the heart of his subjects, which he certainly did, notwithstanding our oppression and injustice. It must be confessed, that good master Rietz carried his insolence rather too far. The wealth which, through just and unjust means, had flowed into his coffers had inflated him with pride and vanity; he became presumptive, brutal, and rough; he therefore thought he might bear down every thing before him by main force. The tricks, which he played behind his master’s back, deprived the King of a share of the affections of his people; distress, fear, and smothered resentment, had got possession of every heart. Very often the blood of the desperate wretch would flow from this sole consideration, that nothing was to be done with the K--g, let the cause be ever so just. This indeed was too hard. I have, however, pretty well succeeded in mortifying his presumption. This proud _ci-devant_ gardener’s boy once took it into his head to fall in love with Madam B----s. He had even gone so far as to project a marriage with her, when at once a warrant was issued from the cabinet, by virtue of which the lady was removed from the Berlin stage, and an end was put to the farce. His mind was tortured with mortification and shame, and he found himself reluctantly obliged to see his fair one, without friend or protector, cast on the wide world. But the wretch deceived me after all, and cringed and flattered till I winked at his presumption, and let him bear away his prize. As the K--g evinced a great predilection for every thing supernatural, a predilection which he had derived from his intercourse with the Rosicrusians, and from all the magic tricks they had played off before him, I was highly pleased at the arrival of the Chevalier Pinetti de Mercy. This man sought my protection, and I was very willing to grant it. Furnished with numberless recommendations, and dressed out, like a nobleman, with laced and embroidered clothes, watches, and rings, set with valuable brilliants, his access to the king was not very difficult. This fellow in fact was nothing but a charlatan, but he was well skilled in the art of deception, so that I saw his mountebankism might be of use to me and my party. His tricks with cards consisted in nothing but legerdemain, and I placed no value on them; on the other hand, his physical deceptions, as he pleased to term them, were the more entertaining. The K--g was highly pleased with his physical deceptions, made him a present of five thousand dollars for the erection of a theatre, and gave him the title of Professor of Physic of the Court, with a pension of six hundred dollars a year. This prodigality of course rouzed the envy of the philosophers of Berlin, and, among others, one Professor Kofmann ventured to publish a treatise on Pinetti’s work, in which he called his paltry tricks the _ne plus ultra_ of natural philosophy. The Professor, in this pamphlet, endeavoured to prove, that every thing was pretty clear and