Berlin and Sans-Souci; Or, Frederick the Great and His FriendsMühlbach, L. (Luise)
History
Berlin and Sans-Souci; Or, Frederick the Great and His Friends
Mühlbach, L. (Luise)
Frederick II, King of Prussia, 1712-1786 -- Fiction; Prussia (Germany) -- History -- Frederick II, 1740-1786 -- Fiction
Queen Elizabeth pressed her lips together, to suppress a cry of
pain. She had heard the king's words; for her they had a deeper
meaning. "He will love her, I know it, I feel it!" she said to
herself as she returned after this eventful evening to Schonhausen.
"Oh, why has God laid upon me this new trial, this new humiliation?
Until now, no one thought the less of me because I was not loved by
the king. The world said, 'The king loves no woman, he has no heart
for love.' From this day I shall be despised and pitied. The king
has found a heart. He knows now that he has not outlived his youth;
he feels that he is young--that he is young in heart, young in love!
Oh, my God! and I too am young, and love; and I must shroud my heart
in resignation and gloom."
While the queen was pouring out her complaints and prayers to God,
the Swedish ambassador was confiding his wrath to his king. He wrote
to his sovereign, and repeated to him the angry and abusive words of
the little Princess Amelia, who was known at the court as the little
April Fee. She was more changeable than April, and more stormy and
imperious than Frederick himself. He painted skilfully the gentle
and attractive bearing of the Princess Ulrica, and asked for
permission to demand the hand of this gracious and noble princess
for Adolph Frederick. After the ambassador had written his
dispatches, and sent them by a courier to the Swedish ship lying in
the sound, he said to himself, with a triumphant smile: "Ah, my
little Princess Amelia, this is a royal punishment for royal
impertinence. You were pleased to treat me with contempt, but you
did not know that I could avenge myself by depriving you of a
kingdom. Ah, if you had guessed my mission, how smilingly you would
have greeted the Count Tessin!"
The gentlemen diplomatists are sometimes outwitted.
CHAPTER X.
ECKHOF.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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