lons all the intellectual men in Berlin, all the
attractive women, all desirous of liberty and freed from prejudice.
Such was Berlin in the days of Frederick.

II.

One of the finest cities in Europe, wrote Forster in 1779; but the
Berliners! Sociability and refined taste, he found, degenerated in
them into sensuality, into libertinage (he might almost say voracity),
freedom of wit and love of shining in shameless licence and
unrestrained debauch of thought. The women in general were abandoned.
An English diplomat, Sir John Harris, afterwards Lord Malmesbury, had
the same impression: Berlin was a town where, if _fortis_ might be
translated by "honourable," you could say that there was not a _vir
fortis nec femina casta_.

If you consider that outside Jewish homes money was scarce, and that
temptations are all the stronger the less means you have of satisfying
them, you can see why in many minds disorder of ideas and corruption
of morals opened a new wound, the most dangerous, in sooth, and the
most repugnant in nations--venality. Mirabeau, in his "Secret
History," indelibly recorded all the vices of _ce noble tripot_,
Berlin. On this head his famous pamphlet is a picture in violent
colours, but true nevertheless. Cynicism there seems merely local
colour. "'Rottenness before Ripeness'--I am very much afraid that must
be the motto of Prussian power.... What cannot money do in a house so
poor?"

III.

It required Frederick's hand of iron to set in motion these
complicated springs, to regulate the unwieldy machine, keep together
these elements collected with no little ingenuity and ready to go to
pieces. But that hand was weighty and hard. There were signs, in the
upper classes at all events--the only classes then taken into
account--of a sort of muffled revolt against this implacable disciple.
Besides, the Prussians entertained queer illusions as to the future.
Frederick had deceived his subjects just as he had deceived himself
regarding the durability of his work. They did not understand to what
an extent their power was the personal power of their King. Proud to
the point of infatuation of the role he had made them play, they
imagined it was their own doing, and that Frederick's soul would
survive in them. They expected from a new reign the same glory abroad,
the same security at home, the same relative prosperity, with a yoke
less rough and a discipline less severe, not understanding that the
very roughness