ere anything more? Out with it, then; better now than too
late!"--Much oppression, forcing men to build in Berlin.--"Oppression?
was it not their benefit, as well as Berlin's and the Country's? I had
no interest in it other. Derschau, you who managed it?" and his Majesty
turned to Derschau. For all the smoking generals and company are still
here; nor will his Majesty consent to dismiss them from the presence
and be alone with Roloff: "What is there to conceal? They are people of
honor, and my friends." Derschau, whose feats in the building way are
not unknown even to us, answers with a hard face, It was all right and
orderly; nothing out of square in his building operations. To which
Roloff shakes his head: "A thing of public notoriety, Herr General."--"I
will prove everything before a Court," answers the Herr General with
still harder face; Roloff still austerely shaking his head. Hm!--And
then there is forgiveness of enemies; your Majesty is bound to forgive
all men, or how can you ask to be forgiven? "Well, I will, I do; you
Feekin, write to your Brother (unforgivablest of beings), after I am
dead, that I forgave him, died in peace with him."--Better her Majesty
should write at once, suggests Roloff.--"No, after I am dead," persists
the Son of Nature,--that will be safer! [Wrote accordingly, "not able to
finish without many tears;" honest sensible Letter (though indifferently
spelt), "Berlin, 1st June, 1740;"--lies now in State-Paper Office:
"ROYAL LETTERS, vol. xciv., Prussia, 1689-1777."] An unwedgeable and
gnarled big block of manhood and simplicity and sincerity; such as we
rarely get sight of among the modern sons of Adam, among the crowned
sons nearly never. At parting he said to Roloff, "You (ER, He) do not
spare me; it is right. You do your duty like an honest Christian man."
[_Notata ex ore Roloffi_ ("found among the Seckendorf Papers," no date
but "May 1740"), in Forster, ii. 154, 155; in a fragmentary state:
completed in Pollnitz, ii. 545-549.]

Roloff, I perceive, had several Dialogues with the King; and stayed in
Potsdam some days for that object. The above bit of jotting is from
the Seckendorf Papers (probably picked up by Seckendorf Junior), and is
dated only "May." Of the two Potsdam Preachers, one of whom is "Oesfeld,
Chaplain of the Giant Grenadiers," and the other is "Cochius, Calvinist
Hofprediger," each published on his own score some Notes of dialogue and
circumstance; [Cochius the HOFPREDIGER'S