peace something enormous; which appeared to his contemporaries [unless my fancy mislead me] almost preternatural, at times inhuman. It was grand, but also terrible, that the success of the whole was to him, at all moments, the one thing to be striven after; the comfort of the individual of no concern at all. When, in the Marshland of the Wetze, he counted more the strokes of the 10,000 spades, than the sufferings of the workers, sick with the marsh-fever in the hospitals which he had built for them; [Compare PREUSS, iv. 60-71.]

when, restless, his demands outran the quickest performance,--there united itself to the deepest reverence and devotedness, in his People, a feeling of awe, as for one whose limbs are not moved by earthly life [fanciful, considerably!]. And when Goethe, himself become an old man, finished his last Drama [Second Part of FAUST], the figure of the old King again rose on him, and stept into his Poem; and his Faust got transformed into an unresting, creating, pitilessly exacting Master, forcing on his salutiferous drains and fruitful ca.n.a.ls through the mora.s.ses of the Weichsel." [G. Freytag, _Neue Bilder aus dem Leben des deutschen Volkes_ (Leipzig, 1862), pp. 397-408.]

These statements and pencillings of Freytag, apart from here and there a flourish of poetic sentiment, I believe my readers can accept as essentially true, and a correct portrait of the fact. And therewith, CON LA BOCCA DOLCE, we will rise from this Supper of Horrors. That Friedrich fortified the Country, that he built an impregnable Graudentz, and two other Fortresses, rendering the Country, and himself on that Eastern side, impregnable henceforth, all readers can believe. Friedrich has been building various Fortresses in this interim, though we have taken no notice of them; building and repairing many things;--tr.i.m.m.i.n.g up his Military quite to the old pitch, as the most particular thing of all. He has his new Silesian Fortress of Silberberg,--big Fortress, looking into certain dangerous Bohemian Doors (in Tobias Stusche's Country, if readers recollect an old adventure now mythical);--his new Silesian Silberberg, his newer Polish Graudentz, and many others, and flatters himself he is not now pregnable on any side.

A Friedrich working, all along, in Poland especially, amid what circ.u.mambient deluges of maledictory outcries, and mendacious shriekeries from an ill-informed Public, is not now worth mentioning.

Mere distracted rumors of the Pamphleteer and Newspaper kind: which, after hunting them a long time, through dense and rare, end mostly in zero, and angry darkness of some poor human brain,--or even testify in favor of this Head-Worker, and of the sense he shows, especially of the patience. For example: that of the "Polish Towns and Villages, ordered"

by this Tyrant "to deliver, each of them, so many marriageable girls; each girl to bring with her as dowry, furnished by her parents, 1 feather-bed, 4 pillows, 1 cow, 3 swine and 3 ducats,"--in which desirable condition this tyrannous King "sent her into the Brandenburg States to be wedded and promote population." [Lindsey, LETTERS ON POLAND (Letter 2d). p. 61: Peyssonnel (in some. French Book of his, "solemnly presented to Louis XVI. and the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly;" cited in PREUSS, iv. 85); &c. &c.] Feather-beds, swine and ducats had their value in Brandenburg; but were marriageable girls such a scarcity there? Most extraordinary new RAPE OF THE SABINES; for which Herr Preuss can find no basis or source,--nor can I; except in the brain of Reverend Lindsey and his loud LETTERS ON POLAND above mentioned.

Dantzig too, and the Harbor-dues, what a case! Dantzig Harbor, that is to say, Netze River, belongs mainly to Friedrich, Dantzig City not,--such the Czarina's lofty whim, in the late Part.i.tion Treatyings; not good to contradict, in the then circ.u.mstances; still less afterwards, though it brought chicanings more than enough. "And she was not ill-pleased to keep this thorn in the King's foot for her own conveniences," thinks the King; though, mainly, he perceives that it is the English acting on her grandiose mind: English, who were apprehensive for their Baltic trade under this new Proprietor, and who egged on an ambitious Czarina to protect Human Liberty, and an inflated Dantzig Burgermeister to stand up for ditto; and made a dismal shriekery in the Newspapers, and got into dreadful ill-humor with said Proprietor of Dantzig Harbor, and have never quite recovered from it to this day.

