Excitable Lefebvre was like to lose his wits, almost to leap out of his skin.

"One evening at supper, he managed to smuggle away a knife; and, in the course of the night, gave himself sixteen stabs with it; which at length sufficed.

The King said, 'He has used himself worse than I should have done;' and was very sorry." Of Lefebvre's scientific structures, globes of compression and the rest, I know not whether anything is left; the above Two Notes, thrown off to Formey, were accidentally a hit, and, in the great blank, may last a long while.
The King found this young Kaiser a very pretty man; and could have liked him considerably, had their mutual positions permitted.

"He had a frankness of manner which seemed natural to him," says the King; "in his amiable character, gayety and great vivacity were prominent features." By accidental chinks, however, one saw "an ambition beyond measure" burning in the interior of this young man, [_OEuvres de Frederic,_ (in _Memoires de 1763 jusqu'a_ 1775, a Chapter which yields the briefest, and the one completely intelligible account we yet have of those affairs), vi.

25.]--let an old King be wary.