Friedrich I., it is admitted on all hands, was "an expensive Herr;" much given to magnificent ceremonies, etiquettes and solemnities; making no great way any-whither, and that always with noise enough, and with a dust vortex of courtier intrigues and cabals encircling him,--from which it is better to stand quite to windward.

Moreover, he was slightly crooked; most sensitive, thin of skin and liable to sudden flaws of temper, though at heart very kind and good.

Sophie Charlotte is she who wrote once, "Leibnitz talked to me of the infinitely little (_ de l'infiniment petit): mon Dieu, _ as if I did not know enough of that!" Besides, it is whispered she was once near marrying to Louis XIV.'s Dauphin; her Mother Sophie, and her Cousin the Dowager Duchess of Orleans, cunning women both, had brought her to Paris in her girlhood, with that secret object; and had very nearly managed it.

Queen of France that might have been; and now it is but Brandenburg, and the dice have fallen somewhat wrong for us! She had Friedrich Wilhelm, the rough boy; and perhaps nothing more of very precious property.

Her first child, likewise a boy, had soon died, and there came no third: tedious ceremonials, and the infinitely little, were mainly her lot in this world.
All which, however, she had the art to take up not in the tragic way, but in the mildly comic,--often not to take up at all, but leave lying there;--and thus to manage in a handsome and softly victorious manner.
With delicate female tact, with fine female stoicism too; keeping all things within limits.