oung Wife,--Hungarian Majesty's one Sister,
Vice-Regents of the Netherlands he and she, conspicuous among the bright
couples of the world,--she had a bad lying-in (child still-born), while
those grand Moldau Operations went on; has been ill, poor lady, ever
since; and, at Brussels, on December 16th, she herself lies dead, Prince
Karl weeping over her and the days that will not return. Prince Karl's
felicities, private and public, had been at their zenith lately, which
was very high indeed; but go on declining from this day. Never more the
Happiest of Husbands (did not wed again at all); still less the Greatest
of Captains, equal or superior to Caesar in the Gazetteer judgment, with
distracted EULOGIES, BIOGRAPHIES and such like filling the air: before
long, a War-Captain of quite moderate renown; which we shall see
sink gradually into no renown at all, and even (unjustly) into MINUS
quantities, before all end. A mad world, my masters!

"Between Traun on the southwest hand, and his Pandours on the southeast,
the small Prussian posts have all been driven in upon Troppau-Jagerndorf
region; more and more narrowed there;--and, in fine (two days before
this new Interview of Leopold and the impatient King at Schweidnitz),
have had to quit the Troppau-Jagerndorf position; to quit the Hills
altogether, and are now in full march towards Brieg. Of which march I
should say nothing, were it not that Marwitz, Father of Wilhelmina's
giggling Marmitzes, commanded;--and came by his death in the course of
it; though our Wilhelmina is not now there, pen in hand, to tell us
what the effects at Baireuth were. Marwitz had been left for dead on
the Field of Mollwitz; lay so all night, but was nursed to some kind
of strength again by those giggling young women; and came back to
Schlesien, to posts of chief trust, for the last year or two,--was
guarding the Mountains, and even invading Mahren, during the late
Campaign;--but saw himself reduced latterly to Jagerndorf and Troppau;
and had even to retreat out of these. And in the whirlpool of hurries
thereupon,--how is not very clear; by apoplexy, say some; by accidental
pistol from a servant of his own; in actual skirmish with Pandours,--too
certainly, one way or the other, on December 23d (just during that
second Interview at Schweidnitz), brave old Marwitz did suddenly sink
dead, and is ended. [_Helden-Geschichte,_ ii. 1201.] Even so, ye poor
giggling creatures, and your loud weeping will not me