He pressed the greyhound closer to his breast; deep silence reigned in the room. The wind howled dismally through the trees in the garden; a sudden blast dashed some fallen twigs against the low window, in front of which Frederick worked, and it sounded as if ghostly hands were knocking there. The wind whispered and murmured as if the voices of the night and the spirits of the flowers and the trees wished to bring the king a greeting. Suddenly Alkmene uttered a long, distressful howl, and ran to the door, and scratched and whined until the servants took heart and entered the room. The king lay groaning in his arm-chair, his eyes glazed, and blood flowing from his pale lips. His physician and a surgeon were summoned at once, and the king was bled and his forehead rubbed with strengthening salts. He awoke once more to life and its torments; and for a few weeks the heroic mind conquered death and bodily decrepitude. But the ride on Condé on the fourth of July was nevertheless his last. After that day Frederick never left his "dark house." When the king of the desert, when the lion feels that his end is approaching, he goes to the forest, seeks the densest jungle and profoundest solitude, and lies down to die. Nature has ordained that no one shall desecrate by his presence the last death-agony of the king of the desert. His Sans-Souci was the great king's holy and solitary retreat; and there it was that the hero and king breathed his last sigh on earth, without murmur or complaint. He died on the morning of the 17th August, in the year 1786. A great man had ceased to live. There lay the inanimate form of him who had been called King Frederick the Second. But a star arose in the heavens, and wise men gave it the name Frederick's Honor. The same star still shines in the firmament, and seems to greet us and Prussia: Frederick's Honor! BOOK II. CHAPTER I. AFTER THE KING'S DEATH. "The king is dead! Frederick the Second is no more! I come, your majesty, to bring you this sad intelligence!" These were the words with which the minister Herzberg, accompanied by the valet Rietz, walked up to the bed of the prince royal, Frederick William, on the night of the seventeenth of August, and aroused him from his slumber. "What is it? Who speaks to me?" asked the prince royal, rising in bed, and staring at the two men who stood before him--the one with a sad, the other with a joyful expression of countenance. "I ventured to speak to your majesty," answered Herzberg; "I, the former minister of King Frederick the Second. His majesty departed this life half an hour since, and I have come to bring the sad tidings in person. King Frederick the Second is dead!" "Long live King Frederick William the Second!" cried the valet Rietz, as he busily assisted the king in dressing himself and finishing his toilet.