Lindsey's POLISH LETTERS are very loud again on this occasion, aided by his SEVEN DIALOGUES ON POLAND; concerning which, partly for extinct Lindsey's sake, let us cite one small pa.s.sage, and so wind up.

MARCH 2d, 1775, in answer to Voltaire, Friedrich writes:... "The POLISH DIALOGUES you speak of are not known to me. I think of such Satires, with Epictetus: 'If they tell any truth of thee, correct thyself; if they are lies, laugh at them.' I have learned, with years, to become a steady coach-horse; I do my stage, like a diligent roadster, and pay no heed to the little dogs that will bark by the way." And then, three weeks after:--

"I have at length got the SEVEN DIALOGUES ON POLAND; and the whole history of them as well. The Author is an Englishman named Lindsey, Parson by profession, and Tutor to the young Prince Poniatowski, the King of Poland's Nephew,"--Nephew Joseph, Andreas's Son, NOT the undistinguished Nephew: so we will believe for poor loud Lindsey's sake! "It was at the instigation of the Czartoryskis, Uncles of the King, that Lindsey composed this Satire,--in English first of all. Satire ready, they perceived that n.o.body in Poland would understand it, unless it were translated into French; which accordingly was done. But as their translator was unskilful, they sent the DIALOGUES to a certain Gerard at Dantzig, who at that time was French Consul there, and who is at present a Clerk in your Foreign Office under M. de Vergennes. This Gerard, who does not want for wit, but who does me the honor to hate me cordially, retouched these DIALOGUES, and put them into the condition they were published in. I have laughed a good deal at them: here and there occur coa.r.s.e things (GROSSIERETES), and plat.i.tudes of the insipid kind: but there are traits of good pleasantry. I shall not go fencing with goose-quills against this sycophant. As Mazarin said, 'Let the French keep singing, provided they let us keep doing.'" [_OEuvres de Frederic,_ xxiii. 319-321: "Potsdam, 2d March, 1775," and "25th March" following.

See PREUSS, iii. 275, iv. 85.]

Chapter V.--A CHAPTER OF MISCELLANIES.

After Neustadt, Kaiser Joseph and the King had no more Interviews.

Kaunitz's procedures in the subsequent Pacification and Part.i.tion business had completely estranged the two Sovereigns: to friendly visiting, a very different state of mutual feeling had succeeded; which went on, such "the immeasurable ambition" visible in some of us, deepening and worsening itself, instead of improving or abating.

Friedrich had Joseph's Portrait hung in conspicuous position in the rooms where he lived; somebody noticing the fact, Friedrich answered: "Ah, yes, I am obliged to keep that young Gentleman in my eye." And, in effect, the rest of Friedrich's Political Activity, from this time onwards, may be defined as an ever-vigilant defence of himself, and of the German Reich, against Austrian Encroachment: which, to him, in the years then running, was the grand impending peril; and which to us in the new times has become so inexpressibly uninteresting, and will bear no narrative, Austrian Encroachment did not prove to be the death-peril that had overhung the world in Friedrich's last years!--

These, accordingly, are years in which the Historical interest goes on diminis.h.i.+ng; and only the Biographical, were anything of Biography attainable, is left. Friedrich's industrial, economic and other Royal activities are as beautiful as ever; but cannot to our readers, in our limits, be described with advantage. Events of world-interest, after the Part.i.tion of Poland, do not fall out, or Friedrich is not concerned in them. It is a dim element; its significance chiefly German or Prussian, not European. What of humanly interesting is discoverable in it,--at least, while the Austrian Grudge continues in a chronic state, and has no acute fit,--I will here present in the shape of detached Fragments, suitably arranged and rendered legible, in hopes these may still have some lucency for readers, and render more conceivable the surrounding ma.s.ses that have to be left dark. Our first Piece is of Winter, or late Autumn, 1771,--while the solution of the Polish Business is still in its inchoative stages; perfectly complete in the Artist's own mind; Russia too adhering; but Kaunitz so refractory and contradictory.

