KING. "'Messieurs, Messieurs, it is of no use even to think of it.' And taking off his hat," slightly raising his hat, as salutation and finale, "he retired precipitately behind the curtain of the interior corner of the tent," says the reporter: EXIT King! ROBINSON (totally flurried, to Podewils). "'Your Excellency, France will abandon Prussia, will sacrifice Prussia to self-interest.' PODEWILS. "'No, no! France will not deceive us; we have not deceived France.'" (SCENE CLOSES; CURTAIN FALLS.) [State-Paper Office (Robinson to Harrington, Breslau, 9th August, 1741); Raumer, pp. 106-110. Compare _OEuvres de Frederic,_ ii. 84; and Valori, i. 119, 122.] The unsuccessfulest negotiation well imaginable by a public man. Strehlen, Monday, 7th August, 1741:--Friedrich has vanished into the interior of his tent; and the two Diplomatic gentlemen, the wind struck out of them in this manner, remain gazing at one another. Here truly is a young Royal gentleman that knows his own mind, while so many do not. Unspeakable imbroglio of negotiations, mostly insane, welters over all the Earth; the Belleisles, the Aulic Councils, the British Georges, heaping coil upon coil: and here, notably, in that now so extremely sordid murk of wiggeries, inane diplomacies and solemn deliriums, dark now and obsolete to all creatures, steps forth one little Human Figure, with something of sanity in it: like a star, like a gleam of steel,--shearing asunder your big balloons, and letting out their diplomatic hydrogen;--salutes with his hat, "Gentlemen, Gentlemen, it is of no use!" and vanishes into the interior of his tent. It is to Excellency Robinson, among all the sons of Adam then extant, that we owe this interesting Passage of History,--authentic glimpse, face to face, of the young Friedrich in those extraordinary circumstances: every feature substantially as above, and recognizable for true. Many Despatches his Excellency wrote in this world,--sixty or eighty volumes of them still left,--but among them is this One: the angriest of mankind cannot say that his Excellency lived and embassied quite in vain!