at
there was no fear now!"--[_Des weltberumkten Leopoldi, &c._ (Anonymous,
by Ranfft, cited above), pp. 42-45, 52, 65.]

A man that has been in many wars; in whose rough head, are schemes
hatching. Any religion he has is of Protestant nature; but he has not
much,--on the doctrinal side, very little. Luther's Hymn, _Eine feste
Burg ist unser Gott,_ he calls "God Almighty's grenadier-march." On
joining battle, he audibly utters, with bared head, some growl of rugged
prayer, far from orthodox at times, but much in earnest: that lifting
of his hat for prayer, is his last signal on such occasions. He is very
cunning as required, withal; not disdaining the serpentine method when
no other will do. With Friedrich Wilhelm, who is his second-cousin
(Mother's grand-nephew, if the reader can count that), he is from of
old on the best footing, and contrives to be his Mentor in many things
besides War. Till his quarrel with Grumkow, of which we shall hear,
he took the lead in political advising, too; and had schemes, or was
thought to have, of which Queen Sophie was in much terror.

A tall, strong-boned, hairy man; with cloudy brows, vigilant swift eyes;
has "a bluish tint of skin," says Wilhelmina, "as if the gunpowder still
stuck to him." He wears long mustaches; triangular hat, plume and other
equipments, are of thrifty practical size. Can be polite enough
in speech; but hides much of his meaning, which indeed is mostly
inarticulate, and not always joyful to the by-stander. He plays rough
pranks, too, on occasion; and has a big horse-laugh in him, where there
is a fop to be roasted, or the like. We will leave him for the present,
in hope of other meetings.

Remarkable men, many of those old Prussian soldiers: of whom one wishes,
to no purpose, that there had more knowledge been attainable. But the
Books are silent; no painter, no genial seeing-man to paint with his
pen, was there. Grim hirsute Hyperborean figures, they pass mostly mute
before us: burly, surly; in mustaches, in dim uncertain garniture, of
which the buff-belts and the steel, are alone conspicuous. Growling in
guttural Teutsoh what little articulate meaning they had: spending,
of the inarticulate, a proportion in games, of chance, probably too
in drinking beer; yet having an immense overplus which they do not so
spend, but endeavor to utter in such working as there may be. So have
the Hyperboreans lived from of old. From the times of Tacitus and
Pytheas, not to sp