But we will leave him and his Peace-Proposals, and the other rumors and futilities of this Year.

They are part of the sound and smoke which fill all Years; and which vanish into next to nothing, oftenest into pure nothing, when the Years have waited a little.
Friedrich's finances, copper and other, were got completed; his Armies too were once more put on a passable footing;--and this Year will have its realities withal.
Gotzkowsky, in regard to those Leipzig Finance difficulties, yields me a date, which is supplementary to some of the Archenholtz details.

I find it was "January 20th, 1761,"-- precisely while the Saldern Interview, and subsequent wreck of Hubertsburg, went on,--that "Gotzkowsky arrived in Leipzig," [Rodenbeck, ii.

77.] and got those unfortunate Seventeen out of ward, and the contributions settled.
And withal, at Paris, in the same hours, there went on a thing worth noting.

That January day, while Icilius was busy on the Schloss of Hubertsburg, poor old Marechal de Belleisle,--mark him, reader!--"in the Rue de Lille at Paris," lay sunk in putrid fever; and on the fourth day after, "January 26th, 1761," the last of the grand old Frenchmen died.
"He had been reported dead three days before," says Barbier: "the public wished it so; they laid the blame on him of this apparent" (let a cautious man write it, "apparent) derangement in our affairs,"-- instead of thanking him for all he had done and suffered (loss of so much, including reputation and an only Son) to repair and stay the same.