Ziethen, for minor good feats, had been made Lieutenant-Colonel, the very day he marched; his Commission dates May 16th, 1741; and on the morrow he handsels it in this pretty manner. He is now forty-two; much held down hitherto; being a man of inarticulate turn, hot and abrupt in his ways,--liable always to multifarious obstruction, and unjust contradiction from his fellow-creatures. But Winterfeld's report on this occasion was emphatic; and Ziethen shoots rapidly up henceforth; Colonel within the year, General in 1744; and more and more esteemed by Friedrich during their subsequent long life together. Though perhaps the two most opposite men in Nature, and standing so far apart, they fully recognized one another in their several spheres. For Ziethen too had good eyesight, though in abstruse sort:--rugged simple son of the moorlands; nourished, body and soul, on orthodox frugal oatmeal (so to speak), with a large sprinkling of fire and iron thrown in! A man born poor: son of some poor Squirelet in the Ruppin Country;--"used to walk five miles into Ruppin on Saturday nights," in early life, "and have his hair done into club, which had to last him till the week following." [_Militair-Lexikon,_ iv. 310.] A big-headed, thick-lipped, decidedly ugly little man. And yet so beautiful in his ugliness: wise, resolute, true, with a dash of high uncomplaining sorrow in him;--not the "bleached nigger" at all, as Print-Collectors sometimes call him! No; but (on those oatmeal terms) the Socrates-Odysseus, the valiant pious Stoic, and much-enduring man. One of the best Hussar Captains ever built. By degrees King Friedrich and he grew to be,--with considerable tiffs now and then, and intervals of gloom and eclipse,--what we might call sworn friends. On which and on general grounds, Ziethen has become, like Friedrich himself, a kind of mythical person with the soldiery and common people; more of a demi-god than any other of Friedrich's Captains. Friedrich is always eagerly in quest of men like Ziethen; specially so at this time. He has meditated much on the bad figure his Cavalry made at Mollwitz; and is already drilling them anew in multiplex ways, during those leisure days he now has,--with evident success on the next trial, this very Summer. And, as his wont is, will not rest satisfied there. But strives incessantly, for a series of summers and years to come, till he bring them to perfection; or to the likeness of his own thought, which probably was not far from that. Till at length it can be said his success became world-famous; and he had such Seidlitzes and Ziethens as were not seen before or since. [MAP FOR THE FIRST AND SECOND SILESIAN WAR HERE--missing] END OF BOOK 12