At Heilbronn our road branches off to the left; and we roll diligently towards Sinzheim, calculating to be there before nightfall. Whew! Something has gone awry at Sinzheim: no right lodging in the waste Inns there; or good clean Barns, of a promising character, are to be had nearer than there: we absolutely do not go to Sinzheim to-night; we are to stop at Steinfurth, a small quiet Hamlet with Barns, four or five miles short of that! This was a great disappointment to the Prince,—and some say, a highly momentous circumstance in his History: ["Might perhaps have succeeded at Sinzheim" (Seckendorf's Relation of the Crown-Prince's meditated Flight, p. 2;—addressed to Prince Eugene few days afterwards; given in Forster, iii. 1-13).]—however, he rallies in the course of the evening; speaks again to Page Keith. "Steinfurth [STONY-FORD, over the Brook here]; be it at Steinfurth, all the same!" Page Keith will manage to get horses for us here, no less. And Speyer and the Ferry of the Rhine are within three hours. Favor us, Silence and all ye good genii!—
On Friday morning, 4th August, 1730, "usual hour of starting, 3 A.M.," not being yet came, the Royal Party lies asleep in two clean airy Barns, facing one another, in the Village of Steinfurth; Barns facing one another, with the Heidelberg Highway and Village Green asleep in front between them; [Compare Wilhelmina, i. 259 (her Account of the Flight: "Heard it from my Brother,"—and report it loosely after a dozen years!).] for it is little after two in the morning, the dawn hardly beginning to break. Prince Friedrich, with his Trio of Vigilance, Buddenbrock, Waldau, Rochow, lies in one Barn; Majesty, with his Seckendorf and party, is in the other: apparently all still locked in sleep? Not all: Prince Friedrich, for example, is awake;—the Trio is indeed audibly asleep; unless others watch for them, their six eyes are closed. Friedrich cautiously rises; dresses; takes his money, his new red roquelaure, unbolts the Barn-door, and walks out. Trio of Vigilance is sound asleep, and knows nothing: alas, Trio of Vigilance, while its own six eyes are closed, has appointed another pair to watch.
Gummersbach the Valet comes to Rochow's bolster: "Hst, Herr Oberst-Lieutenant, please awaken! Prince Royal is up, has on his top-coat, and is gone out of doors!" Rochow starts to his habiliments, or perhaps has them ready on; in a minute or two, Rochow also is forth into the gray of the morning;—finds the young Prince actually on the Green there; in his red roquelaure, leaning pensively on one of the travelling carriages. "Guten Morgen, Ihro Konigliche Hoheit!" [Ranke, 1. 305.]—Fancy such a salutation to the young man! Page Keith, at this moment, comes with a pair of horses, too: "Whither with the nags, Sirrah?" Rochow asked with some sharpness. Keith, seeing how it was, answered without visible embarrassment, "Herr, they are mine and Kunz the Page's horses" (which, I suppose, is true); "ready at the usual hour!" Keith might add.—"His Majesty does not go till five this morning;—back to the stables!" beckoned Rochow; and, according to the best accounts, did not suspect anything, or affected not to do so.
