That of Conquering Hero, in the Macedonia's-madman style, was at all times far from him, if the reader knew it,--perhaps never farther from any King who had such allurements to it, such opportunities for it.

This his First Expedition to Silesia--a rushing out to seize your own stolen horse, while the occasion answered--was a voluntary one; produced, we may say, by Friedrich's own thought and the Invisible Powers.

But the rest were all purely compulsory,--to defend the horse he had seized.

Clear necessities, and Powers very Visible, were the origin of all his other Expeditions and Warlike Struggles, which lasted to the end of his life.
That recent "Moravian Foray;" the joint-stock principle in War matters; and the terrible pass a man might reduce himself to, at that enormous gaming-table of the gods, if he lingered there: think what considerations these had been for him! So that "his look became FAROUCHE," in the sight of Valori; and the spectre of Ruin kept him company, and such hell-dogs were in chase of him;--till Czaslau, when the dice fell kind again! All this had been didactic on a young docile man.

He was but thirty gone.