at riddle of
life,--on death, and what was to follow after it. He had perceived that
nothing remained to him but submission, patience, and quiet endurance.
But bitter corroding misfortune is not a school which develops good
alone: it gives birth also to many faults. He learnt to hide his
decisions in his own breast, to look with suspicion on men and use them
as his tools, to deceive and cajole them with a cold astuteness which
was foreign to his nature. He flattered the cowardly, mean Grumbkow,
and was glad when he gradually won the bad man to his purposes; he had
for years to struggle warily against the dislike and distrust of his
hard father. His nature always resisted this humiliation, and he
endeavoured by bitter scorn to atone to his injured self-respect; his
heart, which glowed for everything noble, saved him from becoming a
hard egotist, but it did not make him milder or more conciliatory, and
when he had become a great man and a wise prince, he still retained
some traces of narrow-minded cunning from this time of servitude. The
lion had at times not been ashamed to scratch like a spiteful cat.

Yet he learnt during these years to respect some things that were
useful--the strict economical care with which his narrow-minded but
prudent father provided for the weal of his household and country.
When, to please the King, he made estimates of a lease; when he gave
himself the trouble to increase the profits of a demesne by some
hundred thalers; when he thought that the King spent more than was
fitting on his favourite fancy, and proposed to him to kidnap a tall
shepherd from Mecklenburg as a recruit,--this work was undoubtedly in
the beginning only a burdensome means of propitiating the King; for
Grumbkow had to procure him a man who made out estimates instead of
him, and the officials and exchequer officers gave him hints how, here
and there, a profit was to be made, and he always jested about the
giants, where he could venture to do so. But the new world in which he
found himself, gradually led him on to the practical interests of the
people and State. It is clear that the economy of his father was often
tyrannical and extraordinary. The King was always convinced that his
whole object was the good of the country, and therefore he took upon
himself to interfere in the most arbitrary way with the possessions and
affairs of private persons. When he commanded that no male goat should
be driven with the sheep; that all