"His (Katte's) eyes were mostly directed to God; and we (Muller and I), on our part, strove to hold his heart up heavenwards, by presenting the examples of those who had died in the Lord,--as of God's Son himself, and Stephen, and the Thief on the Cross,--till, under such discoursing, we approached the Castle. Here, after long wistful looking about, he did get sight of his beloved Jonathan," Royal Highness the Crown-Prince, "at a window in the Castle; from whom he, with the politest and most tender expression, spoken in French, took leave, with no little emotion of sorrow." [Letter to Katte's Father (Extract, in Preuss, _Friedrich mit Freunden und Verwandten,_ p. 7).] President Munchow and the Commandant were with the Prince; whose emotions one may fancy; but not describe. Seldom did any Prince or man stand in such a predicament. Vain to say, and again say: "In the name of God, I ask you, stop the execution till I write to the King!" Impossible that; as easily stop the course of the stars. And so here Katte comes; cheerful loyalty still beaming on his face, death now nigh. "PARDONNEZ-MOI, MON CHER KATTE!" cried Priedrich in a tone: Pardon me, dear Katte; oh, that this should be what I have done for you!--"Death is sweet for a Prince I love so well," said Katte, "LA MORT EST DOUCE POUR UN SI AIMABLE PRINCE;" [Wilhelmina, i. 307; Preuss, i. 45.] and fared on,--round some angle of the Fortress, it appears; not in sight of Friedrich; who sank into a faint, and had seen his last glimpse of Katte in this world. The body lay all day upon the scaffold, by royal order; and was buried at night obscurely in the common churchyard; friends, in silence, took mark of the place against better times,--and Katte's dust now lies elsewhere, among that of his own kindred. "Never was such a transaction before or since, in Modern History," cries the angry reader: "cruel, like the grinding of human hearts under millstones, like--" Or indeed like the doings of the gods, which are cruel, though not that alone? This is what, after much sorting and sifting, I could get to know about the definite facts of it. Commentary, not likely to be very final at this epoch, the reader himself shall supply at discretion. END OF BOOK 7