s fragment of architrave against the
sky. Within, all again was French in the design, the decoration and
the furnishing. At that time there, was in fact no other taste, and
Frederick, who despised and disused his native tongue, was resolved upon
French taste even in his intimate companionship. The droll story of his
coquetry with the terrible free spirit which he got from France to be
his guest is vividly reanimated at Sans Souci, where one breathes the
very air in which the strangely assorted companions lived, and in which
they parted so soon to pursue each other with brutal annoyance on one
side, and with merciless mockery on the other. Voltaire was long ago
revenged upon his host for all the indignities he suffered from him in
their comedy; he left deeply graven upon Frederick's fame the trace of
those lacerating talons which he could strike to the quick; and it is
the singular effect of this scene of their brief friendship that one
feels there the pre-eminence of the wit in whatever was most important
to mankind.

The rain had lifted a little and the sun shone out on the bloom of the
lovely parterre where the Marches profited by a smiling moment to wander
among the statues and the roses heavy with the shower. Then they walked
back to their carriage and drove to the New Palace, which expresses in
differing architectural terms the same subjection to an alien ideal
of beauty. It is thronged without by delightfully preposterous rococco
statues, and within it is rich in all those curiosities and memorials
of royalty with which palaces so well know how to fatigue the flesh and
spirit of their visitors.

The Marches escaped from it all with sighs and groans of relief, and
before they drove off to see the great fountain of the Orangeries, they
dedicated a moment of pathos to the Temple of Friendship which Frederick
built in memory of unhappy Wilhelmina of Beyreuth, the sister he loved
in the common sorrow of their wretched home, and neglected when he came
to his kingdom. It is beautiful in its rococco way, swept up to on
its terrace by most noble staircases, and swaggered over by baroque
allegories of all sorts: Everywhere the statues outnumbered the
visitors, who may have been kept away by the rain; the statues naturally
did not mind it.

Sometime in the midst of their sight-seeing the Marches had dinner in a
mildewed restaurant, where a compatriotic accent caught their ear in a
voice saying to the waiter, "We are in a