A traveller grown familiar with the howling solitudes; aware that the Storm-winds do not pity, that Darkness is the dead Earth's Shadow:--a most lone soul of a man; but continually toiling forward, as if the brightest goal and haven were near and in view.
Once more the world was certain of Friedrich's ruin;--Friedrich himself we have seen certain of it, for some few desperate hours:--but the world and he, as had been repeatedly the world's case, were both disappointed.
Intrinsically there could be little doubt but Friedrich's enemies might now have ruined him, had they been diligent about it.

Now again, and now more than ever, they have the winning-post in sight.

At small distance is the goal and purpose of all these four years' battlings and marchings, and ten years' subterranean plottings and intriguings.

He himself says deliberately, "They had only to give him the finishing stroke (COUP-DE-GRACE)." [_OEuvres de Frederic,_ v.

20.] But they never gave him that stroke; could not do it, though heartily desirous.