He then bade his comrades farewell, knelt to receive the chaplain’s blessing, and with prayer upon his lips submitted to the fatal stroke. [Illustration: FREDERICK THE SECOND. AFTER THE PAINTING BY CUNNINGHAM.] Frederick had fainted. It was the duty of the chaplain to pass straight from the dead offender to the living, and to exhort him to repent. But nature made this royal order of none effect. The prince, when he came to, could only stare dumbly at the gloomy pall which draped the body of his friend. At two o’clock some citizens brought a coffin and bore away the corpse, but Frederick could not withdraw his gaze from the place of execution. All that day he took no food. At night he passed from delirium into a second swoon—then fell to raving anew. When morning broke he declared that Katte was standing before him. But the very violence of his emotion made the reaction swift. On the same day he told the doctor that he was well and asked him for a certain powder. Next day, after much talk with the chaplain on matters of religion, he learned from him that Katte’s fate was not to be his own. Nine days later he made peace with Grumbkow, who came at the head of yet another Commission to exact an oath of strict obedience to the King, and to open the prison doors a little wider. Before Christmas he was reported to be “as merry as a lark.” The conduct of father and son during this crisis is peculiarly worthy of attention because each was his own counsellor, and because Frederick never again lay under a scrutiny so searching. In the summer of 1730 the King reaped all that he had sown during his son’s boyhood. He found in his heir a youth whom he distrusted and despised but could not get rid of. He therefore began the task anew and inaugurated a second education sterner than the first. He had slain his son’s friend, not, as he professed, “that justice should not entirely leave the world,” but that he might, in spite of past failures, fashion an heir after his own heart. The loyal father of the dead man found consolation in viewing his loss as a sacrifice to this design. That this, which he believed to be indispensable to the welfare of Prussia, was the leading motive of the King’s policy, grew clearer as his outbursts of wrath against his son became less frequent and less fierce. It inspired Frederick also with a leading motive—to beguile his father into believing that he had his way.