that), he is from of old on the best footing, and contrives to be
his Mentor in many things besides War. Till his quarrel with
Grumkow, of which we shall hear, he took the lead in political
advising, too; and had schemes, or was thought to have, of which
Queen Sophie was in much terror.

A tall, strong-boned, hairy man; with cloudy brows, vigilant swift
eyes; has "a bluish tint of skin," says Wilhelmina, "as if the
gunpowder still stuck to him." He wears long mustaches; triangular
hat, plume and other equipments, are of thrifty practical size.
Can be polite enough in speech; but hides much of his meaning,
which indeed is mostly inarticulate, and not always joyful to
the by-stander. He plays rough pranks, too, on occasion; and has
a big horse-laugh in him, where there is a fop to be roasted,
or the like. We will leave him for the present, in hope of
other meetings.

Remarkable men, many of those old Prussian soldiers: of whom one
wishes, to no purpose, that there had more knowledge been
attainable. But the Books are silent; no painter, no genial
seeing-man to paint with his pen, was there. Grim hirsute
Hyperborean figures, they pass mostly mute before us: burly,
surly; in mustaches, in dim uncertain garniture, of which the
buff-belts and the steel, are alone conspicuous. Growling in
guttural Teutsoh what little articulate meaning they had:
spending, of the inarticulate, a proportion in games, of chance,
probably too in drinking beer; yet having an immense overplus
which they do not so spend, but endeavor to utter in such working
as there may be. So have the Hyperboreans lived from of old.
From the times of Tacitus and Pytheas, not to speak of Odin and