coach he said to himself,
with joyful anticipation: "I shall see you again, Berlin! I shall see you
again, dear town of my fathers! I shall come back, and, please God, not
humbly and enslaved as I go away to-day, but as a Prince, who is lord
within his own domains, with God in his heart, a clear sky overhead, and
no Schwarzenbergs upon the horizon!"

Wearily and panting for breath the poor horses dragged the heavy carriage
through the sands of the Mark, but within sat the Electoral Prince--within
sat Caesar and his fortunes.

Book IV.

I.--THE YOUTHFUL SOVEREIGN.

The Elector George William had been gathered to his fathers. On the 1st of
December in the year 1640 he had at last closed his weary eyes, and bidden
farewell to a world which had brought him much grief and disquiet, little
joy and repose, much mortification and disappointment, never a single
triumph or solid satisfaction.

The Elector George William had been gathered to his fathers, and his son
Frederick William was Elector now. Two melancholy years of privation and
humiliation, resignation and oppression, had he passed at his father's
side, ever suspected by him, ever watched with jealous eyes, and forcibly
denied any participation in the administration of the government, ever
struggling with care, even for daily food, and forced to borrow at
usurious rates of interest to provide even a meager support for his little
household. It had been a severe school, but Frederick William had passed
through it with a brave spirit and cheerful determination. Across the dark
and gloomy present his clear eye had ever been directed to the future, and
hope had ever lingered at his side, holding him erect when overburdened by
care, consoling him when vexed and humiliated by his father's unjust
suspicions and ill will. Not unexpectedly had the Elector George William
died; full two months before his summons came, the two physicians in
ordinary, after holding a long consultation with the celebrated Koenigsberg
doctors, announced to the Electoral Prince that the Elector was drawing
near his end, and that his dropsy and insidious fever were slowly but
inevitably causing death.

The Electoral Prince had had time, therefore, to prepare for the momentous
hour which would call him from obscurity and inactivity--time to summon to
him those whom he wished to have at his side in the critical hour. Up to
the period of his father's death he had been an obedient, submissive so