ed with its broad magnificence, but we
are soon tired, and all that is left in our memory is a vast expanse of
windows, columns, statues, and wall. But let us retire to some of the
_bosquets_ on each side of the main avenue, and take a diagonal view of
the great mansion of Louis XIV., and though we lose part of the palace,
the whole picture gains in color and life, and it brings before our mind
the figure of the great monarch himself, so fond of concealing part of his
majestic stateliness under the shadow of those very groves where we are
sitting.

It was a happy thought of M. Kurd von Schloezer to try a similar experiment
with Frederic the Great, and to show him to us, not as the great king,
looking history in the face, but as seen near and behind another person,
for whom the author has felt so much sympathy as to make him the central
figure of a very pretty historical picture. This person is Chasot.
Frederic used to say of him, _C'est le matador de ma jeunesse_,--a saying
which is not found in Frederic's works, but which is nevertheless
authentic. One of the chief magistrates of the old Hanseatic town of
Luebeck, Syndicus Curtius,--the father, we believe, of the two distinguished
scholars, Ernst and Georg Curtius,--was at school with the two sons of
Chasot, and he remembers these royal words, when they were repeated in all
the drawing-rooms of the city where Chasot spent many years of his life.
Frederic's friendship for Chasot is well known, for there are two poems of
the king addressed to this young favorite. They do not give a very high
idea either of the poetical power of the monarch, or of the moral
character of his friend; but they contain some manly and straightforward
remarks, which make up for a great deal of shallow declamation. This young
Chasot was a French nobleman, a fresh, chivalrous, buoyant
nature,--adventurous, careless, extravagant, brave, full of romance, happy
with the happy, and galloping through life like a true cavalry officer. He
met Frederic in 1734. Louis XV. had taken up the cause of Stanislas
Lesczynski, King of Poland, his father-in-law, and Chasot served in the
French army which, under the Duke of Berwick, attacked Germany on the
Rhine, in order to relieve Poland from the simultaneous pressure of
Austria and Russia. He had the misfortune to kill a French officer in a
duel, and was obliged to take refuge in the camp of the old Prince Eugene.
Here the young Prince of Prussia soon discovered