Finkenstein and Borck, merciful persons, and always of the English party, were again profoundly sorry. Borck has a blaze of temper in him withal; we hear he apprised Grumkow, at one point of the dialogue, that he, Grumkow, was a "scoundrel," so Dubourgay calls it,--which was one undeniable truth offered there that day. But what can anything profit? The Message is: "Whatever the answer now be from England, I will have nothing to do with it. Negative, procrastinative, affirmative, to me it shall be zero. You, Madam, have to choose, for Wilhelmina, between Weissenfels and Schwedt; otherwise I myself will choose: and upon you and her will alight Oranienburg, outer darkness, and just penalties of mutiny against the Authority set over you by God and men. Weissenfels or Schwedt: choose straightway." This is the King's message by these Three. "You can inform the King," replied her Majesty, [Wilhelmina, i. 188.] "that he will never make me consent to render my Daughter miserable; and that, so long as a breath of life (UN SOUFFLE DE VIE) remains in me, I will not permit her to take either the one or the other of those persons." "Is that enough? For you, Sir," added her Majesty, turning to Grumkow, "for you, Sir, who are the author of my misfortunes, may my curse fall upon you and your house! You have this day killed me. But I doubt not, Heaven will hear my prayer, and avenge these wrongs." [Dubourgay, 28th January, 1730; Wilhelmina, i. 188 (who suppresses the maledictory part).]--And herewith to a bed of sickness, as the one refuge left! Her Majesty does now, in fact, take to bed at Berlin; "fallen very ill," it would appear; which gives some pause to Friedrich Wilhelm till he ascertain. "Poorly, for certain," report the Doctors, even Friedrich Wilhelm's Doctor. The humane Doctors have silently given one another the hint; for Berlin is one tempest of whispers about her Majesty's domestic sorrows, "Poorly, for interesting reasons:--perhaps be worse before she is better, your Majesty!"--"Hmph!" thinks Friedrich Wilhelm out at Potsdam. And then the treacherous Ramen reports that it is all shamming; and his Majesty, a Bear, though a loving one, is driven into wrath again; and so wavers from side to side.