But he could not always; though he tried.

And sarcastic quizzing (especially if it be truth too), on certain female topics, what Improper Female, Czarina of All the Russias, could stand it?
The history is but a distressing one, a disgusting one, in human affairs.

Elizabeth was orthodox, too, and Friedrich not, 'the horrid man!' The fact is,--fact dismally indubitable, though it is huddled into discreet dimness, and all details of it (as to what Friedrich's witticisms were, and the like) are refused us in the Prussian Books,--indignation, owing to such dismal cause, became fixed hate on the Czarina's part, and there followed terrible results at last: A Czarina risen to the cannibal pitch upon a man, in his extreme need;--'INFAME CATIN DU NORD,' thinks the man! Friedrich's wit cost him dear; him, and half a million others still dearer, twenty years hence."-- Till which time we will gladly leave the Czarina and it.
Major von Winterfeld had been in Russia before this; and had wooed his fair Malzahn there.

He is the same Winterfeld whom we once saw dining by the wayside with the late Friedrich Wilhelm, on that last Review-Journey his Majesty made.

A Captain in the Potsdam Giants at that time; always in great favor with the late King; and in still greater with the present,--who finds in him, we can dimly discover, and pretty much in him alone, a soul somewhat like his own; the one real "peer" he had about him.