[History of Friedrich II. of Prussia<br> Vol. XII. (of XXI.) by Thomas Carlyle]@TWC D-Link book
History of Friedrich II. of Prussia
Vol. XII. (of XXI.)

CHAPTER VII
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-- AT VERSAILLES, THE MOST CHRISTIAN MAJESTY CHANGES HIS.
SHIRT, AND BELLEISLE IS SEEN WITH PAPERS.
While Friedrich was so busy in Silesia, the world was not asleep around him; the world never is, though it often seems to be, round a man and what action he does in it.

That Sunday morning, First Day of the Year 1741, in those same hours while Friedrich, with energy, with caution, was edging himself into Breslau, there went on in the Court of Versailles an interior Phenomenon; of which, having by chance got access to it face to face, we propose to make the reader participant before going farther.
Readers are languidly aware that phenomena do go on round their Friedrich; that their busy Friedrich, with his few Voltaires and renowned persons, are not the only population of their Century, by any means.

Everybody is aware of that fact; yet, in practice, almost everybody is as good as not aware; and the World all round one's Hero is a darkness, a dormant vacancy.

How strange when, as here, some Waste-paper spill (so to speak) turns up, which you can KINDLE; and, by the brief flame of it, bid a reader look with his own eyes!--From Herr Doctor Busching, who did the GEOGRAPHY and about a Hundred other Books,--a man of great worth, almost of genius, could he have elaborated his Hundred Books into Ten (or distilled, into flasks of aqua-vitae, what otherwise lies tumbling as tanks of mash and wort, now run very sour and mal-odorous);--it is from Herr Busching that we gain the following rough Piece, illuminative if one can kindle it:-- The Titular-Herr Baron Anton von Geusau, a gentleman of good parts, scholastic by profession, and of Protestant creed, was accompanying as Travelling Tutor, in those years, a young Graf von Reuss.


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