eal he had
formed of him was destroyed. The King began to quiz him on account of
his sentimentality; the sensitive Frenchman begged for leave of
absence, that he might travel to France for some months for his health.
The King was deeply wounded at this touch of temper, and continued, in
the friendly letters which he afterwards wrote to him, to quiz this
morbid disposition. He said, "That it was reported that there was a
_loup garou_ in France; no doubt this was the marquis as a Prussian, in
his invalid guise. Did he now eat little children? This bad conduct he
would not formerly have been guilty of, but men change much in
travelling." The marquis remained two winters instead of a few months:
when he was about to return, he sent the certificate of his physician;
probably the good man was really ill, but the King was deeply wounded
at this unnecessary verification from an old friend, and when the
marquis returned, the old connection was spoiled. Yet the King would
not give him up, but amused himself by punishing his unconfiding friend
by pungent speeches and sharp jests. Then the Frenchman, most
thoroughly embittered, demanded his dismissal; he obtained it, and one
may discover the sorrow and anger of the King from his answer. When the
marquis, in the last letter he wrote to the King before his death, once
more represented, not without bitterness, how scornfully and ill he had
treated an unselfish admirer, the King read his letter in silence. But
he wrote sorrowfully to the widow, of his friendship for her husband,
and caused a costly monument to be erected to his memory. Such was the
case with most of his favourites: magical as was his power of
attracting, equally demoniacal was his capacity of repelling. But it
may be answered, to any one who blames this as a fault in the man, that
in history there is scarcely another king who has so nobly opened his
most secret soul to his friends, like Frederic.

Frederic II. had not worn the crown many months, when the Emperor
Charles VI. died. Everything now impelled the young King to play a
great game. That he should have made such a resolution was, in spite of
the momentary weakness of Austria, a sign of daring courage. The
countries which he ruled counted not more than a seventh of the
population of the wide realm of Maria Theresa. It is true that his army
was superior in number to the Imperial, and still more in warlike
capacity; and, according to the representations of the time