Equally with the daily accounts of his kitchen he knew how to test the calculations concerning the crown demesnes and forests, and the excise. His people had chiefly to thank the years in which he was compelled to sit as assessor at the green table at Ruppin for his power of overlooking with a sharp eye the smallest as well as the greatest affairs. But sometimes what had been so vexatious in his father's time happened to himself: his knowledge of business details was not sufficient, so that here and there, just like his father, he commanded what violently interfered with the life of his Prussians, and could not be carried out. The wounds inflicted upon Frederic by the great catastrophe had scarcely been healed, when a new misfortune befell him as great almost in its consequences as the first. The King forced a wife upon him. Heartrending is the woe with which he strove to escape the bride chosen for him. "I do not care how frivolous she may be, as long as she is not a simpleton, that, I cannot bear." It was all in vain. With bitterness and indignation did he regard this marriage shortly before it took place. Never did he overcome the effect of this sorrow, by which his father ruined his inward life. His most susceptible feelings, and his loving heart, were sold in the roughest way. Not only was he made unhappy by it, but also an excellent woman who was deserving of a better fate. The Princess Elizabeth of Bevern had many noble qualities of heart; she was not a simpleton, she was not ugly, and might have passed well through the bitter criticisms of the princesses of the royal house. But we fear that, if she had been an angel, the pride of the son, who was subjected to the useless barbarity of compulsion, would still have protested against her. And yet this union was not always so cold as has been supposed. For six years did the goodness of heart and tact of the Princess succeed in reconciling the Crown Prince to her. In the retirement of Rheinsberg she was in fact the lady of his house and the amiable hostess of his guests, and it was reported by the Austrian agents that her influence was on the ascendant. But her modest clinging nature was too deficient in the qualities calculated to fix the attachment of an intellectual man. It was necessary for the sprightly children of the house of Brandenburg to give vent to their excitable natures by ready and pointed humour. The Princess, when she was excited, was as quiet as if paralysed, and she was wanting in the easy grace of society. This did not suit. Even the way in which she loved her husband, dutifully and submissively, as if repelled and overwhelmed by the greatness of his mind, was little interesting to the Prince, who had adopted, together with French intellectual culture, not a little of the frivolity of French society.