HERR DOCTOR ZIMMERMANN, THE FAMOUS AUTHOR OF THE BOOK "ON SOLITUDE,"

WALKS REVERENTIALLY BEFORE FRIEDRICH'S DOOR IN THE DUSK OF AN OCTOBER EVENING: AND HAS A ROYAL INTERVIEW NEXT DAY.

Friday Evening, 25th October, 1771, is the date of Zimmermann's walk of contemplation,--among the pale Statues and deciduous Gardenings of Sans-Souci Cottage (better than any Rialto, at its best),--the eternal stars coming out overhead, and the transitory candle-light of a King Friedrich close by.

"At Sans-Souci," says he, in his famed Book, "where that old G.o.d of War (KRIEGSGOTT) forges his thunder-bolts, and writes Works of Intellect for Posterity; where he governs his People as the best father would his house; where, during one half of the day, he accepts and reads the pet.i.tions and complaints of the meanest citizen or peasant; comes to help of his Countries on all sides with astonis.h.i.+ng sums of money, expecting no payment, nor seeking anything but the Common Weal; and where, during the other half, he is a Poet and Philosopher:--at Sans-Souci, I say, there reigns all round a silence, in which you can hear the faintest breath of every soft wind. I mounted this Hill for the first time in Winter [late Autumn, 25th October, 1771, edge of Winter], in the dusk. When I beheld the small Dwelling-House of this Convulser of the World close by me, and was near his very chamber, I saw indeed a light inside, but no sentry or watchman at the Hero's door; no soul to ask me, Who I was, or What I wanted. I saw nothing; and walked about as I pleased before this small and silent House." [Preuss, i. 387 ("from EINSAMKEIT," Zimmermann's SOLITUDE, "i. 110; Edition of Leipzig, 1784").]

Yes, Doctor, this is your Kriegsgott; throned in a free-and-easy fas.h.i.+on. In regard to that of Sentries, I believe there do come up from Potsdam nightly a corporal and six rank-and-file; but perhaps it is at a later hour; perhaps they sit within doors, silent, not to make noises.

Another gentleman, of sauntering nocturnal habits, testifies to having, one night, seen the King actually asleep in bed, the doors being left ajar. [Ib. i. 388.]--As Zimmermann had a DIALOGUE next day with his Majesty, which we propose to give; still more, as he made such noise in the world by other Dialogues with Friedrich, and by a strange Book about them, which are still ahead,--readers may desire to know a little who or what the Zimmermann is, and be willing for a rough brief Note upon him, which certainly is not readier than it is rough:--

Johann Georg Zimmermann: born 1728, at Brugg in the Canton of Bern, where his Father seems to have had some little property and no employment, "a RATHSHERR (Town-Councillor), who was much respected." Of brothers or sisters, no mention. The Mother being from the French part of the Canton, he learned to speak both languages. Went to Bern for his Latin and high-schooling; then to Gottingen, where he studied Medicine, under the once great Haller and other now dimmed celebrities. Haller, himself from Bern, had taken Zimmermann to board, and became much attached to him: Haller, in 1752, came on a summer visit to native Bern: Zimmermann, who had in the mean time been "for a few months" in France, in Italy and England, now returned and joined him there; but the great man, feeling very poorly and very old, decided that he would like to stay in Bern, and not move any more;--Zimmermann, accordingly, was sent to Gottingen to bring Mrs. Haller, with her Daughters, bandboxes and effects, home to Bern. Which he did;--and not only them, but a soft, ingenious, ingenuous and rather pretty young Gottingen Lady along with them, as his own Wife withal. With her he settled as STADTPHYSICUS (Town-Doctor) in native Brugg; where his beloved Hallers were within reach; and practice in abundance, and honors, all that the place yielded, were in readiness for him.

