BOOK IV. THE VISIBLES AND THE INVISIBLES.

CHAPTER XXVIII. OLD FRITZ.

The war terminated, the hostile armies returned to their different
German countries. Frederick the Great had gained his point, forcing
Austria to renounce the possession of Bavaria. The Prince of
Zweibruecken had been solemnly recognized by him as the rightful heir
to the electorate, and the lawful ruler and possessor of Bavaria. The
Emperor Joseph had submitted with profound regret and bitter animosity
to the will of his mother, the reigning empress, and consented to the
peace negotiations of Baron von Thugut. Having signed the document of
the same, in his quality of co-regent, he angrily threw aside the pen,
casting a furious glance at the hard, impenetrable face of Thugut,
saying: "Tell her majesty that I have accomplished my last act as
co-regent, and I now abdicate. From henceforth I will still lie her
obedient son, but no submissive joint ruler, to only follow devotedly
her imperial will. Therefore I resign, and never will trouble myself in
future about the acts of the government." The emperor kept his word. He
retired, piqued, into solitude, wounded in the depths of his soul, and
afterward travelled, leaving the government entirely to the empress and
her pious confessors.

Bavaria was rescued! It owed its existence to the watchfulness,
sagacity, and disinterested aid of Prussia's great king. The Elector
Maximilian vowed in his delight that he, as well as his successors and
heirs, would never forget that Bavaria must ascribe its continuance
to Prussia alone, and therefore the gratitude of the princes of this
electorate could not and never would be extinguished toward the royal
house of Prussia. Frederick received these overflowing acknowledgments
with the calmness of a philosopher and the smile of a skeptic. He
understood mankind sufficiently to know what to expect from their oaths;
to know that in the course of time there is nothing more oppressive and
intolerable than gratitude, that it soon becomes a burden which they
would gladly throw off their bent shoulders at any price, and become
the enemy of him to whom they had sworn eternal thankfulness. Frederick
regarded these oaths of Bavaria not as a security for the future, but as
a payment on account of the past.

"I did not go forth to render the Bavarian princes indebted to me," said
he, to his only confidante, Count Herzberg, as he brought to him, at
Sans-Souci, the renewed exp