s comme autrefois cet heureux Mithridate,
Qui, de Rome toujours balancant le destin,
Tenait entre elle et moi l'univers incertain.
Je suis vaincu; Pompee a saisi l'avantage
D'une nuit qui laissait peu de place au courage;
Mes soldats presque nus, dans"...

Not a little to De Catt's comfort. [Rodenbeck, i. 354.] During the
retreat itself, Retzow Junior had come, as Papa's Aide-de-Camp, with a
message to the King; found him on the heights of Klein Bautzen, watching
the movements. Message done with, the King said, in a smiling tone,
"Daun has played me a slippery trick to-day!" "I have seen it," answered
Retzow; "but it is only a scratch, which your Majesty will soon manage
to heal again."--"GLAUBT ER DIES, Do you think so?" "Not only I, but the
whole Army firmly believe it of your Majesty."--"You are quite right,"
added the King, in a confidentially candid way: "We will manage Daun.
What I lament is, the number of brave men that have died this morning."
[Retzow, i. 359 n.] On the morrow, he was heard to say publicly: "Daun
has let us out of check-mate; the game is not lost yet. We will rest
ourselves here, a few days; then go for Silesia, and deliver Neisse."
The Anecdote-Books (perhaps not mythically) add this: "Where are all
your guns, though?" said the King to an Artilleryman, standing vacant
on parade, next day. "IHRO MAJESTAT, the Devil stole them all, last
night!"--"Hm, well, we must have them back from him." [Archenholtz, i.
299.]

Nothing immoderately depressive in Hochkirch, it appears;--though, alas,
on the fourth day after, there came a message from Baireuth; which did
strike one down: "My noble Wilhelmina dead; died in the very hours while
we were fighting here!" [On a common Business-Letter to Prince Henri,
"Doberschutz, 18th October, 1758," is this sudden bit of Autograph:
"GRAND DIEU, MA SOEUR DE BAREITH!"--(Schoning, _Der siebenjahrige Krieg,
nach der Original-Correspondens &c. aus den Staats-Archiven:_ Potsdam,
1851: i. 287.)] Readers must conceive it: coming unexpected more or
less, black as sudden universal hurricane, on the heart of the man; a
sorrow sacred, yet immeasurable, irremediable to him; as if the sky
too were falling on his head, in aid of the mean earth and its
ravenings:--of all this there can nothing be said at present.
Friedrich's one relief seems to have been the necessity laid on him of
perpetual battling with outward business;--we may