was this visit of his, along with Papa, to Dresden in the Carnival
of 1728. Visit contrived by Seckendorf and Company, as we have
seen, to divert the King's melancholy, and without view to the
Crown-Prince at all. The Crown-Prince, now sixteen, and not in the
best favor with his Father, had not been intended to accompany;
was to stay at Potsdam and diligently drill: nevertheless an
estafette came for him from the gallant Polish Majesty;--
Wilhelmina had spoken a word to good Suhm, who wrote to his King,
and the hospitable message came. Friedrich made no loitering,--to
Dresden is but a hundred miles, one good day;--he arrived there on
the morrow after his Father; King "on the 14th January, 1728,"
dates Fassmann; "Crown-Prince on the 15th," which I find was
Thursday. The Crown-Prince lodged with Fieldmarshal Flemming;
Friedrich Wilhelm, having come in no state, refused King August's
pressings, and took up his quarters with "the General Fieldmarshal
Wackerbarth, Commandant in Dresden,"--pleasant old military
gentleman, who had besieged Stralsund along with him in times
gone. Except Grumkow, Derschau and one or two of less importance,
with the due minimum of Valetry, he had brought no retinue;
the Crown-Prince had Finkenstein and Kalkstein with him, Tutor
and Sub-Tutor, officially there. And he lodges with old Count
Flemming and his clever fashionable Madam,--the diligent but
unsuccessful Flemming, a courtier of the highest civility, though
iracund, and "with a passion for making Treaties," whom we know
since Charles XII.'s time.

Amongst the round of splendors now set on foot, Friedrich Wilhelm
had, by accident of Nature, the spectacle of a house on fire,--
rather a symbolic one in those parts,--afforded him, almost to
start with. Deep in the first Saturday night, or rather about two