hypochondria, irritated him; he began to discover that the aged marquis was neither a great scholar nor a man of strong mind; the ideal he had formed of him was destroyed. The King began to quiz him on account of his sentimentality; the sensitive Frenchman begged for leave of absence, that he might travel to France for some months for his health. The King was deeply wounded at this touch of temper, and continued, in the friendly letters which he afterwards wrote to him, to quiz this morbid disposition. He said, "That it was reported that there was a _loup garou_ in France; no doubt this was the marquis as a Prussian, in his invalid guise. Did he now eat little children? This bad conduct he would not formerly have been guilty of, but men change much in travelling." The marquis remained two winters instead of a few months: when he was about to return, he sent the certificate of his physician; probably the good man was really ill, but the King was deeply wounded at this unnecessary verification from an old friend, and when the marquis returned, the old connection was spoiled. Yet the King would not give him up, but amused himself by punishing his unconfiding friend by pungent speeches and sharp jests. Then the Frenchman, most thoroughly embittered, demanded his dismissal; he obtained it, and one may discover the sorrow and anger of the King from his answer. When the marquis, in the last letter he wrote to the King before his death, once more represented, not without bitterness, how scornfully and ill he had treated an unselfish admirer, the King read his letter in silence. But he wrote sorrowfully to the widow, of his friendship for her husband, and caused a costly monument to be erected to his memory. Such was the case with most of his favourites: magical as was his power of attracting, equally demoniacal was his capacity of repelling. But it may be answered, to any one who blames this as a fault in the man, that in history there is scarcely another king who has so nobly opened his most secret soul to his friends, like Frederic.