lin the end of October [Monday, 17th, as above said].
My younger Brothers, followed by the Princes of the Blood and by all
the Court, received us at the bottom of the stairs. I was led to my
apartment, where I found the Reigning Queen, my Sisters [Ulrique,
Amelia], and the Princesses [of the Blood, as above, Schwedt and the
rest]. I learned with much chagrin that the King was ill of tertian ague
[quartan; but that is no matter]. He sent me word that, being in his
fit, he could not see me; but that he depended on having that pleasure
to-morrow. The Queen Mother, to whom I went without delay, was in a dark
condition; rooms all hung with their lugubrious drapery; everything yet
in the depth of mourning for my Father. What a scene for me! Nature has
her rights; I can say with truth, I have almost never in my life been so
moved as on this occasion." Interview with Mamma--we can fancy it--"was
of the most touching." Wilhelmina had been absent eight years. She
scarcely knows the young ones again, all so grown;--finds change on
change: and that Time, as he always is, has been busy. That night the
Supper-Party was exclusively a Family one.

Her Brother's welcome to her on the morrow, though ardent enough, she
found deficient in sincerity, deficient in several points; as indeed a
Brother up to the neck in business, and just come out of an ague-fit,
does not appear to the best advantage. Wilhelmina noticed how ill he
looked, so lean and broken-down (MAIGRE ET DEFAIT) within the last two
months; but seems to have taken no account of it farther, in striking
her balances with Friedrich. And indeed in her Narrative of this Visit,
not, we will hope, in the Visit itself, she must have been in a high
state of magnetic deflection,--pretty nearly her maximum of such,
discoverable in those famous MEMOIRS,--such a tumult is there in her
statements, all gone to ground-and-lofty tumbling in this place; so
discrepant are the still ascertainable facts from this topsy-turvy
picture of them, sketched by her four years hence (in 1744). The truest
of magnetic needles; but so sensitive, if you bring foreign iron near
it!

Wilhelmina was loaded with honors by an impartial Berlin Public that is
Court Public; "but, all being in mourning, the Court was not brilliant.
The Queen Mother saw little company, and was sunk in sorrow;--had not
the least influence in affairs, so jealous was the new King of his
Authority,--to the Queen Mother's surprise," says Wi