Hardly had he been five weeks at Breslau, in those gloomy circumstances, when,--about the middle of January, 1762 (day not given, though it is forever notable),--there arrive rumors, arrive news,--news from Petersburg; such as this King never had before! "Among the thousand ill strokes of Fortune, does there at length come one pre-eminently good?
The unspeakable Sovereign Woman, is she verily dead, then, and become peaceable to me forevermore ?" We promised Friedrich a wonderful star-of-day; and this is it,--though it is long before he dare quite regard it as such.

Peter, the Successor, he knows to be secretly his friend and admirer; if only, in the new Czarish capacity and its chaotic environments and conditions, Peter dare and can assert these feelings?
What a hope to Friedrich, from this time onward! Russia may be counted as the bigger half of all he had to strive with; the bigger, or at least the far uglier, more ruinous and incendiary;--and if this were at once taken away, think what a daybreak when the night was at the blackest! Pious people say, The darkest hour is often nearest the dawn.

And a dawn this proved to be for Friedrich.

And the fact grew always the longer the brighter;--and before Campaign time, had ripened into real daylight and sunrise.

The dates should have been precise; but are not to be had so: here is the nearest we could come.