Seldom did any Prince or man stand in such a predicament.

Vain to say, and again say: "In the name of God, I ask you, stop the execution till I write to the King!" Impossible that; as easily stop the course of the stars.

And so here Katte comes; cheerful loyalty still beaming on his face, death now nigh.
"PARDONNEZ-MOI, MON CHER KATTE!" cried Priedrich in a tone: Pardon me, dear Katte; oh, that this should be what I have done for you!--"Death is sweet for a Prince I love so well," said Katte, "LA MORT EST DOUCE POUR UN SI AIMABLE PRINCE;" [Wilhelmina, i.

307; Preuss, i.

45.] and fared on,--round some angle of the Fortress, it appears; not in sight of Friedrich; who sank into a faint, and had seen his last glimpse of Katte in this world.
The body lay all day upon the scaffold, by royal order; and was buried at night obscurely in the common churchyard; friends, in silence, took mark of the place against better times,--and Katte's dust now lies elsewhere, among that of his own kindred.
"Never was such a transaction before or since, in Modern History," cries the angry reader: "cruel, like the grinding of human hearts under millstones, like--" Or indeed like the doings of the gods, which are cruel, though not that alone?
This is what, after much sorting and sifting, I could get to know about the definite facts of it.