After which fine feat, salvatory to the Cause of Liberty, and destructive to French influence, what is to prevent his election to the Kaisership?
Friedrich complains aloud: 'Conti has given it up; you drafted 15,000 from him (for imaginary uses in the Netherlands),--you have given it up, then! Was that our bargain ?' 'We have given it up,' answers D'Argenson the War-minister, writing to Valori; 'but,'-- And supplies, instead of performance according to the laws of fact, eloquent logic; very superfluous to Friedrich and the said laws!--Valori, and the French Minister at Dresden, had again been trying to stir up the Polish Majesty to stand for Kaiser; but of course that enterprise, eager as the Polish Majesty might be for such a dignity, had now to collapse, and become totally hopeless.

A new offer of Friedrich's to co-operate had been refused by Bruhl, with a brevity, a decisiveness--'Thinks me finished (AUX ABOIS),' says Friedrich; 'and not worth giving terms to, on surrendering!' The foolish little creature; insolent in the wrong quarter!" [ _OEuvres de Frederic,_ iii.

128.] 'The German Burden, then,--which surely was mutual, at lowest, and lately was French altogether,--the French have thrown it off; the French have dropped their end of the BEARING-POLES (so to speak), and left Friedrich by himself, to stand or stagger, under the beweltered broken harness-gear and intolerable weight! That is one's payment for cutting the rope from their neck last year!--Long since, while the present Campaign was being prepared for, under such financial pressures, Friedrich had bethought him, "The French might, at least give me money, if they can nothing else ?"--and he had one day penned a Letter with that object; but had thrown it into his desk again, "No; not till the very last extremity, that!" Friedrich did at last despatch the unpleasant missive: "Service done you in Elsass, let us say little of it; but the repayment has been zero hitherto: your Bavarian expenses (poor Kaiser gone, and Peace of Fussen come!) are now ended:--A round sum, say of 600,000 pounds, is becoming indispensable here, if we are to keep on our feet at all!" Herr Ranke, who has seen the Most Christian King's response (though in a capricious way), finds "three or four successive redactions" of the difficult passage; all painfully meaning, "Impossible, alas!"-- painfully adding, "We will try, however!" And, after due cunctations, Friedrich waiting silent the while,--Louis, Most Christian King, who had failed in so many things towards Friedrich, does empower Valori To offer him a subsidy of 600,000 livres a month, till we see farther.

Twenty thousand pounds a month; he hopes this will suffice, being himself run terribly low.

Friedrich's feeling is to be guessed: "Such a dole might answer to a Landgraf of Hessen-Darmstadt; but to me is not in the least suitable;"-- and flatly refuses it; FIEREMENT, says Valori.