THE FRENCH ARE LITTLE GRATEFUL FOR THE PLEASURE DONE THEM AT SUCH RUINOUS EXPENSE. French sitting well on Prince Karl's skirts? They are not molesting Prince Karl in the smallest; never tried such a thing;--are turned away to the Brisgan, to the Upper Rhine Country; gone to besiege Freyburg there, and seize Towns; about the Lake of Constance, as if there were no Friedrich in the game! It must be owned the French do liberally pay off old scores against Friedrich,--if, except in their own imagination, they had old scores against him. No man ever delivered them from a more imminent peril; and they, the rope once cut that was strangling them, magnificently forget who cut it; and celebrate only their own distinguished conduct during and after the operation. To a degree truly wonderful. It was moonlight, clear as day that night, 23d August, when Prince Karl had to recross the Rhine, close in their neighborhood; [_Guerre de Boheme,_ iii. 196.]--and instead of harassing Prince Karl "to half or to whole ruin," as the bargain was, their distinguished conduct consisted in going quietly to their beds (old Marechal de Noailles even calling back some of his too forward subalterns), and joyfully leaving Prince Karl, then and afterwards, to cross the Rhine, and march for Bohmen, at his own perfect convenience. "Seckendorf will sit on Karl's skirts," they said: "too late for US, this season; next season, you shall see!" Such was their theory, after Louis got that cathartic, and rose from bed. Schmettau, with his importunities, which at last irritated everybody, could make nothing more of it. "Let the King of France crown his glories by the Siege of Freyburg, the conquest of Brisgau:--for behoof of the poor Kaiser, don't you observe? Hither Austria is the Kaiser's;--and furthermore, were Freyburg gone, there will be no invading of Elsass again" (which is another privately very interesting point)!