[_Helden-Geschichte, _iv.

340 ("26th March, 1757").] In short, the sleeping world-whirlwinds are awakened against this man.

General Dance of the Furies; there go they, in the dusky element, those Eumenides, "giant-limbed, serpent-haired, slow-pacing, circling, torch in hand" (according to Schiller),-- scattering terror and madness.

At least, in the Diplomatic Circles of mankind;--if haply the Populations will follow suit!-- Friedrich, abundantly contemptuous of Reich's-thunder in the rusted kind, and well able to distinguish sound from substance in the Reich or elsewhere, recognizes in all this sufficiently portentous prophecies of fact withal; and understands, none better, what a perilous position he has got into.

But he cannot mend it;--can only, as usual, do his own utmost in it.