Here he continued some sixteen years; very busy, very successful in medicine and literature; but "tormented with hypochondria;"--having indeed an immense conceit of himself, and generally too thin a skin for this world. Here he first wrote his Book on SOLITUDE, a Book famed over all the world in my young days (and perhaps still famed); he wrote it a second time, MUCH ENLARGED, about thirty years after: [_Betrachtungen uber die Einsamkeit, von Doctor J. G. Zimmermann, Stadtphysicus in Brugg_ (Zurich, 1756),--as yet only "1 vol. 8vo, price 6d." (5 groschen); but it grew with years; and (Leipzig, 1784) came out remodelled into 4 vols.;--was translated into French, "with many omissions," by Mercier (Paris, 1790); into English from Mercier (London, 1791). "Zurich, 1763-1764:" by and by, one "Dobson did it into English."] I read it (in the curtailed English-Mercier form, no Scene in it like the above), in early boyhood,--and thank it for nothing, or nearly so. Zimmermann lived much alone, at Brugg and elsewhere; all his days "Hypochondria" was the main company he had:--and it was natural, but UNprofitable, that he should say, to himself and others, the best he could for that bad arrangement: poor soul! He wrote also on MEDICAL EXPERIENCE, a famed Book in its day;" also on NATIONAL PRIDE; and became famed through the Universe, and was Member of infinite Learned Societies.

All which rendered dull dead Brugg still duller and more dead; unfit utterly for a man of such sublime accomplishments. Plenty of Counts Stadion, Kings of Poland even, offered him engagements; eager to possess such a man, and deliver him from dull dead Brugg; but he had hypochondria, and always feared their deliverance might be into something duller. At length,--in his fortieth year, 1768,--the place of Court-Physician (HOFMEDICUS) at Hanover was offered him by George the Third of pious memory, and this he resolved to accept; and did lift anchor, and accept and occupy accordingly.

Alas, at the Gate of Hanover, "his carriage overset;" broke his poor old Mother-in-law's leg (who had been rejoicing doubtless to get home into her own Country), and was the end of her--poor old soul;--and the beginning of misfortunes continual and too tedious to mention. Spleen, envy, malice and calumny, from the Hanover Medical world; treatment, "by the old buckram Hofdames who had drunk coffee with George II.," "which was fitter for a laquais-de-place" than for a medical gentleman of eminence: unworthy treatment, in fact, in many or most quarters;--followed by hypochondria, by dreadful bodily disorder (kind not given or discoverable), "so that I suffered the pains of h.e.l.l," sat weeping, sat gnas.h.i.+ng my teeth, and could n't write a Note after dinner; followed finally by the sickness, and then by the death, of my poor Wife, "after five months of torment." Upon which, in 1771, Zimmermann's friends--for he had many friends, being, in fact, a person of fine graceful intellect, high proud feelings and tender sensibilities, gone all to this sad state--rallied themselves; set his Hanover house in order for him (governess for his children, what not); and sent him off to Berlin, there to be dealt with by one Meckel, an incomparable Surgeon, and be healed of his dreadful disorder ("LEIBESSCHADE, of which the first traces had appeared in Brugg"),--though to most people it seemed rather he would die; "and one Medical Eminency in Hanover said to myself [Zimmermann] one day: 'Dr. So-and-so is to have your Pension, I am told; now, by all right, it should belong to me, don't you think so?'" What, "I" thought of the matter, seeing the greedy gentleman thus "parting my skin," may be conjectured!--

The famed Meckel received his famed patient with a n.o.bleness worthy of the heroic ages. Dodged him in his own house, in softest beds and appliances; spoke comfort to him, hope to him,--the gallant Meckel;--rallied, in fact, the due medical staff one morning; came up to Zimmermann, who "stripped," with the heart of a lamb and lion conjoined, and trusting in G.o.d, "flung himself on his bed" (on his face, or on his back, we never know), and there, by the hands of Meckel and staff, "received above 2,000 (TWO THOUSAND) cuts in the s.p.a.ce of an hour and half, without uttering one word or sound." A frightful operation, gallantly endured, and skilfully done; whereby the "bodily disorder"

(LEIBESSCHADE), whatever it might be, was effectually and forever sent about its business by the n.o.ble Meckel.

