Sieur Prasse, same Funck's Secretary of Legation, at Petersburg, writes to Count Bruhl, 12th April, 1756:-- "I am bidden signify to your Excellency that it is greatly wished, in order to favor certain views, you would have the goodness to cause arrive in Petersburg, by different channels, the following intelligence: 'That the King of Prussia, on pretext of Commerce, is sending officers and engineers into the Ukraine, to reconnoitre the Country and excite a rebellion there.' And this advice, be pleased to observe, is not to come direct from the Saxon Court, nor by the Envoy Gross, but by some third party,--to the end there may be no concert noticed;--as they [L'ON, the "service-pipes," and managing Excellencies, Russian and Austrian] have given the same commission to other Ministers, so that the news shall come from more places than one.
"They [the said managing Excellencies] have also required me to write to the Baron de Sack," our Saxon Minister in Sweden, "upon it, which I will not fail to do; and they assured me that our Court's advantage was not less concerned in it than that of their own; adding these words [comfortable to one's soul], 'The King of Prussia [in 1745] gave Saxony a blow which it will feel for fifty years; but we will give him one which he will feel for a hundred.'" To which beautiful suggestion Excellency Bruhl answers, 2d June, 1756: "As to the Secret Commission of conveying to Petersburg, by concealed channels, Intelligence of Prussian machinations in the Ukraine, we are still busy finding out a right channel; and they [L'ON, the managing Excellencies] shall very soon, one way or the other, see the effect of my personal inclination to second what is so good an intention, though a little artful (UN PEU ARTIFICIEUSE,"-- UN PEU, nothing to speak of)! [MEMOIRE RAISONNE (in _ Gesammelte Nachrichten _), i.

424-425; and ib.
472.] Fancy a poor fat Czarina, of many appetites, of little judgment, continually beaten upon in this manner by these Saxon-Austrian artists and their Russian service-pipes.

Bombarded with cunningly devised fabrications, every wind freighted for her with phantasmal rumors, no ray of direct daylight visiting the poor Sovereign Woman; who is lazy, not malignant if she could avoid it: mainly a mass of esurient oil, with alkali on the back of alkali poured in, at this rate, for ten years past; till, by pouring and by stirring, they get her to the state of SOAP and froth! Is it so wonderful that she does, by degrees, rise into eminent suspicion, anger, fear, violence and vehemence against her bad neighbor?
One at last begins to conceive those insane whirls, continual mad suspicions, mad procedures, which have given Friedrich such vexation, surprise and provocation in the years past.
Friedrich is always specially eager to avoid ill-will from Russia; but it has come, in spite of all he could do and try.

And these procedures of the Czarish Majesty have been so capricious, unintelligible, perverse, and his feeling is often enough irritation, temporary indignation,--which we know makes Verses withal! I can nowhere learn from those Prussian imbroglios of Books, what the Friedrich Sayings or Satirical Verses properly were: Retzow speaks of a PRODUKT, one at least, known in interior Circles.

[Retzow, i.