But the King is so jealous, that he will see a spy in every person who comes to his miserable capital in the great sandy desert here.

Ah, my boy, I must show you Paris and Vienna!' I said there was nothing I longed for more than to see any city but Berlin, and should be delighted to be free of the odious military service.

Indeed, I thought, from his splendour of appearance, the knickknacks about the room, the gilded carriage in the remise, that my uncle was a man of vast property; and that he would purchase a dozen, nay, a whole regiment of substitutes, in order to restore me to freedom.
But I was mistaken in my calculations regarding him, as his history of himself speedily showed me.

'I have been beaten about the world,' said he, 'ever since the year 1742, when my brother your father (and Heaven forgive him) cut my family estate from under my heels, by turning heretic, in order to marry that scold of a mother of yours.

Well, let bygones be bygones.