and his Apparatus, the matter doubtless seemed big with
difficulties; but to us, who see the interior, the difficulties
are plainly hopeless. Unless the Kaiser's mind change, unless many
fixed things change, the Double-Marriage is impossible.

One thing only is a sorrow; and this proved an immeasurable one:
That they did not, that Queen Sophie did not, in such case,
frankly give it up: Double-Marriage is not a law of Nature; it is
only a project at Hanover that has gone off again. There will be a
life for our Crown-Prince, and Princess, without a marriage with
England!-It is greatly wise to recognize the impossible, the
unreasonably difficult, when it presents itself: but who of men is
there, much more who of women that can always do it?

Queen Sophie Dorothee will have this Double-Marriage, and it shall
be possible. Pour Lady, she was very obstinate; and her Husband
was very arbitrary. A rough bear of a Husband, yet by no means an
unloving one; a Husband who might have been managed. She evidently
made a great mistake in deciding not to obey this man; as she had
once vowed. By perfect prompt obedience she might have had a very
tolerable life with the rugged Orson fallen to her lot; who was a
very honest-hearted creature. She might have done a pretty stroke
of female work, withal, in taming her Orson; might have led him by
the muzzle far enough in a private way,--by obedience.

But by disobedience, by rebellion open or secret? Friedrich
Wilhelm was a Husband; Friedrich Wilhelm was a King; and the most
imperative man then breathing. Disobedience to Friedrich Wilhelm
was a thing which, in the Prussian State, still more in the Berlin
Schloss and vital heart of said State, the laws of Heaven and of
Earth had not permitted, for any man's or any woman's sake, to be.
The wide overarching sky looks down on no more inflexible
Sovereign Man than him in the red-collared blue coat and white
leggings, with the bamboo in his hand. A peaceable, capacious, not
ill-given Sovereign Man, if you will let him have his way. But to
bar his way; to tweak the nose of his sovereign royalty, and
ignominiously force him into another way: that is an enterprise no
man or devil, or body of men or devils, need attempt.
Seckendorf and Grumkow, in Tobacco-Parliament, understand it
better. That attempt is impossible, once for all. The first step
in such attempt will require to be assassination of Friedrich
Wilhelm; for you may depend on it, royal Sophie, so long as he is
alive, the feat cannot be done. O royal Sophie, O pretty Feekin,
what a business you are making of it!

The year 1726 was throughout a troublous one to Queen Sophie.
Seckendorf's advent; King George's manifestoing; alarm of imminent
universal War, nay sputters of it actually beginning (Gibraltar
invested by the Spaniards, ready for besieging, it is said):
nor was this all. Sophie's poor Mother, worn to a tragic Megaera,
locked so long in the Castle of Ahlden, has taken up wild plans of
outbreak, of escape by means of secretaries, moneys in the Bank of
Amsterdam, and I know not what; with all which Sophie,
corresponding in double and triple mystery, has her own terrors
and sorrows, trying to keep it down. And now, in the depth of the
year, the poor old Mother suddenly dies. [13th November, 1726:
<italic> Memoirs of Sophia Dorothea, Consort of George I. <end
italic> (i. 386),--where alao some of her concluding Letters
("edited" as if by the Nightmares) can be read, but next to no
sense made of them.] Burnt out in this manner, she collapses into
ashes and long rest; closing so her nameless tragedy of thirty
years' continuance:--what a Bluebeard-chamber in the mind of
Sophie! Nay there rise quarrels about the Heritage of the
Deceased, which will prove another sorrow.



END OF BOOK V





End of Project Gutenberg's Etext History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 5

