Upon the whole, my emissaries and I had, at that time, the most absolute and unprecedented sway. The subject felt all the weight of my despotic oppression, and the lash of my scourge. Frankness in scientific debate, cordiality in mutual communication, and hilarity in company, entirely disappeared. My spies were dreaded every where. Upright magistrates, who pronounced sentence according to the dictates of right and reason, were dismissed; those of the clergy, who ventured to preach common sense, lost their places, and were banished the country; the most important trials were superseded, because the verdicts were expected to fall out against me and my friends. Several of the public offices I caused to be given to my creatures; I forged warrants of arrest, and orders of the cabinet; rewarded spies, informers, and runners, with large sums of money and honourable offices; nay, I had, without any apparent reason, a young lady arrested, merely because I dreaded that her beauty would supplant me. In a word, whatever did not pass through my hands, or was not subservient to my schemes, was sure to be crushed. A certain man in office, who repeatedly had embezzled the public money, sued for my protection; I had him created a nobleman, and chief judge of the Criminal Court. But, in return for this good office, he was, from gratitude, bound to give his verdict in every cause that concerned either me or my friends, as I would have it. He did indeed once attempt to recede from it, and to have it his own way, in the affair with Miss Belderbush; this was the name of the young lady, just before mentioned; but I had influence enough to punish him for his temerity; he was dismissed, and banished the kingdom. This was likewise the lot of the Countess D----, and the Privy Counsellor G----, against whom a suspicion of being concerned in a scheme of poisoning was urged, and who were compelled to leave the P---- dominions. Such was at that time the power of the trumpeter’s daughter, whose favour, thirty years back, might be purchased for a dollar.