Such things, it is remarked, weigh heavier on his now infirm Majesty than they were wont.

He is more subject to fits of hypochondria, to talk of abdicating.

"All gone wrong!" he would say, if any little flaw rose, about recruiting or the like.

"One might go and live at Venice, were one rid of it!" [Forster (place LOST).] And his deep-stung clangorous growl against the Kaiser's treatment of him bursts out, from time to time; though he oftenest pities the Kaiser, too; seeing him at such a pass with his Turk War and otherwise.
It was in this Pfalz business that Herr Luiscius, the Prussian Minister in Holland, got into trouble; of whom there is a light dash of outline-portraiture by Voltaire, which has made him memorable to readers.

This "fat King of Prussia," says Voltaire, was a dreadfully avaricious fellow, unbeautiful to a high degree in his proceedings with mankind:-- "He had a Minister at the Hague called Luiscius; who certainly of all Ministers of Crowned Heads was the worst paid.