I was born in a small village called Dessau, at the very time when the portentous comet, with its luminous tail, threatened the affrighted inhabitants of my native country with pestilence, famine, war, and all the attendant train of misery. I mean in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and ——. Whoever is the least acquainted with the history of that comet will not be at a loss how to find out the remaining figures to complete the year of my birth. My father, Heaven have mercy upon his soul! was an honest good kind of man, and obliged to maintain himself, his wife, my sisters, and me, with the produce of his earnings; his name was Encke; his profession that of a trumpeter. Our mode of living was such as behoved the family of a man in his humble line, and had not my mother, at intervals, found means to make a few perquisites, we might have fared still worse. But, dear woman! she was an industrious being, and would contrive it so as to enable my honest father to sit down to a joint of meat, at least, twice or thrice a week. This my poor father liked very well, and would pay his dear partner many a well deserved compliment on the occasion.
My father had lately been called to Potsdam, to be one of his Royal Highness’s band of music, in consequence of which we fixed our abode at Berlin. In the capital my mother continued her former trade, and had very good custom for herself, whilst at the same time she would never neglect any occasion of clandestinely making some good bargain or other for my eldest sister and me, either with some young wealthy debauchee, or an old married man; these bargains produced watches, clothes, cash, &c.
In this way of living, in a kind of style, without much concern, my father was highly pleased; yet, every now and then, he would—and Heaven knows why—fly into a violent fit of passion, and, in those fits, would generally make use of a kind of manual argument to convince my good industrious mother of her duty as a wife. The fourteenth anniversary of my birth happened to fall on the twenty-ninth day of the month of February, Bissextile, when my father entered upon an argument of this impressive nature, and his passion rose so high that it killed him on the spot.
My mother was now a widow, and we all prospered beyond our warmest expectation. Our father being gone, we immediately hoisted our colours publicly at Berlin, and why should we not, as our reputation was pretty well established, and known all over the town? Our good mother’s province was to hold out the lure to empty the purses of unwary youth, and to pluck up by the root the very last feather of the conceited fool; all this was performed on a methodical system. Our house was a sort of rendezvous, where the Jew and the Christian could assemble without any interruption.
My eldest sister had the good fortune to strike the fancy of a Prince, and to be chosen by him for his mistress. It became my humble lot, at that time, to wait on her, which, however, did not hinder me from conducting my own little concerns in private, for they were well worth continuing. What business had I to toil and work, whilst my admirers could administer to my wants and wishes! Ducats and fine clothes were my motto, and whoever would furnish me with these was sure to succeed. My sister, one day, happened to be off her guard with her favourite, for, besides the Prince, she had an intrigue with a Silesian Count, of the name of Matuschka. She was just sitting on the sopha, in a careless posture, when, all of a sudden, the Prince entered the room. His eyes sparkled with indignation, and in the first fit of his anger he took my sister by the hair, pulled her off the sopha, and then knocked the glasses, china, &c. girandoles, chandeliers, and every article of furniture in the room, to pieces. The Count, with the aid of my mother, fled through the window, and might thank his saints for the narrow escape, for his life was at stake, and the Prince would have ran him through without hesitation.
He loaded my mother with all the reproaches his rage could suggest, called her a procuress, &c. Poor woman! she was innocent, and, of course, the treatment affected her to the very quick. But at once she took me by the hand, and, stepping up to the Prince, thus addressed him: “Please your Royal Highness, I protest to Heaven, and all his Saints, that I am quite innocent. The Count is the girl’s own choice. I am as innocent as the child unborn. Here, take my little Minna instead of her; she will keep true to you; she is susceptible of gratitude; I can pledge my word that you will find what I say to be true. Behold, and please your Royal Highness, behold this beautiful innocent; behold this lucid eye, this harmonious shape, this slender waist, and then the rosebud; her lively conversation will dissipate your cares, when collected on your brow; and then such sallies of wit, such sprightly sayings, such flashes of merriment, that time will dance away with down on his feet in her company.” The Prince smiled at this sublime piece of oratory, which my mother had got by rote, like a parrot; forgot all that had happened, and since that very moment chose me for his favourite.
With this amiable Prince I lived in uninterrupted happiness, but his uncle, the sage, the politician, and the hero, began to interfere with our little love-concerns, and loudly inveighed against his nephew’s fathering several of my children, and the people publicly calling me his mistress. It did not become, he thought, the destined ruler of a great and powerful nation to be governed and duped by women and a set of idle parasites. Such creatures, he said, were generally connected with a gang of adventurers, for whom no honest man could have the least esteem, because they had no other aim than to creep into favour, under the protection of a prostitute, and, as soon as they had obtained it, would interfere with the most serious and momentous concerns of the state, betray whole nations, exhaust the very sources of the common wealth, and commit acts of violence and injustice. Such and the like nonsense would frequently flow from the old man’s lips, and the Prince, who, in fact, was somewhat overawed by his aged uncle, advised me to retire to my native town till the storm was over, and the horizon cleared up again. In consequence of his advice, I repaired to Dessau, accompanied by my mother, where I was soon afterwards delivered of a son. The Prince often came to visit me in my retirement, and our meetings were crowned with unspeakable bliss.
To make the old man quite easy, and the better to enable ourselves to carry on our mutual intercourse, the Prince proposed a match between me and his favorite valet, Rietz. His uncle, he thought, would the sooner forget me, and his foes, as well as mine, would, by this marriage, be brought to silence. I entered into the scheme, became Mrs. Rietz, and returned unconcerned to Berlin. To the old grumbler I was represented as an ignorant country wench, without any turn for intrigue, and incapable of governing the Prince, and still less of involving him, even in the most distant manner, in any foreign concern. This completely quieted the old man, and I passed my time in the greatest peace and tranquillity.
The long wished-for moment arrived at last; the old fellow died, and my dear admirer ascended the throne. An extensive field of action now opened before my eyes; “This is the time, said I to myself, to form my system; to govern, to rule, to enrich, my friends, and to humble the pride of my inveterate foes.”