"On receipt of this order, you are to marry the tallest of your grenadiers to the bearer thereof, taking particular care to have the ceremony performed in your own presence; and for the execution of this, I hold you responsible.
"FRIEDRICH."
"P.S.—If he refuse, to Spandau with him, until further orders."
"Can you read, fraulein?" asked he, while folding this remarkable order.
"No, mein herr."
"Good; then there is the less use for a seal, which I have not here." He placed the note and the rix-dollar in the large fair hand of the girl, and added, "I have noted this place—the Wilde Katze in my tablets, and I trust to your honesty and fidelity, Gretchen, in delivering my note without delay, as the matter is of great consequence to me, and may not prove unpleasant to yourself." And giving her a look that somehow impressed her, he put spurs to his old charger, and shambled off.
As ignorant of the contents of the letter as of the exalted rank of its writer, Gretchen Viborg was hurrying along the road towards Berlin, when she suddenly remembered that she had to keep an appointment with her lover, a remarkably jealous little fellow, who had a mill on the Spree—an assignation which the delivery of this note would completely mar! While pausing to consider this dilemma, honesty impelling her forward, and love or fear staying her steps, she met an old crone who was employed by her at the Wilde Katze, to till the ground, carry wood and do other out-door work; and supposing it was all one who delivered the note, provided that it safely reached its destination, she offered her a ducat to bear it to the palace near the White Hall.
Now this old crone could read; she scanned the note, saw the whole bearings of the case, and knew who the writer was in an instant. She grinned a horrible grin of intense satisfaction, undertook the mission, and already beheld in prospect her victim—the tallest grenadier!
This cunning hag was past fifty years of age, and one of her legs was shorter than the other leg at least by half an inch; she stooped in gait and was not much more than four feet high, and was remarkably hideous, even for a continental woman, her face being a mass of wrinkles, her pointed chin covered with wiry sprouts of grey hair, while her teeth were reduced to a few yellow fangs; thus, great was my father's astonishment, when he perused the note which she gave him faithfully at the palace-gate, just as he was mounting his charger to join the evening parade of his boasted battalion of the Guards.
He was too familiar with the handwriting of the great Frederick to doubt for a moment the authenticity of the note; but he could by no means reconcile its singular contents with the extreme years and appalling aspect of the old witch who brought it, and he surveyed them alternately for some time, in utter bewilderment, till the "P.S." about Spandau, that formidable state prison in Brandenburg, made him dread a trip there in person, if the king's orders were trifled with or delayed; so turning with repugnance from the woman, who continued to grin and drop endless curtsies by his side, he summoned the sergeant-major.