Page Keith returned, trembling in his saddle. Friedrich strolled towards the other Barn,—at least to be out of Rochow's company. Seckendorf emerges from the other Barn; awake at the common hour: "How do you like his Royal Highness in the red roquelaure?" asks Rochow, as if nothing had happened. Was there ever such a baffled Royal Highness; or young bright spirit chained in the Bear's Den in this manner? Our Steinfurth project has gone to water; and it is not to-day we shall get across the Rhine!—Not to-day; nor any other day, on that errand, strong as our resolutions are! For new light, in a few hours afterwards, pours in upon the project; and human finesse, or ulterior schemes, avail nothing henceforth. "The Crown-Prince's meditated Flight" has tried itself, and failed. Here and so that long meditation ENDS; this at Steinfurth was all the over-act it could ever come to. In few hours more it will melt into air; and only the terrible consequences will remain!—
By last night's arrangement, the Prince with his Trio was to set out an hour before his Father, which circumstance had helped Page Keith in his excuses. Naturally the Prince had now no wish to linger on the Green of Steinfurth, in such a posture of affairs: "Towards Heidelberg, then; let us see the big Tun there: ALLONS!" How the young Prince and his Trio did this day's journey; where he loitered, what he saw, said or thought, we have no account: it is certain only that his Father, who set out from Steinfurth an hour after him, arrived in Mannheim several hours before him; and, in spite of Kurfurst Karl Philip's welcome, testified the liveliest inquietude on that unaccountable circumstance. Beautiful Rhine-stream, thrice-beautiful trim Mannheim;—yes, all is beautiful indeed, your Serenity! But where can the Prince be? he kept ejaculating. And Karl Philip had to answer what he could. Of course the Prince may be lingering about Heidelberg, looking at the big Tun and other miracles:—"I had the pleasure to repair that world-famous Tub or Tun, as your Majesty knows; which had lain half burnt, ever since Louis XIV. with his firebrand robberies lay upon us, and burnt the Pfalz in whole, small honor to him! I repaired the Tun: [Kohler, Munzbelustigungen (viii. 418-424; 145-152), who gives a view of the world's wonder, lying horizontal with stairs running up to it. Big Tuns of that kind were not uncommon in Germany; and had uses, if multiplex dues of wine were to be paid IN NATURA: the Heidelberg, the biggest of them, is small to the Whitbread-and-Company, for porter's-ale, in our time.] it is probably the successfulest feat I did hitherto; and well worth looking at, had your Majesty had time!"—"JA WOHL;—but he came away an hour before me!"—The polite Karl Philip, at length, sent off one of his own Equerries to ride towards Heidelberg, or even to Steinfurth if needful, and see what was become of the Prince. This Official person met the Prince, all in order, at no great distance; and brought him safe to Papa's presence again.
Why Papa was in such a fuss about this little circumstance? Truly there has something come to Papa's knowledge since he started, perhaps since he arrived at Mannheim. Page Keith, who rides always behind the King's coach, has ridden this day in an agony of remorse and terror; and at length (probably in Mannheim, once his Majesty is got to his Apartments, or now that he finds his Majesty so anxious there) has fallen on his knees, and, with tears and obtestations, made a clean breast. Page Keith has confessed that the Crown-Prince and he were to have been in Speyer, or farther, at this time of the day; flying rapidly into France. "God's Providence alone prevented it! Pardon, pardon: slay me, your Majesty; but there is the naked truth, and the whole of it, and I have nothing more to say!" Hereupon ensues despatch of the Equerry; and hereupon, as we may conjecture, the Equerry's return with Fritz and the Trio is an unspeakable relief to Friedrich Wilhelm.
Friedrich Wilhelm now summons Buddenbrock and Company straightway; shows, in a suppressed-volcanic manner, with questions and statements,—obliged to SUPPRESS oneself in foreign hospitable Serene Houses,—what atrocity of scandal and terror has been on the edge of happening: "And you three, Rochow, Waldau, Buddenbrock, mark it, you three are responsible; and shall answer, I now tell you, with your heads. Death the penalty, unless you bring HIM to our own Country again,—'living or dead,'" added the Suppressed-Volcano, in low metallic tone; and the sparkling eyes of him, the red tint, and rustling gestures, make the words too credible to us. [Ranke, i. 307.]
