ter in Berlin,--who saw those PROFOSSEN, or
Scavenger-Executioners in French Costume long since, and was always good
to me:--might not that be a method? Lieutenant Keith indeed is in Wesel,
waiting only a signal. Suppose he went to the Hague, and took soundings
there what welcome we should have? No, not till we have actually run;
beware of making noise!--The poor Prince is in unutterable perplexity;
can only answer Katte by that Messenger of his, to the effect (date and
Letter burnt like the former): "Doubt is on every hand; doubt,--and yet
CERTAINTY. Will write again before undertaking anything."

And there is no question he did write again; more than once: letters by
the post, which his faithful Lieutenant Katte in Berlin received; one
of which, however, stuck on the road; and this one,--by some industry of
postmasters spirited into vigilance, as is likeliest, though others say
by mere misaddressing, by "want of BERLIN on the address,"--fell into
the hands of vigilant RITTMEISTER Katte at Erlangen. Who grew pale in
reading it, and had to resolve on a painful thing! This was, I suppose,
among the last Letters of the series; and must have been dated, as I
guess, about the 29th of July, 1730; but they are now all burnt, huddled
rapidly into annihilation, and one cannot say!--

Certain it is that the Royal Travelling-Party left Anspach in a
few days, to go, southward still, "by the OEttingen Country towards
Augsburg." [Fassmann, p. 410.] Feuchtwang (WET Wang, not Durrwang or DRY
Wang) is the first stage; here lives the Dowager Margravine of Anspach:
here the Prince does some inconceivably small fault "lets a knife, which
he is handing to or from the Serene Lady, fall," [Ranke, i. 304 ("from
a Letter the Prince had written to Katte").] who, as she is weak, may
suffer by the jingle; for which Friedrich Wilhelm bursts out on him like
the Irish Rebellion,--to the silent despair of the poor Prince. The poor
Prince meditates desperate resolutions, but has to keep them strictly to
himself.

Doubtless the Buddenbrock Trio, good old military gentlemen, would
endeavor to speak comfort to him, when they were on the road again.
Here is Nordlingen, your Highness, where Bernhard of Weimar, for his
over-haste, got so beaten in the Thirty-Years War; would not wait till
the Swedes were rightly gathered: what general, if he have reinforcement
at hand, would not wait for it? The waters now, you observe, run all
into the Wornitz, into the