Those who have hard work and scant pay are wont to observe that they might just as well travailler pour le roi de Prusse. The kingdom of Prussia not having been a century and a half in existence, this expression cannot have an earlier origin. M. Rozan asks, therefore, which is it of the five Fredericks who thus puts in doubt the royal generosity? Some persons say that it is Frederick William I., constantly anxious to show himself economical of the property of his subjects, unlike his father, who was, according to the expression of Frederick the Great, “great in little things and little in great.” Either from what the one did not spend at all, or from what the other spent amiss, a conclusion might be drawn in the sense of the proverb. We incline, however, rather to charge upon the Great Frederick himself all the responsibility of the French reproach.
Frederick II. was fond of employing French workmen, but not quite so fond of paying them; and as no people know better than the French that noblesse oblige, it is no matter of surprise that he should have furnished them with a proverb. We also find an example of his sparing management in the conflict which arose between him and Voltaire (who was very economical also) about lumps of sugar and candle-ends. In the agreement he had made with the poet Frederick had promised him, besides the key of chamberlain and the Cross of Merit, the ordinary appointments of a minister of state—i.e., an apartment at the château, board, firing, two candles a day, and so many pounds of tea, sugar, coffee, and chocolate every month. These articles, though duly provided, were of such bad quality that Voltaire complained to the king. Frederick professed to be infinitely pained, and promised to give fresh orders. Were the orders given? In any case the provisions were as bad as ever, and Voltaire again remonstrated. The king got out of the affair with equal economy and cunning. “It is frightful,” he exclaimed, “to think how badly I am obeyed! I cannot hang those rascals for a lump of sugar or an ounce of tea; they know it, and laugh at my orders. But what most pains me is to see M. de Voltaire disturbed in his sublime ideas by small miseries like these. Ah! let us not waste upon mere trifles the moments that we can devote to friendship and the muses. Come, my dear friend, you can do without these little provisions. They occasion you cares unworthy of you; we will speak of them no more. I will command that for the future they shall be stopped.”
On another occasion Frederick was having a new front put to a Lutheran place of worship in Berlin. The ministers complained to the king that they had not light enough to carry on the service. The building, however, being too far advanced for his majesty to wish to incur the cost of alteration, he sent back their address, after writing upon it: “Blessed are they who see not, and yet believe.”
As a last proof of the just implication of the proverb, an English traveller, who does full justice to the eminent qualities of the monarch, says: “Never was there a fat soldier in any country; but the King of Prussia has not even a fat sergeant. A profound knowledge of financial economy is a point on which this sovereign excels. It is also a reason why his troops should never be otherwise than lean.”
This observer might have added that Frederick made it a rule never to allow his soldiers any pay on the 31st day of the month. There were thus seven days in the year on which the whole Prussian army travaillait pour le roi de Prusse.
Manger de la vache enragée is to suffer great privations, to procure with difficulty the merest necessaries of life, and so to be reduced, as it were, to “eat the flesh of a mad cow.” The expression has also come to mean the trials of every kind which, in the course of life, ought to strengthen the body to endure hardness and the mind to a habit of fortitude.
On entering upon a house or appartement in Paris it is customary to make a present of a few francs to the concierge, which present is called le dernier adieu. The newcomer, if a foreigner, wonders why the first dealings he has with the concierge of his new abode should be so singularly misnamed as “the last farewell.” The words are a corruption of the Denier à Dieu—God’s penny—the piece of money given to the person with whom a bargain was concluded, with the intention of taking God to witness that the engagement had been made, and of offering him a pledge that it should be faithfully kept. The sums thus given were bestowed by the receiver in alms to the poor, and were not appropriated, like the arrhes, a part payment of what was due to the person with whom an agreement had been made.
The lugubrious associations connected with the name of the melancholy building at the back of Notre Dame de Paris encourage the idea that the word morgue must relate to corpses, or in any case to death. M. Rozan disabuses us of the mistake.
There was formerly at the entrance of prisons a room where new arrivals were detained for a few days after committal, in order that the keepers might learn to know their faces and appearance sufficiently well to preclude any chance of their escape. Later on the corpses found in the Seine or elsewhere were exposed in this same room, the public being admitted to see them through a small aperture made in the door.
Until 1804 the corpses were exposed in the lower jail dependent on the prison of the Grand Châtelet, when they were transferred to the quay of the Marché Neuf in a small building which received the name of morgue, an old French word for face or visage, and used also to express a fixed or scrutinizing look. It is doubtless in the latter sense that we find the true meaning of the term.