Again he rallied, and until the middle of August disease and his inflexible determination to accomplish the daily routine struggled for the mastery. On August 10th, he sent a tender little note to his widowed sister Charlotte of Brunswick. “The old,” wrote the dying King, “must give place to the young, that each generation may find room clear for it: and life, if we examine strictly what its course is, consists in seeing one’s fellow-creatures die and be born.” By an almost pathetic chance his last letter, written on August 14th, was to de Launay, demanding more minute accounts of the hated excise. Frederick, like his ancestors, died at his post. The Great Elector, whose only fear was that dropsy might unfit him to govern, held a Privy Council within two days of the end. Frederick William amid all his torments spent his last days in private conference with his heir. Frederick, an older man than either, began work at five o’clock on the morning of Tuesday, August 15th. He made the arrangements for a review at Potsdam and dictated despatches of weight with all his wonted clearness. On Wednesday he failed, struggling in vain to give his weeping general the parole. All that day he lay in his chair dying, attended by valets, ministers, and physicians. In the evening he slept, and when eleven o’clock struck he enquired the time and declared that he would rise at four. Towards midnight he asked for his favourite dog and bade them cover it with a quilt. Then for more than two hours his faithful valet Strützky knelt by his chair to keep him upright, passing both his arms around the half-unconscious King. At twenty minutes past two in the morning of August 17th, Frederick passed quietly away. Hertzberg closed his eyes and led his nephew and successor, Frederick William, to the corpse. The King had willed to be buried on the terrace of Sans Souci, but he could now command no longer. Throughout one day, August 18th, he lay in state at Potsdam. In the evening his coffin was borne to a vault in the garish church of the Potsdam garrison, where it rests by the side of his father’s.