So far as appears, the news came on Friedrich by surprise:--"bad cough," we hear of, and of his anxieties about it, in the Spring time; then again of "improvement, recovery, in the fine weather;"-- no thought, just now, of such an event: and he took it with a depth of affliction, which my less informed readers are far from expecting of him.
July 2d, the news came: King withdrew into privacy; to weep and bewail under this new pungency of grief, superadded to so many others.

Mitchell says: "For two days he had no levee; only the Princes dined with him [Princes Henri and Ferdinand; Prince of Prussia is gone to Jung-Bunzlau, would get the sad message there, among his other troubles]: yesterday, July 3d, King sent for me in the afternoon,--the first time he has seen anybody since the news came:--I had the honor to remain with him some hours in his closet.

I must own to your Lordship I was most sensibly afflicted to see him indulging his grief, and giving way to the warmest filial affections; recalling to mind the many obligations he had to her late Majesty; all she had suffered, and how nobly she bore it; the good she did to everybody; the one comfort he now had, to think of having tried to make her last years more agreeable." [_Papers and Memoirs,_ i.
253; Despatch to Holderness, 4th July (slightly abridged);--see ib.
i.

357-359 (Private Journal).

Westphalen, ii.14.See _OEuvres de Frederic,_ iv.