"The King: 'That will happen if you remain inactive, and would have done so already if I had not come. My loving cousin ought to do as I have done, and commend the result to God. I have not lain on a bed for fourteen days. I might have spared myself this trouble and sat at home with my wife if I had had no greater considerations.' "I: 'As your Kingly Majesty is content that his Electoral Highness should become mediator, you must at least allow his Electoral Highness to remain neutral.' "The King: 'Yes, till I come to his country. Such an idea is mere chaff, which the wind raises and blows away. _What kind of a thing is that Neutrality? I do not understand it!_' "I: 'Yet your Kingly Majesty understood it well in Prussia, where you yourself suggested it to his Electoral Highness and to the city of Dantzic.' "The King: 'Not to the Elector, but certainly to the city of Dantzic, for it was to my advantage.' "After this he returned again to the subject of the Duke of Pomerania, saying that the good prince had been well content with him. He would have restored him Stralsund, Rügen, Usedom, Wollin, and all the rest. The Duke had desired that his Majesty should be his father. 'But I,' said his Majesty, 'answered, I would rather be his son, as he has no children.' "Thereupon I answered: 'Yes, Kingly Majesty, that might very well be, if his Electoral Highness could only maintain the law of primogeniture in Pomerania.' "The King: 'Yes, that may be very easily maintained by my loving cousin; but he must defend it, and not, like Esau, sell it for a mess of pottage.'" Thus far goes the narrative. When the great King, the lord of half Germany, sank into the dust in battle, the wail of lamentation broke forth in all the Protestant territories. Funeral services were performed in the towns and country, endless elegies poured forth; even the enemy concealed their joy under a manly sympathy, which at that time was seldom accorded to opponents.