We will now quit the Rhine Operations, which indeed are not now of moment; Friedrich being suddenly the key of events again. I add only, what readers are vaguely aware of, that King Louis did not die; that he lay at death's door for precisely one week (8th-15th August), symptoms mending on the 15th. In the interim,--Grand-Almoner Fitz-James (Uncle of our Conte di Spinelli) insisting that a certain Cardinal, who had got the Sacraments in hand, should insist; and endless ministerial intrigue being busy,--moribund Louis had, when it came to the Sacramental point, been obliged to dismiss his Chateauroux. Poor Chateauroux; an unfortunate female; yet, one almost thinks, the best man among them: dismissed at Metz here, and like to be mobbed! That was the one issue of King Louis's death-sickness. Sublime sickness; during which all Paris wept aloud, in terror and sorrow, like a child that has lost its mother and sees a mastiff coming; wept sublimely, and did the Prayers of Forty-Hours; and called King Louis Le BIEN-AIME (The Well-beloved):--merely some obstruction in the royal bowels, it turned out;--a good cathartic, and the Prayers of Forty-Hours, quite reinstated matters. Nay reinstated even Chateauroux, some time after,--"the Devil being well again," and, as the Proverb says, quitting his monastic view. Reinstated Chateauroux: but this time, poor creature, she continued only about a day:--"Sudden fever, from excitement," said the Doctors: "Fever? Poison, you mean!" whispered others, and looked for changes in the Ministry. Enough, oh, enough!-- Old Marshal Wade did not awaken, though bawled to by his Ligoniers and others, and much shaken about, poor old gentleman. "No artillery to speak of," murmured he; "want baggage-wagons, too!" and lay still. "Here is artillery!" answered the Official people; "With my own money I will buy you baggage-wagons!" answered the high Maria Anna, in her own name and her Prince Karl's, who are Joint-Governors there. Possibly he would have awakened, had they given him time. But time, in War especially, is the thing that is never given. Once Friedrich HAD struck in, the moment was gone by. Poor old Wade! Of him also enough. Chapter II.--FRIEDRICH MARCHES UPON PRAG, CAPTURES PRAG.