very
requisite to please. I lived, as I vainly imagined, without inciting
enmity or malice, and my mind was wholly occupied by the desire of
earning well-founded fame.

I had hitherto remained ignorant of love, and had been terrified from
illicit commerce by beholding the dreadful objects of the hospital at
Potzdam. During the winter of 1743, the nuptials of his Majesty's sister
were celebrated, who was married to the King of Sweden, where she is at
present Queen Dowager, mother of the reigning Gustavus. I, as officer of
my corps, had the honour to mount guard and escort her as far as Stettin.
Here first did my heart feel a passion of which, in the course of my
history, I shall have frequent occasion to speak. The object of my love
was one whom I can only remember at present with reverence; and, as I
write not romance, but facts, I shall here briefly say, ours were
mutually the first-fruits of affection, and that to this hour I regret no
misfortune, no misery, with which, from a stock so noble, my destiny was
overshadowed.

Amid the tumult inseparable to occasions like these, on which it was my
duty to maintain order, a thief had the address to steal my watch, and
cut away part of the gold fringe which hung from the waistcoat of my
uniform, and afterwards to escape unperceived. This accident brought on
me the raillery of my comrades; and the lady alluded to thence took
occasion to console me, by saying it should be her care that I should be
no loser. Her words were accompanied by a look I could not
misunderstand, and a few days after I thought myself the happiest of
mortals. The name, however, of this high-born lady is a secret, which
must descend with me to the grave; and, though my silence concerning this
incident heaves a void in my life, and indeed throws obscurity over a
part of it, which might else be clear, I would much rather incur this
reproach than become ungrateful towards my best friend and benefactress.
To her conversation, to her prudence, to the power by which she fixed my
affections wholly on herself, am I indebted for the improvement and
polishing of my bodily and mental qualities. She never despised,
betrayed, or abandoned me, even in the deepest of my distress; and my
children alone, on my death-bed, shall be taught the name of her to whom
they owe the preservation of their father, and consequently their own
existence.

I lived at this time perfectly happy at Berlin, and highly esteemed. T