Von Katte was a young man of good family and strange but charming personality, who, as soon as he came to Court, being three or four years older than Frederick, exercised a strong attraction upon the latter. The two were always together, and finally, enraged by the harshness of the royal father, they plotted flight to England. They were arrested, and Katte, accused of treason to the throne, was condemned to death. That this sentence was pronounced, not so much for political reasons, as in order to do despite to the affection between him and the Crown Prince, is strongly suggested by the circumstances. Von Katte was sent from a distance in order to be executed at Cüstrin, in the fortress where the Prince was confined, and with instructions that the latter should witness his execution. Carlyle, in his life of Frederick II., says:— “Katte wore, by order, a brown dress exactly like the Prince’s; the Prince is already brought down into a lower room to see Katte as he passes, (to see Katte die has been the royal order, but they smuggled that into abeyance) and Katte knows he shall see him.” [Besserer, the chaplain of the Garrison, quoted by Carlyle, describing the scene as they approached the Castle, says:—‘Here, after long wistful looking about, he did get sight of his beloved Jonathan at a window in the Castle, from whom, he, with politest and most tender expression, speaking in French, took leave, with no little emotion of sorrow.] “_Pardonnez moi, mon cher Katte_” cried Friedrich. “_La mort est douce pour un si aimable Prince_,” said Katte, and fared on; round some angle of the Fortress it appears; not in sight of Friedrich, who sank in a faint, and had seen his last glimpse of Katte in this world.’ _Life of Frederick II._, vol. 2, p. 489. [Sidenote: _Frederick the Great_] Frederick’s grief and despair were extreme for a time. Then his royal father found him a wife, in the Princess Elizabeth of Brunswick, whom he obediently married, but in whom he showed little interest—their meetings growing rarer and rarer till at last they became merely formal. Later, and after his accession, he spent most of his leisure time when away from the cares of war and political re-organisation, at his retreat at Sans-Souci, afar from feminine society (a fact which provoked Voltaire’s sarcasms), and in the society of his philosophic and military friends, to many of whom he was much attached. Von Kupffer has unearthed from his poems printed at Sans-Souci in 1750 the following, addressed to Count Von Kaiserlinck, a favorite companion, on whom he bestowed the by-name of Cesarion:—