Hospitalities and soft, hushed kindnesses and soothing ministrations, by Meckel and by everybody, were now doubled and trebled: wise kind Madam Meckel, young kind Mamsell Meckel and the Son (who "now, in 1788, lectures in Gottingen"); not these only, nor Schmucker Head Army-Surgeon, and the ever-memorable HERR GENERALCHIRURGUS Madan, who had both been in the operation; not these only, but by degrees all that was distinguished in the Berlin world, Ramler, Busching, Sulzer, Prime Minister Herzberg, Queen's and King's Equerries, and honorable men and women,--bore him "on angel-wings" towards complete recovery. Talked to him, sang and danced to him (at least, the "Muses" and the female Meckels danced and sang), and all lapped him against eating cares, till, after twelve weeks, he was fairly on his feet again, and able to make jaunts in the neighborhood with his "life's savior," and enjoy the pleasant Autumn weather to his farther profit.--All this, though described in ridiculous superlative by Zimmermann, is really touching, beautiful and human: perhaps never in his life was he so happy, or a thousandth part so helped by man, as while under the roof of this thrice-useful Meckel,--more power to Meckel!

Head Army-Surgeon Schmucker had gone through all the Seven-Years War; Zimmermann, an ardent Hero-wors.h.i.+pper, was never weary questioning him, listening to him in full career of narrative, on this great subject,--only eight years old at that time. Among their country drives, Meckel took him to Potsdam, twenty English miles off; in the end of October, there to stay a night. This was the ever-memorable Friday, when we first ascended the Hill of Sans-Souci, and had our evening walk of contemplation:--to be followed by a morrow which was ten times more memorable: as readers shall now see. [Jordens, _Lexikon_ (Zimmermann), v. 632-658 (exact and even eloquent account, as these of Jordens, unexpectedly, often are); Zimmermann himself, UNTERREDUNGEN MIT FRIEDRICH DEM GROSSEN (ubi infra); Tissot, _Vie de M. Zimmermann_ (Lausanne, 1797): &c. &c.]

NEXT DAY, ZIMMERMANN HAS A DIALOGUE. Schmucker had his apartments in "LITTLE SANS-SOUCI," where the King now lived (Big Sans-Souci, or "Sans-Souci" by itself, means in those days, not in ours at all, "New Palace, NEUE PALAIS," now in all its splendor of fresh finish). De Catt, Friedrich's Reader, whom we know well, was a Genevese, and knew Zimmermann from of old. Schmucker and De Catt were privately twitching up Friedrich's curiosity,--to whom also Zimmermann's name, and perhaps his late surgical operation, might be known: "Can he speak French?"--"Native to him, your Majesty." Friedrich had some notion to see Zimmermann; and judicious De Catt, on this fortunate Sat.u.r.day, "26th October, 1771," morrow after Zimmermann's arrival at Potsdam, "came to our inn about, 1 P.M. [King's dinner just done]; and asked me to come and look at the beauties of Sans-Souci [Big Sans-Souci] for a little."

Zimmermann willingly went: Catt, left him in good hands to see the beauties; slipt off, for his own part, to "LITTLE Sans-Souci;" came back, took Zimmermann thither; left, him with Schmucker, all trembling, thinking perhaps the King might call him. "I trembled sometimes, then again I felt exceeding happiness:" I was in Schmucker's room, sitting by the fire, mostly alone for a good while, "the room that had once been Marquis d'Argens's" (who is now dead, and buried far away, good old soul);--when, at last, about half-past 4, Catt came jumping in, breathless with joy; s.n.a.t.c.hed me up: "His Majesty wants to speak with you this very moment!" Zimmermann's self shall say the rest.

"I hurried, hand-in-hand with Catt, along a row of Chambers. 'Here,'

said Catt, 'we are now at the King's room!'--My heart thumped, like to spring out of my body. Catt went in; but next moment the door again opened, and Catt bade me enter.

"In the middle of the room stood an iron camp-bed without curtains.

There, on a worn mattress, lay King Friedrich, the terror of Europe, without coverlet, in an old blue roquelaure. He had a big c.o.c.ked-hat, with a white feather [hat aged, worn soft as duffel, equal to most caps; "feather" is not perpendicular, but horizontal, round the inside of the brim], on his head.

"The King took off his hat very graciously, when I was perhaps ten steps from him; and said in French (our whole Dialogue proceeded in French): 'Come nearer, M. Zimmermann.'

"I advanced to within two steps of the King; he said in the mean while to Catt: 'Call Schmucker in, too.' Herr Schmucker came; placed himself behind the King, his back to the wall; and Catt stood behind me. Now the Colloquy began.

KING. "'I hear you have found your health again in Berlin; I wish you joy of that.'