426.] This is probably Prince Henri's cleverest feat,--though he did a great many of clever; and his Brother used to say, glancing towards him, "There is but one of us that never committed a mistake." A highly ingenious dexterous little man in affairs of War, sharp as needles, vehement but cautious; though of abstruse temper, thin-skinned, capricious, and giving his Brother a great deal of trouble with his jealousies and shrewish whims.

By this last consummate little operation he has astonished Daun as much as anybody ever did; shorn his elaborate tissue of cunctations into ruin and collapse at one stroke; and in effect, as turns out, wrecked his campaign for this Year.
Daun finds there is now no hope of Saxony, unless he himself at once proceed thither.

At once thither;--and leave Glogau and the Russians to their luck,--which in such case, what is it like to be?
Probably, to Daun's own view, ominous enough; but he has no alternative.

To this pass has the March of Fifty Hours brought us.

There is such a thing as being too cunctatory, is not there, your Excellency?
Every mortal, and more especially every Feldmarschall, ought to strike the iron while it is hot.