But it is to no purpose; nor can Gotter, with all his industry, report other than worse and worse.

Nay, he reports before long, not refusal only, but refusal with mockery: "How strange that his Prussian Majesty, whose official post in Germany, as Kur-Brandenburg and Kaiser's Chamberlain, has been to present ewer and towel to the House of Austria, should now set up for prescribing rules to it!" A piece of wit, which could not but provoke Friedrich; and warn him that negotiation on this matter might as well terminate.

Such had been his own thought, from the first; but in compliance with Schwerin and Podewils he was willing to try.
Better for Maria Theresa, and for all the world how much better, could she have accepted this Fifth Proposition! But how could she,--the high Imperial Lady, keystone of Europe, though by accident with only a few pounds of ready money at present?
Twenty years of bitter fighting, and agony to herself and all the world, were necessary first; a new Fact of Nature having turned up, a new European Kingdom with real King to it; NOT recognizable as such, by the young Queen of Hungary or by any other person, till it do its proofs.
WHAT BERLIN IS SAYING; WHAT FRIEDRICH IS THINKING.
What Friedrich's own humor is, what Friedrich's own inner man is saying to him, while all the world so babbles about his Silesian Adventure?
Of this too there are, though in diluted state, some glimmerings to be had,--chiefly in the Correspondence with Jordan.
Ingenious Jordan, Inspector of the Poor at Berlin,--his thousand old women at their wheels humming pleasantly in the background of our imaginations, though he says nothing of that,--writes twice a week to his Majesty: pleasant gossipy Letters, with an easy respectfulness not going into sycophancy anywhere; which keep the campaigning King well abreast of the Berlin news and rumors: something like the essence of an Old Newspaper; not without worth in our present Enterprise.

One specimen, if we had room! JORDAN TO THE KING (successively from Berlin,--somewhat abridged.) No.1.

"BERLIN, 14th DECEMBER, 1740 [day after his Majesty left].
Everybody here is on tiptoe for the Event; of which both origin and end are a riddle to the most.