History of Friedrich II of Prussia, vol 8 | Page 6

the young soul (truly a lover of Truth, your
Majesty) taps on his ceiling, my floor being overhead, before the winter
sun rises, as a signal that I must come down to him; so eager to have
error and darkness purged away. Believes himself, as I believe him,
ready to undertake that Oath; desires, however, to see it first, that he
may maturely study every clause of it.-- Say you verily so? answers

Majesty. And MAY my ursine heart flow out again, and blubber
gratefully over a sinner saved, a poor Son plucked as brand from the
burning? "God, the Most High, give His blessing on it, then!"
concludes the paternal Majesty: "And as He often, by wondrous
guidances, strange paths and thorny steps, will bring men into the
Kingdom of Christ, so may our Divine Redeemer help that this prodigal
son be brought into His communion. That his godless heart be beaten
till it is softened and changed; and so he be snatched from the claws of
Satan. This grant us the Almighty God and Father, for our Lord Jesus
Christ and His passion and death's sake! Amen!--I am, for the rest, your
well-affectioned King, FRIEDRICH WILHELM (WUSTERHAUSEN,
8th NOVEMBER, 1730)." [Forster, i. 379.]
CROWN-PRINCE BEGINS A NEW COURSE.
It was Monday, 6th November, when poor Katte died. Within a
fortnight, on the second Sunday after, there has a Select Commission,
Grumkow, Borck, Buddenbrock, with three other Soldiers, and the
Privy Councillor Thulmeyer, come out to Custrin: there and then,
Sunday, November 19th, [Nicolai, exactest of men, only that
Documents were occasionally less accessible in his time, gives
(ANEKDOTEN, vi. 187), "Saturday, November 25th," as the day of the
Oath; but, no doubt, the later inquirers, Preuss (i. 56) and others, have
found him wrong in this small instance.] these Seven, with due
solemnity, administer the Oath (terms of Oath conceivable by readers);
Friedrich being found ready. He signs the Oath, as well as audibly
swears it: whereupon his sword is restored to him, and his prison-door
opened. He steps forth to the Town Church with his Commissioners;
takes the sacrament; listens, with all Custrin, to an illusive Sermon on
the subject; "text happily chosen, preacher handling it well." Text was
Psalm Seventy-seventh, verse eleventh (tenth of our English version),
And I said, This is my infirmity; but I will remember the years
of the right hand of the Host High; or, as Luther's version
more intelligibly gives it, This I have to suffer; the right hand
of the Most High can change all. Preacher (not Muller but
another) rose gradually into didactic pathos; Prince, and all Custrin,
were weeping, or near weeping, at the close of the business. [Preuss, i.

56.]
Straight from Church the Prince is conducted, not to the Fortress, but to
a certain Town Mansion, which he is to call his own henceforth, under
conditions: an erring Prince half liberated, and mercifully put on proof
again. His first act here is to write, of his own composition, or helped
by some official hand, this Letter to his All-serenest Papa; which must
be introduced, though, except to readers of German who know the
"DERE" (TheirO), "ALLERDURCHLAUCHTIGSTER," and strange
pipe-clay solemnity of the Court-style, it is like to be in great part lost
in any translation:--
"CUSTRIN, 19th November, 1730.
"ALL-SERENEST AND ALL-GRACIOUSEST FATHER,--To your
Royal Majesty, my All-graciousest Father, have,"--I.E. "I have," if one
durst write the "I,"--"by my disobedience as TheirO [YourO] subject
and soldier, not less than by my undutifulness as TheirO Son, given
occasion to a just wrath and aversion against me. With the
All-obedientest respect I submit myself wholly to the grace of my most
All-gracious Father; and beg him, Most All-graciously to pardon me; as
it is not so much the withdrawal of my liberty in a sad arrest
(MALHEUREUSEN ARREST), as my own thoughts of the fault I
have committed, that have brought me to reason: Who, with
all-obedientest respect and submission, continue till my end,
"My All-graciousest King's and Father's faithfully obedientest Servant
and Son,
"FRIEDRICH."
[Preuss, i. 56, 57; and Anonymous, Friedrichs des Grossen
Briefe an seinen Vater (Berlin, Posen und Bromberg,
1838), p. 3.]
This new House of Friedrich's in the little Town of Custrin, he finds
arranged for him on rigorously thrifty principles, yet as a real
Household of his own; and even in the form of a Court, with

Hofmarschall, Kammerjunkers, and the other adjuncts;--Court reduced
to its simplest expression, as the French say, and probably the cheapest
that was ever set up. Hafmarschall (Court-marshal) is one Wolden, a
civilian Official here. The Kammerjunkers are Rohwedel and Natzmer;
Matzmer Junior, son of a distinguished Feldmarschall: "a good-hearted
but foolish forward young fellow," says Wilhelmina; "the failure of a
coxcomb