President Munchow and the Commandant were with the Prince; whose emotions one may fancy; but not describe. Seldom did any Prince or man stand in such a predicament. Vain to say, and again say: "In the name of God, I ask you, stop the execution till I write to the King!" Impossible that; as easily stop the course of the stars. And so here Katte comes; cheerful loyalty still beaming on his face, death now nigh. "PARDONNEZ-MOI, MON CHER KATTE!" cried Priedrich in a tone: Pardon me, dear Katte; oh, that this should be what I have done for you!—"Death is sweet for a Prince I love so well," said Katte, "LA MORT EST DOUCE POUR UN SI AIMABLE PRINCE;" [Wilhelmina, i. 307; Preuss, i. 45.] and fared on,—round some angle of the Fortress, it appears; not in sight of Friedrich; who sank into a faint, and had seen his last glimpse of Katte in this world.
The body lay all day upon the scaffold, by royal order; and was buried at night obscurely in the common churchyard; friends, in silence, took mark of the place against better times,—and Katte's dust now lies elsewhere, among that of his own kindred.
"Never was such a transaction before or since, in Modern History," cries the angry reader: "cruel, like the grinding of human hearts under millstones, like—" Or indeed like the doings of the gods, which are cruel, though not that alone? This is what, after much sorting and sifting, I could get to know about the definite facts of it. Commentary, not likely to be very final at this epoch, the reader himself shall supply at discretion.
END OF BOOK 7