What Friedrich Wilhelm got to speak about with the old Kur-Pfalz, during their serene passages of hospitality at Mannheim, is not very clear to me; his Prussian Majesty is privately in such a desperate humor, and the old Kur-Pfalz privately so discrepant on all manner of points, especially on the Julich-and-Berg point. They could talk freely about the old Turk Campaigns, Battle of Zentha, [11th September, 1697; Eugene's crowning feat;—breaking of the Grand Turk's back in this world; who has staggered about, less and less of a terror and outrage, more and more of a nuisance growing unbearable, ever since that day. See Hormayr (iii. 97-101) for some description of this useful bit of Heroism.] and Prince Eugene; very freely about the Heidelberg Tun. But it is known old Karl Philip had his agents at the Congress of Soissons, to secure that Berg-and-Julich interest for the Sulzbachs and him: directly in the teeth of Friedrich Wilhelm. How that may have gone, since the Treaty of Seville broke out to astonish mankind,—will be unsafe to talk about. For the rest, old Karl Philip has frankly adopted the Pragmatic Sanction; but then he has, likewise, privately made league with France to secure him in that Julich-and-Berg matter, should the Kaiser break promise;—league which may much obstruct said Sanction. Nay privately he is casting glances on his Bavarian Cousin, elegant ambitious Karl Albert. Kurfurst of Baiern,—are not we all from the same Wittelsbach stock, Cousins from of old?—and will undertake, for the same Julich-and-Bergobject, to secure Bavaria in its claims on the Austrian Heritages in defect of Heirs Male in Austria. [Michaelis, ii. 99-101.] Which runs directly into the throat of said Pragmatic Sanction; and engages to make it, mere waste sheepskin, so to speak! Truly old Karl Philip has his abstruse outlooks, this way, that way; most abstruse politics altogether:—and in fact we had better speak of the Battle of Zentha and the Heidelberg Tun, while this Visit lasts.
On the morrow, Saturday, August 5th, certain Frenchmen from the Garrison of Landau come across to pay their court and dine. Which race of men Friedrich Wilhelm does not love; and now less than ever, gloomily suspicious they may be come on parricide Fritz's score,—you Rochow and Company keep an eye! By night and by day an eye upon him! Friedrich Wilhelm was, no doubt, glad to get away on the morrow afternoon; fairly out into the Berg-Strasse, into the summer breezes and umbrageous woods, with all his pertinents still safe about him; rushing towards Darmstadt through the Sunday stillness, where he will arrive in the evening, time enough. ["Sunday Evening arrive at Darmstadt," says Seckendorf (in Forster, iii. 3), but by mistake calls it the "7th" instead of "6th.">[
The old Prince of Darmstadt, Ernst Ludwig, Landgraf of Hessen-Darmstadt, age now sixty-three, has a hoary venerable appearance, according to Pollnitz, "but sits a horse well, walks well, and seems to enjoy perfect health,"—which we are glad to hear of. What more concerns us, "he lives usually, quite retired, in a small house upon the Square," in this extremely small Metropolis of his, "and leaves his Heir-Apparent to manage all business in the Palace and elsewhere." [Pollnitz, Memoirs and Letters, ii. 66.] poor old Gentleman, he has the biggest Palace almost in the world; only he could not finish it for want of funds; and it lies there, one of the biggest futilities, vexatious to look upon. No doubt the old Gentleman has had vexations, plenty of them, first and last. He is now got disgusted with the affairs of public life, and addicts himself very much to "turning ivory," as the more eligible employment. He lives in that small house of his, among his turning-lathes and ivory shavings; dines in said small house, "at a table for four persons:" only on Sunday, and above all on this Sunday, puts off his apron; goes across to the Palace; dines there in state, with his Heir and the Grandees. He has a kinship by affinity to Friedrich Wilhelm; his Wife (dead long years since), Mother of this Heir-Apparent, was an Anspach Princess, Aunt to the now Queen Caroline of England. Poor old fellow, these insignificancies, and that he descends direct from Philip the Magnanimous of Hessen (Luther's Philip, who insisted on the supplementary Wife), are all I know of him; and he is somewhat tragic to me there, turning ivory in this extremely anarchic world. What the passages between him and Friedrich Wilhelm were, on this occasion, shall remain conjectural to all creatures. Friedrich Wilhelm said, this Sunday evening at Darmstadt to his own Prince: "Still here, then? I thought you would have been in Paris by this time!"—To which the Prince, with artificial firmness, answered, He could certainly, if he had wished; [Seckendorf (in Forster, iii.), p. 3.] and being familiar with reproaches, perhaps hoped it was nothing.