[History of Friedrich II. of Prussia Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) by Thomas Carlyle]@TWC D-Link bookHistory of Friedrich II. of Prussia Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) CHAPTER IX 29/31
"He has lived," counts Rodenbeck, "74 years, 6 months and 24 days." His death seems very stern and lonely;--a man of such affectionate feelings, too; "a man with more sensibility than other men!" But so had his whole life been, stern and lonely; such the severe law laid on him. Nor was it inappropriate that he found his death in that poor Silesian Review; punctually doing, as usual, the work that had come in hand.
Nor that he died now, rather than a few years later.
In these final days of his, we have transiently noticed Arch-Cardinal de Rohan, Arch-Quack Cagliostro, and a most select Company of Persons and of Actions, like an Elixir of the Nether World, miraculously emerging into daylight; and all Paris, and by degrees all Europe, getting loud with the DIAMOND-NECKLACE History.
And to eyes of deeper speculation,--World-Poet Goethe's, for instance,--it is becoming evident that Chaos is again big.
As has not she proved to be, and is still proving, in the most teeming way! Better for a Royal Hero, fallen old and feeble, to be hidden from such things. "Yesterday, Wednesday, August 16th," says a Note which now strikes us as curious, "Mirabeau, smelling eagerly for news, had ridden out towards Potsdam; met the Page riding furiously for Selle ('one horse already broken down,' say the Peasants about); and with beak, powerful beyond any other vulture's, Mirabeau perceived that here the end now was.
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