noises and scenic etiquettes were not inexorable. "SANS-SOUCI;"
which we may translate "No-Bother." A busy place this too, but of
the quiet kind; and more a home to him than any of the Three fine
Palaces (ultimately Four), which lay always waiting for him in the
neighborhood. Berlin and Charlottenburg are about twenty miles off;
Potsdam, which, like the other two, is rather consummate among
Palaces, lies leftwise in front of him within a short mile. And at
length, to RIGHT hand, in a similar distance and direction, came
the "NEUE SCHLOSS" (New Palace of Potsdam), called also the "PALACE
of Sans-Souci," in distinction from the Dwelling-House, or as it
were Garden-House, which made that name so famous.

Certainly it is a significant feature of Friedrich; and discloses
the inborn proclivity he had to retirement, to study and
reflection, as the chosen element of human life. Why he fell upon
so ambitious a title for his Royal Cottage? "No-Bother" was not
practically a thing he, of all men, could consider possible in this
world: at the utmost perhaps, by good care, "LESS-Bother"!
The name, it appears, came by accident. He had prepared his Tomb,
and various Tombs, in the skirts of this new Cottage: looking at
these, as the building of them went on, he was heard to say, one
day (Spring 1746), D'Argens strolling beside him: "OUI, ALORS JE
SERAI SANS SOUCI (Once THERE, one will be out of bother)!" A saying
which was rumored of, and repeated in society, being by such a man.
Out of which rumor in society, and the evident aim of the Cottage
Royal, there was gradually born, as Venus from the froth of the
sea, this name, "Sans-Souci;"--which Friedrich adopted; and, before
the Year was out, had put upon his lintel in gold letters. So that,
by "Mayday, 1747," the name was in all men's memories; and has
continued ever since. [Preuss, i. 268, &c.; Nicolai, iii. 1200.]