But with these sentiments, I am far from condemning Cato and Otho. The latter had no fine moment in his life, except that of his death. [Breaks off into Verse:] "Croyez que si j'etais Voltaire, Et particulier comme lui, Me contentant du necessaire, Je verrais voltiger la fortune legere," --Or,to wring the water and the jingle out of it, and give the substance in Prose:-- "Yes, if I were Voltaire and a private man, I could with much composure leave Fortune to her whirlings and her plungings; to me, contented with the needful, her mad caprices and sudden topsy-turvyings would be amusing rather than tremendous. "I know the ennui attending on honors, the burdensome duties, the jargon of grinning flatterers, those pitiabilities of every kind, those details of littleness, with which you have to occupy yourself if set on high on the stage of things. Foolish glory has no charm for me, though a Poet and King: when once Atropos has ended me forever, what will the uncertain honor of living in the Temple of Memory avail? One moment of practical happiness is worth a thousand years of imaginary in such Temple.--Is the lot of high people so very sweet, then? Pleasure, gentle ease, true and hearty mirth, have always fled from the great and their peculiar pomps and labors. "No, it is not fickle Fortune that has ever caused my sorrows; let her smile her blandest, let her frown her fiercest on me, I should sleep every night, refusing her the least worship. But our respective conditions are our law; we are bound and commanded to shape our temper to the employment we have undertaken. Voltaire in his hermitage, in a Country where is honesty and safety, can devote himself in peace to the life of the Philosopher, as Plato has described it. But as to me, threatened with shipwreck, I must consider how, looking the tempest in the face, I can think, can live and can die as a King:-- Pour moi, menace du naufrage, Je dois, en affrontant l'orage, Penser, vivre et mourir en roi." [_OEuvres,_ xxiii. 14.] This is of October 9th; this ends, worthily, the Lamentation-Psalms; work having now turned up, which is a favorable change. Friedrich's notion of suicide, we perceive, is by no means that of puking up one's existence, in the weak sick way of FELO DE SE; but, far different, that of dying, if he needs must, as seems too likely, in uttermost spasm of battle for self and rights to the last. From which latter notion nobody can turn him. A valiantly definite, lucid and shiningly practical soul,--with such a power of always expectorating himself into clearness again. If he do frankly wager his life in that manner, beware, ye Soubises, Karls and flaccid trivial persons, of the stroke that may chance to lie in him!-- III. RUMOR OF AN INROAD ON BERLIN SUDDENLY SETS FRIEDRICH ON MARCH THITHER: INROAD TAKES EFFECT,--WITH IMPORTANT RESULTS, CHIEFLY IN A LEFT-HAND FORM.