melessness ruled over wide circles. As bad as the worst stood matters
in the two German capitals, Vienna and Berlin. In the Capua of Germany,
Vienna, true enough, the strict Maria Theresa reigned through a large
portion of the century, but she was impotent against the doings of a
rich nobility, steeped in sensuous pleasures, and of the citizen circles
that emulated the nobility. With the Chastity Commissions that she
established, and in the aid of which an extensive spy-system was
organized, she partly provoked bitterness, and partly made herself
laughable. The success was zero. In frivolous Vienna, sayings like these
made the rounds during the second half of the eighteenth century: "You
must love your neighbor like yourself, that is to say, you must love
your neighbor's wife as much as your own;" or "If the wife goes to the
right, the husband may go to the left: if she takes an attendant, he
takes a lady friend." In how frivolous a vein marriage and adultery were
then taken, transpires from a letter of the poet Ew. Chr. von Kleist,
addressed in 1751 to his friend Gleim. Among other things he there says:
"You are already informed on the adventure of the Mark-Graf Heinrich. He
sent his wife to his country seat and intends to divorce her because he
found the Prince of Holstein in bed with her.... The Mark-Graf might
have done better had he kept quiet about the affair, instead of now
causing half Berlin and all the world to talk about him. Moreover, _such
a natural thing should not be taken so ill_, all the more when, like the
Mark-Graf, one is not so waterproof himself. Mutual repulsion, we all
know, is unavoidable in married life: all husbands and wives are
perforce unfaithful, due to _their illusions concerning other estimable
persons. How can that be punished that one is forced to?_" On Berlin
conditions, the English Ambassador, Lord Malmsbury, wrote in 1772:
"Total corruption of morals pervades both sexes of all classes, whereto
must be added the indigence, caused, partly through the taxes imposed by
the present King, partly through the love of luxury that they took from
his grandfather. The men lead a life of excesses with limited means,
while the women are harpies, wholly bereft of shame. They yield
themselves to him who pays best. Tenderness and true love are things
unknown to them."[56]

Things were at their worst in Berlin under Frederick II, who reigned
from 1786 to 1796. He led with the worst example; and his co