red him tried for that crime. It is
small wonder that Fritz declared he would have been glad to exchange his
place for that of the poorest serf in Prussia.

Fritz was placed in a strongly barred room like a dungeon, with no
furniture in it, and lighted by a single slit in the wall so high that
the boy could not look out of it. The coarsest brown clothes were given
him to wear. He was allowed only one or two books. His food was bought
at a near-by butcher-shop, and was cut for him, for he was not allowed a
knife. The door of his prison was opened three times a day for
ventilation, and he was provided with a single tallow candle which had
to be put out by seven o'clock in the evening. This was the way the
Crown Prince of Prussia lived when he was nineteen years old, and if
the father did not actually succeed in breaking all the boy's spirit,
he was at least changing this lovable, gentle-natured youth into a stern
and gloomy young man.

Eventually the boy was released from his prison, but as long as his
father lived he was treated with all the harshness the King's mind could
devise. His sister Wilhelmina was kept away from him, and finally
married to a man for whom she cared little. Fritz was cut off from all
interests save that of the army, but gradually he began to acquire
something of his father's interest in creating a splendid fighting
machine.

In time he became King of Prussia himself, free at last to do as he
would. He sought out men of genius, musicians, poets, and thinkers. He
offered Voltaire, the great Frenchman, a home with him, and his happiest
hours were spent in his company, or listening to music, or playing the
flute he had loved as a boy. But that was only one side of him, and the
side which was least seen. On the world's side he was the grasping
ruler, the great general who forced war on all his neighbors, and who
came to be known as the conqueror of Europe.

The boy Fritz of Prussia might have become one of Europe's greatest
sovereigns, for he was naturally endowed with a love of all the finer
things of life. Instead he became a despot who plunged Europe for years
into the horrors of useless war. For this misfortune his father was
responsible. The loving mother and sister could not counterbalance the
terrible severity of the cruel King. Gradually Fritz changed from the
sunny lad who had played in the gardens of Potsdam with Wilhelmina to a
severe and arbitrary monarch.

His father had taught him t