Next year (1735) he begged to go to the war again, but the King, who had been near death from dropsy, put him off with a journey to Ost-Preussen. This was the first of those official tours of inspection which later became one of the chief occupations of Frederick’s years of peace. In 1736 he began a far more agreeable pursuit. It was then that he established himself at Rheinsberg, and, that, to quote his own testimony, he began to live. To live, in Frederick’s vocabulary, meant to read. He plunged into books, comparing, annotating, analysing, and learned by four days’ trial the lesson of the zealous freshman—that man needs more than two hours’ sleep a day. To the remonstrances of the doctors he replied that he would rather suffer in body than in mind. Books were supplemented by conversation, the society of ladies, music, theatricals, literary effort of every kind. His _Anti-Machiavel_, a treatise on the duty of princes, attracted the attention of Europe, and men of liberal mind awaited with impatience the moment at which he would be able to put his virtuous maxims into practice. Meanwhile he revelled in intercourse with philosophers and learned men. Frederick styled his house “the temple of friendship,” and his guests rejoiced to find that the palace of a Crown Prince could be Liberty Hall. Yet the hand of Frederick William was not entirely invisible. Thrice every Sunday must the master of the house tear himself from philosophy to go to church, and he was also compelled to read the sermons which his father’s favourite chaplains had composed. His own select preacher was Voltaire, with whom and with his intimates he “reasoned high Of providence, fore-knowledge, will and fate, Passion and apathy and glory and shame.” From history he learned much for every department of life; from philosophy chiefly contempt for religion and a deep-rooted fatalism which sustained him at many moments of disaster. He speaks of “this Necessity, which orders all things, directs our intercourse and determines our fate.” “I know too well that we cannot escape from the inexorable laws of fate ... and that it would be folly to desire to oppose what is Necessity and was so arranged from all eternity. I admit that consolation drawn from the impossibility of avoiding an evil is not very well fitted to make the evil lighter, but still there is something calming in the thought that the bitter which we must taste is not the result of our fault, but pertains to the design and arrangement of Providence.”