His first education made him a rebel; his second, a hypocrite. Katte’s death had taught him once and for all that life would be tolerable only if he gained his father’s confidence. To this end he applied every art which a fertile brain could devise and an unscrupulous actor could practise. He exhausted the language of contrition for the past. He promised full amendment for the future. He sent letters, as many as his father would consent to receive, and the burden of all was that he was indeed a new man, a second Frederick William, adoring the things that he had burned and burning those that he had adored. The new Frederick is interested in tall soldiers, his father’s hobby, and longs to put on the uniform which he had been wont to call his winding-sheet. He relishes theology and after argument abandons what his father calls “the damned heresy” of predestination. He professes to find pleasure in the work of the estates committee and informs his father with ecstasy that the rent of some royal domains can be raised. He tries to propitiate the King of Prussia as Philip of Spain tried to propitiate the English people, by pretending to a taste for beer. Even his opinion of his own family has swiftly changed. He now pretends to realise that his mother is a mischievous intriguer; to be content that his sister shall abjure the throne of England and marry an obscure Hohenzollern of Baireuth; to desire that his father may live to see his children’s children grow up around him. Finally he receives at the hands of Frederick William a regiment and a wife and withdraws into the marshy solitudes of Brandenburg to make the best of both. It is the duty of Frederick’s biographer to mark from Frederick’s point of view the stages of this second education. The first period lasted rather more than two and a half years, from November, 1730, to June, 1733, and therefore roughly corresponds with the period of residence at an English university which is usually enjoyed at the age at which the Crown Prince had then arrived. This course began and ended with a crime. Katte was done to death for a military offence which a tribunal representing the most sternly disciplined army in the world had declared not to be death-worthy—though their commander-in-chief and king demanded another verdict. A fortnight later, that is, on November 20, 1730, Frederick was admitted as a humble participant in the proceedings of the local Chamber of War and Domains—to assist in duties which he privately styled the work of brigands. He was to study agriculture under the Director, Hille, and in general to survey the foundations of the Prussian State.