December 5th, 1732, as we compute;--a kind of epoch in his Majesty's life.

Prussian Majesty stares wide-eyed; the breath as if struck out of him; repeats, "Julich and Berg absolutely secured, say you?
But--hm, na!"-- and has not yet taken in the unspeakable dimensions of the occurrence.

"What?
Imperial Majesty will make me break my word before all the world?
Imperial Majesty has been whirling me about, face now to the east, face straightway round to the west: Imperial Majesty does not feel that I am a man and king at all; takes me for a mere machine, to be seesawed and whirled hither and thither, like a rotatory Clothes-horse, to dry his Imperial Majesty's linen upon.

TAUSEND HIMMEL--!" The full dimensions of all this did not rise clear upon the intellect of Prussian Majesty,--a slow intellect, but a true and deep, with terrible earthquakes and poetic fires lying under it,--not at once, or for months, perhaps years to come.

But they had begun to dawn upon him painfully here; they rose gradually into perfect clearness: all things seen at last as what they were;--with huge submarine earthquake for consequence, and total change of mind towards Imperial Majesty and the drying of his Pragmatic linen, in Friedrich Wilhelm.