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ecause he was without guile, and had no vulpinism at all. In which they were very much mistaken indeed. History is proud to report that the guileless Prussian Majesty, steadily attending to his own affairs in a wise manner, though hoodwinked and led about by Black-Artists as he had been, turned out when Fact and Nature subsequently pronounced upon it, to have had more intellect than the whole of them together,--to have been, in a manner, the only one of them that had any real "intellect," or insight into Fact and Nature, at all. Consummate Black-art Diplomacies overnetting the Universe, went entirely to water, running down the gutters to the last drop; and a prosperous Drilled Prussia, compact, organic in every part, from diligent plough-sock to shining bayonet and iron ramrod, remained standing. "A full Treasury and 200,000 well-drilled men would be the one guarantee to your Pragmatic Sanction," Prince Eugene had said. But that bit of insight was not accepted at Vienna; Black-art, and Diplomatic spider-webs from pole to pole, being thought the preferable method. Enough, Seckendorf was ordered to manipulate and soothe down the Prussian Majesty, as surely would be easy; to continue his galvanic operations on the Double-Match, or produce a rotation in the purposes of the royal breast. Which he diligently strove to do, when once admitted to speech again;--Grumkow steadily declining to meddle, and only Queen Sophie, as we can fancy, auguring joyfully of it. Seckendorf, admitted to speech the third day after that explosive Session, snuffles his softest, his cunningest;--continues to ride diligently, the concluding portion (such it proved) of his 25,000 miles with the Prussian Majesty up and down through winter and spring; but makes not the least progress, the reverse rather. Their dialogues and arguings on the matter, here and elsewhere, are lost in air; or gone wholly to a single point unexpectedly preserved for us. One day, riding through some village, Priort some say his Majesty calls it, some give another name,--advocate Seckendorf, in the fervor of pleading and arguing, said some word, which went like a sudden flash of lightning through the dark places of his Majesty's mind, and never would go out of it again while he lived after. In passionate moments, his Majesty spoke of it sometimes, a clangorous pathos in his tones, as of a thing hideous, horrible, never to be forgotten, which had killed him,--death from a frien
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