How, at the first mention of this idea of big August, with his lame foot, taking wing, and coming like a gigantic partridge, with lame foot and cocked-hat, Friedrich Wilhelm grinned. How, at the second mention, and Polish threat of your feet, Friedrich Wilhelm, who hates all lies, and cares not for salutations in the market-place, jerks himself impatiently and saves his feet. At the third mention, clear it is, Friedrich Wilhelm utters the word, "ANSPANNEN, Horses!"--and in very truth takes to the road again;hungry indeed, but still angrier; leaving Hopfgarten bent into the shape of a parabola, and his grand dinner cooling futile, in what tragic humor we can imagine. [Ib. p. 411.] Why has no Prussian Painter done that scene? Let another Chodowiecki, when another comes, try whether he cannot.
Friedrich Wilhelm regretted the dinner, regretted to hurt the good man's feelings; but could stand it no longer. He rushes off for Meuselwitz, where Seckendorf, with at least silence, and some cold collation instead of dinner, is awaiting him. Twenty miles off is Meuselwitz; up the flat valley of the Pleisse River towards Altenburg; through a region memorable, were we not so hungry.
Famed fights have had their arena here; Lutzen, the top of its church-steeple visible on your right, it is there where the great Gustavus fell two hundred years ago: on that wide champaign, a kind of Bull-ring of the Nations, how many fights have been, and will be! Altenburg one does not see to-night: happy were we but at Meuselwitz, a few miles nearer; and had seen what dinner the old Feldzeugmeister has.
Dinner enough, we need not doubt. The old Feldzeugmeister has a big line Schloss at Meuselwitz; his by unexpected inheritance;with uncommonly fine gardens; with a good old Wife, moreover, blithe though childless;--and he is capable of "lighting more than one candle" when a King comes to visit him. Doubtless the man hurls his thrift into abeyance; and blazes out with conspicuous splendor, on this occasion. A beautiful Castle indeed, this Meuselwitz of his; the towers of Altenburg visible in the distance; Altenburg, where Kunz von Kauffungen stole the two little Princes; centuries ago;--where we do not mean to pause at this time. On the morrow morning,--unless they chose to stay over Sunday; which I cannot affirm or deny,--Seckendorf also has made his packages; and joins himself to Friedrich. Wilhelm's august travelling party. Doing here a portion of the long space (length of the Terrestrial Equator in all) which he is fated to accomplish in the way of riding with that Monarch.
From Meuselwitz, through Altenburg, Gera, Saalfeld, to Coburg, is our next day's journey. Up one fork of the Leipzig Pleisse, then across the Leipzig Elster, these streams now dwindling to brooks;leading us up to the water-shed or central Hill-countries between the Mayn and Saale Rivers; where the same shower will run partly, on this hand, northward by the Elster, Pleisse or other labyrinthic course, into the Saale, into the Elbe; and partly, on the other hand, will flow southward into the Mayn; and so, after endless windings in the Fir Mountains (FICHTEL-GEBIRGE), get by Frankfurt into the Rhine at Mainz. Mayn takes the south end of your shower; Saale takes the north,--or farther east yonder, shower will roll down into the same grand Elbe River by the Mulde (over which the Old Dessauer is minded to build a new stone bridge; Wallenstein and others, as well as Time, have ruined many bridges there). That is the line of the primeval mountains, and their ever-flowing rain-courses, in those parts.
At Gera, dim, old Town,--does not your Royal Highness well know the "Gera Bond (GERAISCHE VERTRAG)"? Duhan: did not forget to inform you of that? It is the corner-stone of the House of Brandenburg's advancement in the world. Here, by your august ancestors, the Law of Primogeniture was settled, and much rubbish was annihilated in the House of Brandenburg: Eldest Son always to inherit the Electorate unbroken; after Anspach and Baireuth no more apanages, upon any cause or pretext whatsoever; and these themselves to lapse irrevocable to the main or Electoral House, should they ever fall vacant again. Fine fruit of the decisive sense that was in the Hohenzollerns; of their fine talent for annihilating rubbish,--which feat, if a man can do it, and keep doing it, will more than most others accelerate his course in this world. It was in this dim old Town of Gera, in the Year 1598, by him that had the twenty-three children, that the "GERA BOND" was brought to parchment. But indeed it was intrinsically only a renewal, more solemnly sanctioned, of Albert Achilles's HAUSORDNUNG (House-Order), done in 1478, above a century earlier.--But see, we are under way again. His Prussian Majesty rushes forward without pause; will stop nowhere, except where business demands; no Majesty of his day travels at such a speed. Orlamunde an hour hence,--your Royal Highness has heard of Orlamunde and its famed Counts of a thousand years back, when Kaiser Redbeard was in the world, and the Junior Hohenzollern, tired of hawking, came down from the Hills to him? Orlamunde (OrlaMOUTH) is not far off, on our right; and this itself is the Orla; this pleasant streamlet we are now quitting, which has borne us company for some time:
this too will get into the Saale, and be at Magdeburg, quite beyond the Dessauer's Bridge, early to-morrow. Ha, here at last is Saalfeld, Town and Schloss, and the incipient Saal itself:
his Serene Highness Saalfeld-Coburg's little REZIDENZ;--probably his Majesty will call on him, in passing? I have no doubt he does;and transacts the civilities needful.