remarkable that his Majesty has not gone to bed sober for this
month past." [Dickens, 9th and 19th December, 1730.]

What Seckendorf and Grumkow thought of all these phenomena?
They have done their job too well. They are all for mercy;
lean with their whole weight that way,--in black qualms, one of
them withal, thinking tremulously to himself, "What if his now
Majesty were to die upon us, in the interim!"



Chapter II.

CROWN-PRINCE TO REPENT AND NOT PERISH.

In regard to Friedrich, the Court-Martial needs no amendment from
the King; the sentence on Friedrich, a Lieutenant-Colonel guilty
of desertion, is, from President and all members except two, Death
as by law. The two who dissented, invoking royal clemency and
pardon, were Major-Generals by rank,--Schwerin, as some write, one
of them, or if not Schwerin, then Linger; and for certain,
Donhof,--two worthy gentlemen not known to any of my readers, nor
to me, except as names, The rest are all coldly of opinion that
the military code says Death. Other codes and considerations may
say this and that, which it is not in their province to touch
upon; this is what the military code says: and they leave
it there.

The Junius Brutus of a Royal Majesty had answered in his own heart
grimly, Well then! But his Councillors, Old Dessauer, Grumkow,