Their dialogues and arguings on the matter, here and elsewhere, are lost in air; or gone wholly to a single point unexpectedly preserved for us. One day, riding through some village, Priort some say his Majesty calls it, some give another name,--advocate Seckendorf, in the fervor of pleading and arguing, said some word, which went like a sudden flash of lightning through the dark places of his Majesty's mind, and never would go out of it again while he lived after. In passionate moments, his Majesty spoke of it sometimes, a clangorous pathos in his tones, as of a thing hideous, horrible, never to be forgotten, which had killed him,--death from a friend's hand. "It was the 17th of April, 1733, [All the Books (Forster, ii. 142, for one) mention this utterance of his Majesty, on what occasion we shall see farther on; and give the date "1732," not 1733: but except as amended above, it refuses to have any sense visible at this distance. The Village of Priort is in the Potsdam region.] riding through Priort, a man said something to me: it was as if you had turned a dagger about in my heart. That man was he that killed me; there and then I got my death!" A strange passion in that utterance: the deep dumb soul of his Majesty, of dumb-poetic nature, suddenly brought to a fatal clearness about certain things. "O Kaiser, Kaiser of the Holy Roman Empire; and this is your return for my loyal faith in you? I had nearly killed my Fritz, my Wilhelmina, broken my Feekin's heart and my own, and reduced the world to ruins for your sake. And because I was of faith more than human, you took me for a dog? O Kaiser, Kaiser!"--Poor Friedrich Wilhelm, he spoke of this often, in excited moments, in his later years; the tears running down his cheeks, and the whole man melted into tragic emotion: but if Fritz were there, the precious Fritz whom he had almost killed for their sake, he would say, flashing out into proud rage, "There is one that will avenge me, though; that one! DA STEHT EINER, DER MICH RACHEN WIRD!" [Forster, ii. 153.] Yes, your Majesty; perhaps that one. And it will be seen whether YOU were a rotatory Clothes-horse to dry their Pragmatic linen upon, or something different a good deal. Chapter VI. -- KING AUGUST MEDITATING GREAT THINGS FOR POLAND.