EGO. "'Apropos of M. de Voghera, is your Majesty aware of a little thing he did before charging? He is a boiling, restless, ever-eager kind of man; and has something of the good old Chivalry style. Seeing that his Regiment would not arrive quick enough, he galloped ahead of it; and coming up to the Commander of the Prussian Regiment of Cavalry which he meant to attack, he saluted him as on parade; the other returned the salute; and then, Have at each other like madmen.'

KING. "'A very good style it is! I should like to know that man; I would thank him for it.—Your General von Ried, then, had got the devil in him, that time at Eilenburg [spurt of fight there, in the Meissen regions, I think in Year 1758, when the D'Ahremberg Dragoons got so cut up], to let those brave Dragoons, who so long bore your Name with glory, advance between Three of my Columns?'—He had asked me the same question at the Camp of Neustadt ten years since; and in vain had I told him that it was not M. de Ried; that Ried did not command them at all; and that the fault was Marechal Daun's, who ought not to have sent them into that Wood of Eilenburg, still less ordered them to halt there without even sending a patrol forward. The King could not bear our General von Ried, who had much displeased him as Minister at Berlin; and it was his way to put down everything to the account of people he disliked.

KING. "'When I think of those devils of Saxon Camps [Summer, 1760],—they were unattackable citadels! If, at Torgau, M. de Lacy had still been Quartermaster-General, I should not have attempted to attack him. But there I saw at once the Camp was ill chosen.'

EGO. "'The superior reputation of Camps sometimes causes a desire to attempt them. For instance, I ask your Majesty's pardon, but I have always thought you would at last have attempted that of Plauen, had the War continued.'

KING. "'Oh, no, indeed! There was no way of taking that one.'

EGO. "'Does n't your Majesty think: With a good battery on the heights of Dolschen, which commanded us; with some battalions, ranked behind each other in the Ravine, attacking a quarter of an hour before daybreak [and so forth, at some length,—excellent for soldier readers who know the Plauen Chasm], you could have flung us out of that almost impregnable Place of Refuge?'

KING. "'And your battery on the Windberg, which would have scourged my poor battalions, all the while, in your Ravine?'

EGO. "'But, Sire, the night?'

KING. "'Oh, you could not miss us even by grope. That big hollow that goes from Burg, and even from Potschappel,—it would have poured like a water-spout [or fire-spout] over us. You see, I am not so brave as you think.'

"The Kaiser had set out for his Interview [First Interview, and indeed it is now more than half done, a good six weeks of it gone] with the Czarina of Russia. That Interview the King did not like [no wonder]:—and, to undo the good it had done us, he directly, and very unskilfully, sent the Prince Royal to Petersburg [who had not the least success there, loutish fellow, and was openly snubbed by a Czarina gone into new courses]. His Majesty already doubted that the Court of Russia was about to escape him:—and I was dying of fear lest, in the middle of all his kindnesses, he should remember that I was an Austrian. 'What,' said I to myself, 'not a single epigram on us, or on our Master? What a change!'