He determined to escape to England; how his flight miscarried, and how great was the anger of Colonel Frederic William against the deserter, are well known. With the days of his imprisonment in Kuestrin, and his residence at Ruppin, his education began in earnest. The horrors he had experienced had called forth in him new powers. He had borne all the terrors of death, and the most bitter humiliation of princely pride. In the solitude of his prison he had reflected on the great riddle of life,--on death, and what was to follow after it. He had perceived that nothing remained to him but submission, patience, and quiet endurance. But bitter corroding misfortune is not a school which develops good alone: it gives birth also to many faults. He learnt to hide his decisions in his own breast, to look with suspicion on men and use them as his tools, to deceive and cajole them with a cold astuteness which was foreign to his nature. He flattered the cowardly, mean Grumbkow, and was glad when he gradually won the bad man to his purposes; he had for years to struggle warily against the dislike and distrust of his hard father. His nature always resisted this humiliation, and he endeavoured by bitter scorn to atone to his injured self-respect; his heart, which glowed for everything noble, saved him from becoming a hard egotist, but it did not make him milder or more conciliatory, and when he had become a great man and a wise prince, he still retained some traces of narrow-minded cunning from this time of servitude. The lion had at times not been ashamed to scratch like a spiteful cat.