"'The common news now is [rumor in Diplomatic circles, rather below the truth this time], your Majesty, after the 12th of August, will join the French.

[King looks fixedly at him in silence.] Sire, I venture to hope not! Austria prefers your friendship; but if your Majesty disdain Austria's advances, what is it to do?
Austria must throw itself entirely into the hands of France,--and endeavor to outbid your Majesty.' [King quite silent.] "King was quite silent upon this head," says Robinson, reporting: silence, guesses Robinson, founded most probably upon his "consciousness of guilt"-- what I, florid Yorkshire Gentleman, call GUILT, as being against the Cause of Liberty and us!"From time to time he threw out remarks on the advantageousness of his situation:--" KING....

"'At the head of such an Army, which the Enemy has already made experience of; and which is ready for the Enemy again, if he have appetite! With the Country which alone I am concerned with, conquered and secured behind me; a Country that alone lies convenient to me; which is all I want, which I now have; which I will and must keep! Shall I be bought out of this country?
Never! I will sooner perish in it, with all my troops.

With what face shall I meet my Ancestors, if I abandon my right, which they have transmitted to me?
My first enterprise; and to be given up lightly ?'"-- With more of the like sort; which Friedrich, in writing of it long after, seems rather ashamed of; and would fain consider to have been mock fustian, provoked by the real fustian of Sir Thomas Robinson, "who negotiated in a wordy high-droning way, as if he were speaking in Parliament," says Friedrich (a Friedrich not taken with that style of eloquence, and hoping he rather quizzed it than was serious with it, [_OEuvres de Frederic,_ ii.

84.]--though Robinson and Hyndford found in him no want of vehement seriousness, but rather the reverse!)--He concludes: "Have I need of Peace?
Let those who need it give me what I want; or let them fight me again, and be beaten again.
Have not they given whole Kingdoms to Spain?
[Naples, at one swoop, to the Termagant; as broken glass, in that Polish-Election freak!] And to me they cannot spare a few trifling Principalities?
If the Queen does not now grant me all I require, I shall in four weeks demand Four Principalities more! [Nay, I now do it, being in sibylline tune.] I now demand the whole of Lower Silesia, Breslau included;--and with that Answer you can return to Vienna.' ROBINSON.