Grumkow, with the thought ever present to him, "What if Friedrich Wilhelm should die?" is naturally an eloquent preacher. Enough, it has been settled (perhaps before the day of Katte's death, or at the latest three days after it, as we can see), That if the Prince will, and can with free conscience, take an Oath ("no mental reservation," mark you!) of contrite repentance, of perfect prostrate submission, and purpose of future entire obedience and conformity to the paternal mind in all things, "GNADENWAHL"included,--the paternal mind may possibly relax his durance a little, and put him gradually on proof again. [King's Letter to Muller, 8th November (Forster, i. 379).]
Towards which issue, as Chaplain Muller reports, the Crown-Prince is visibly gravitating, with all his weight and will. The very GNADENWAHL is settled; 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), <italic> And I said, This is my infirmity; but I will remember the years of the right hand of the Host High; <end italic> or, as Luther's version more intelligibly gives it, <italic> This I have to suffer; the right hand of the Most High can change all. <end italic> 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, <italic> Friedrichs des Grossen Briefe an seinen Vater <end italic> (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 ******st 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 (PETIT-MAITRE MANQUE)." For example, once, strolling about in a solemn Kaiser's Soiree in Vienna, he found in some quiet corner the young Duke of Lorraine, Franz, who it is thought will be the divine Maria Theresa's husband, and Kaiser himself one day.