"Yes, if I were Voltaire and a private man, I could with much composure leave Fortune to her whirlings and her plungings; to me, contented with the needful, her mad caprices and sudden topsy-turvyings would be amusing rather than tremendous.
"I know the ennui attending on honors, the burdensome duties, the jargon of grinning flatterers, those pitiabilities of every kind, those details of littleness, with which you have to occupy yourself if set on high on the stage of things. Foolish glory has no charm for me, though a Poet and King: when once Atropos has ended me forever, what will the uncertain honor of living in the Temple of Memory avail? One moment of practical happiness is worth a thousand years of imaginary in such Temple.—Is the lot of high people so very sweet, then? Pleasure, gentle ease, true and hearty mirth, have always fled from the great and their peculiar pomps and labors.
"No, it is not fickle Fortune that has ever caused my sorrows; let her smile her blandest, let her frown her fiercest on me, I should sleep every night, refusing her the least worship. But our respective conditions are our law; we are bound and commanded to shape our temper to the employment we have undertaken. Voltaire in his hermitage, in a Country where is honesty and safety, can devote himself in peace to the life of the Philosopher, as Plato has described it. But as to me, threatened with shipwreck, I must consider how, looking the tempest in the face, I can think, can live and can die as a King:—
Pour moi, menace du naufrage,
Je dois, en affrontant l'orage,
Penser, vivre et mourir en roi."
[OEuvres, xxiii. 14.]
This is of October 9th; this ends, worthily, the Lamentation-Psalms; work having now turned up, which is a favorable change. Friedrich's notion of suicide, we perceive, is by no means that of puking up one's existence, in the weak sick way of FELO DE SE; but, far different, that of dying, if he needs must, as seems too likely, in uttermost spasm of battle for self and rights to the last. From which latter notion nobody can turn him. A valiantly definite, lucid and shiningly practical soul,—with such a power of always expectorating himself into clearness again. If he do frankly wager his life in that manner, beware, ye Soubises, Karls and flaccid trivial persons, of the stroke that may chance to lie in him!—
III. RUMOR OF AN INROAD ON BERLIN SUDDENLY SETS FRIEDRICH ON MARCH THITHER: INROAD TAKES EFFECT,—WITH IMPORTANT RESULTS, CHIEFLY IN A LEFT-HAND FORM.
October 11th, express arrived, important express from General Finck (who is in Dresden, convalescent from Kolin, and is even Commandant there, of anything there is to command), "That the considerable Austrian Brigade or Outpost, which was left at Stolpen when the others went for Silesia, is all on march for Berlin." Here is news! "The whole 15,000 of them," report adds;—though it proved to be only a Detachment, picked Tolpatches mostly, and of nothing like that strength; shot off, under a swift General Haddick, on this errand. Between them and Berlin is not a vestige of force; and Berlin itself has nothing but palisades, and perhaps a poor 4,000 of garrison. "March instantly, you Moritz, who lie nearest; cross Elbe at Torgau; I follow instantly!" orders Friedrich; [His Message to Moritz, ORLICH, p. 73; Rodenbeck, p. 322 (dubious, or wrong).]—and that same night is on march, or has cavalry pushed ahead for reinforcement of Moritz.
Friedrich, not doubting but there would be captaincy and scheme among his Enemies, considered that the Swedes, and perhaps the Richelieu French, were in concert with this Austrian movement,—from east, from north, from west, three Invasions coming on the core of his Dominions;—and that here at last was work ahead, and plenty of it! That was Friedrich's opinion, and most other people's, when the Austrian inroad was first heard of: "mere triple ruin coming to this King," as the Gazetteers judged;—great alarm prevailing among the King's friends; in Berlin, very great. Friedrich, glad, at any rate, to have done with that dismal lingering at Buttelstadt, hastens to arrange himself for the new contingencies; to post his Keiths, his Ferdinands, with their handfuls of force, to best advantage; and push ahead after Moritz, by Leipzig, Torgau, Berlin-wards, with all his might. At Leipzig, in such press of business and interest,—judge by the following phenomenon, what a clear-going soul this is, and how completely on a level with whatever it may be that he is marching towards:—
"LEIPZIG, 15th OCTOBER, 1757 (Interview with Gottsched).—At 11 this morning, Majesty came marching into Leipzig; multitudes of things to settle there; things ready, things not yet ready, in view of the great events ahead. Seeing that he would have time after dinner, he at once sent for Professor Gottsched, a gigantic gentleman, Reigning King of German Literature for the time being, to come to him at 3 P.M. Reigning King at that time; since gone wholly to the Dustbins,—'Popular Delusion,' as old Samuel defines it, having since awakened to itself, with scornful ha-ha's upon its poor Gottsched, and rushed into other roads worse and better; its poor Gottsched become a name now signifying Pedantry, Stupidity, learned Inanity and the Worship of Colored Water, to every German mind.