And veiled, too, in such a way that you do not notice any veil,--the young King being, as we often intimate, a master in this art. Which useful circumstance has done him much ill with readers and mankind. For if you intend to interest readers,--that is to say, idle neighbors, and fellow-creatures in need of gossip,--there is nothing like unveiling yourself: witness Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and many other poor waste creatures, going off in self-conflagration, for amusement of the parish, in that manner. But may not a man have something other on hand with his Existence than that of "setting fire to it [such the process terribly IS], to show the people a fine play of colors, and get himself applauded, and pathetically blubbered over?" Alas, my friends!-- It is certain there was seldom such a life-element as this of Friedrich's in Summer, 1741. Here is the enormous jumbling of a World broken loose; boiling as in very chaos; asking of him, him more than any other, "How? What?" Enough to put GLOIRE out of his head; and awaken thoughts,--terrors, if you were of apprehensive turn! Surely no young man of twenty-nine more needed all the human qualities than Friedrich now. The threatenings, the seductions, big Belleisle hallucinations,--the perils to you infinite, if you MISS the road. Friedrich did not miss it, as is well known; he managed to pick it out from that enormous jumble of the elements, and victoriously arrived by it, he alone of them all. Which is evidence of silent or latent faculty in him, still more wonderful than the loud-resounding ones of which the world has heard. Probably there was not, in his history, any chapter more significant of human faculty than this, which is not on record at all. Chapter III. -- GRAND REVIEW AT STREHLEN: NEIPPERG TAKES AIM AT BRESLAU, BUT ANOTHER HITS IT. A day or two before that famous Audience of Hyndford and Robinson's, Neipperg had quitted his impregnable Camp at Neisse, and taken the field again; in the hope of perhaps helping Robinson's Negotiation by an inverse method. Should Robinson's offers not prove attractive enough, as is to be feared, a push from behind may have good effects. Neipperg intends to have a stroke on Breslau; to twitch Breslau out of Friedrich's hands, by a private manoeuvre on new resources that have offered themselves. [_ Helden-Geschichte,_ i. 982, and ii. 227.]