EGO. "'He who excels him;--for instance, he who could win Twelve Battles!'--He put on his modest air. I have always said, it is easy to be modest, if you are in funds. He seemed as though he had not understood me, and said:-- KING. "'When the cabal which, during forty years, the Prince had always had to struggle with in his Army, were plotting mischief on him, they used to take advantage of the evening time, when his spirits, brisk enough in the morning, were jaded by the fatigues of the day. It was thus they persuaded him to undertake his bad March on Mainz' [March not known to me]. EGO. "'Regarding yourself, Sire, and the Rhine Campaign, you teach me nothing. I know everything your Majesty did, and even what you said. I could relate to you your Journeys to Strasburg, to Holland, and what passed in a certain Boat. Apropos of this Rhine Campaign, one of our old Generals, whom I often set talking, as one reads an old Manuscript, has told me how astonished he was to see a young Prussian Officer, whom he did not know, answering a General of the late King, who had given out the order, Not to go a-foraging: "And I, Sir, I order you to go; our Army needs it; in short, I will have it so (JE LE VEUX)!--"' KING. "'You look at me too much from the favorable side! Ask these Gentlemen about my humors and my caprices; they will tell you fine things of me.' "We got talking of some Anecdotes which are consigned to, or concealed in, certain obscure Books. 'I have been much amused, said I to the King, (with the big cargo of Books, true or false, written by French Refugees, which perhaps are unknown in France itself.' [Discourses a little on this subject.] KING. "'Where did you pick up all these fine old Pieces? These would amuse me on an evening; better than the conversation of my Doctor of the Sorbonne [one Peyrau, a wandering creature, not otherwise of the least interest to us], [Nicolai, _Anekdoten,_ ii. 133 n.] whom I have here, and whom I am trying to convert.' EGO. "'I found them all in a Bohemian Library, where I sat diverting myself for two Winters.' KING. "'How, then? Two Winters in Bohemia? What the devil were you doing there! Is it long since?'