ty of
eyesight, and a fixed steadiness of holding to his purpose, which are
of rare quality. His utterances to D'Argens, about this time and
onward,--brief hints, spontaneous, almost unconscious,--give curious
testimony of his glooms and moody humors. Of which the reader shall
see something. For the present, he is in deep indignation with his poor
Troops, among other miseries. "Actual running away!" he will have it to
be; and takes no account of thirst, hunger, heat, utter weariness and
physical impossibility! This lasts for some weeks. But in general there
is nothing of this injustice to those about him. In general, nothing
even of gloom is manifested; on the contrary, cheerfulness, brisk hope,
a strangely continual succession of hopes (mostly illusory);--though,
within, there is traceable very great sorrow, weariness and misery. A
fixed darkness, as of Erebus, is grown habitual to him; but is strictly
shut up, little of it shown to others, or even, in a sense, to himself.
He is as a traveller overtaken by the Night and its tempests and
rain-deluges, but refusing to pause; who is wetted to the bone, and does
not care farther for rain. A traveller grown familiar with the howling
solitudes; aware that the Storm-winds do not pity, that Darkness is the
dead Earth's Shadow:--a most lone soul of a man; but continually toiling
forward, as if the brightest goal and haven were near and in view.

Once more the world was certain of Friedrich's ruin;--Friedrich himself
we have seen certain of it, for some few desperate hours:--but the world
and he, as had been repeatedly the world's case, were both disappointed.
Intrinsically there could be little doubt but Friedrich's enemies might
now have ruined him, had they been diligent about it. Now again, and now
more than ever, they have the winning-post in sight. At small distance
is the goal and purpose of all these four years' battlings and
marchings, and ten years' subterranean plottings and intriguings. He
himself says deliberately, "They had only to give him the finishing
stroke (COUP-DE-GRACE)." [_OEuvres de Frederic,_ v. 20.] But they never
gave him that stroke; could not do it, though heartily desirous. Which
was, and is, matter of surprise to an observant public.

The cause of failure may be considered to have been, in good part,
Daun and his cunctations. Daun's zeal was unquestionable; ardent and
continual is Daun's desire to succeed: but to try it at his own risk was
beyond h