And so the Prince is off in the Autumn sunset, driving down the peaty hollow of the Warta, through unpicturesque country, which produces Wreechs and incomparable flowers nevertheless. Yes; and if he look a six miles to the right, there is the smoke of the evening kettles from Zorndorf, rising into the sky; and across the River, a twenty miles to the left, is Kunersdorf: poor sleepy sandy hamlets; where nettles of the Devil are to be plucked one day!-- "The beautiful Wreech drove off to Tamsel," her fine house; I to this wretched tavern; where, a couple of hours after that conversation, I began writing it all down, and have nothing else to do for the night. Your Excellency's most moral, stiff-necked, pipe-clayed and extremely obedient, "VON SCHULENBUBG." [Forster, iii. 65-71.] This young man may be orthodox on Predestination, and outwardly growing all that a Papa could wish; but here are strange heterodoxies, here is plenty of mutinous capricious fire in the interior of him, Herr General! In fact, a young man unfortunately situated; already become solitary in Creation; has not, except himself, a friend in the world available just now. Tempestuous Papa storms one way, tempestuous Mamma Nature another; and between the outsids and the inside there are inconsistencies enough. Concerning the fair Wreech of Tamsel, with her complexion of lily and rose, there ensued by and by much whispering, and rumoring underbreath; which has survived in the apocryphal Anecdote-Books, not in too distinct a form. Here, from first hand, are three words, which we may take to be the essence of the whole. Grumkow reporting, in a sordid, occasionally smutty, spy manner, to his Seckendorf, from Berlin, eight or ten months hence, has this casual expression: "He [King Friedrich Wilhelm] told me in confidence that Wreech, the Colonel's Wife, is--to P. R. (Prince-Royal); and that Wreech vowed he would not own it for his. And his Majesty in secret is rather pleased," adds the smutty spy. [Grumkow to Seckendorf, Berlin, 20th August, 1732 (Forster, iii. 112).] Elsewhere I have read that the poor object, which actually came as anticipated (male or female, I forget), did not live long;--nor had Friedrich, by any opportunity, another child in this world. Domestic Tamsel had to allay itself as it best could; and the fair Wreech became much a stranger to Friedrich,--surprisingly so to Friedrich the KING, as perhaps we may see.-- Predestination, GNADENWAHL, Herr General: what is orthodoxy on Predestination, with these accompaniments! [For Wreech, see _Benekendorf,_ v. 94; for Schulenburg, ib. 26;--and _Militair-Lexikon,_ iii. 432, 433, and iv. 268, 269. Vacant on the gossiping points; cautiously official, both these.] We go now to the Second Letter and the Third,--from Landsberg about a fortnight later:-- No. 2. TO HIS EXCELLENCY (shovelful of titles) VON GRUMKOW, IN BERLIN. "LANDSBERG, 19th October, 1731.