with a certain effort, in little
abrupt phrases. There was nothing in him to recall the implacable and
sovereign irony of Frederick.

"His look," said one apologist, "does not betoken a man of genius, but
German candour shines on his brow." Strange candour, scarcely
recognizable if you take the word in its common and proper sense. It
must be taken, as was then the practice in Germany, through
translations of Rousseau, in the equivocal and refined acceptation
which reconciled innocence with indecency, virtue with every disorder
of the imagination and the heart. Ecstatic and sensual, devout and
licentious, a prey to violent appetites, tormented by scruples,
superstitious and debauched, believing in ghosts, with a tendency
towards cabal, Frederick William had a taste for ethics and a feeling
for religion. He spoke of them with respect, with awe, with emotion.
In his case it was a natural penchant and at the same time a pose, the
attitude of every heir-presumptive towards the crowned head, a way of
winning admiration and captivating by force of contrast.

VI.

He and those around him might be gulled by this "German candour." Not
so Frederick. In his Memoirs he draws his nephew as he was in 1765, at
the age of twenty-one, at the time of his first marriage with
Elizabeth of Brunswick: "The young husband, without any morals, given
over to a life of debauchery, was daily guilty of infidelity to his
wife. The Princess, who was in the flower of her beauty, was shocked
at the slight regard shown for her charms. Soon she plunged into
excesses almost as bad as her husband's." In 1769 they were divorced.
Frederick William married a Princess of Darmstadt. The second
marriage was no happier than the first. The Princess did not
retaliate, though she did not lack incentives to do so. The Prince
lapsed back into his dissolute habits. Apart from many passing
fancies, he had a recognized mistress-in-chief. This person, who
managed always to retain the favour, if not the love, of Frederick
William, was the daughter of a humble musician. She married the
Prince's _valet de chambre_, became Madame Rietz, and was afterwards
made Countess of Lichtenau. Frederick William by the first marriage
had had a daughter, Princess Frederica, who was brought up by the
Queen, the discarded, not to say repudiated, wife of Frederick the
Great. The father, when visiting the girl, fell in love with one of
her maids-of-honour. Her name was Mademoiselle de V