Now it chanced that one day, about the year 1780, he had been riding in the environs of Berlin, attended only by Strutzki, his old Putkammer orderly, with the gunpowder-spotted visage. As he pottered along on his old shambling horse, with a pair of large spectacles on his nose--the royal nose, I mean--one eye was fixed on his bridle and the other on Herr Doctor Johann Georg Zimmerman's then famous but dreary work on Solitude, with his flap pockets stuffed with letters from Voltaire and Hume, general orders, proof-sheets of plays, and other rubbish, he suddenly saw something in the opinions of the Herr Doctor which displeased him, and jotting off a note on the subject, he despatched it by Strutzki. Then resuming his meditations he rode on alone into the fields, smoking a pipe which had belonged to his old and faithful comrade, Seydlitz, and which he had picked up on the field of Rosbach, when that general gave his usual signal for the Hussars to charge by flinging his pipe into the air. In a lonely place he came suddenly upon a peasant girl who possessed remarkable beauty, but that which he greatly preferred, astonishing stature. She was fully six feet, and so splendidly proportioned that Frederick reined up his horse and slung his pipe at his button-hole to observe her, which he could do for some time unobserved, as she was busy twining creepers and flowers over the front paling of a cottage named the Wild Katze, a wayside tavern. "Bey'm Henker!" thought he, "could I but get you married to one of my grenadiers, my long-legged Fraulein, what sons you might have! What recruits--what a progeny of giant children to recruit the next generation of my guards!" The tall girl now perceived the king observing her, and curtseyed and laughed, for she had no idea of his rank. His horse furniture was shabby, and his own appearance was far from being stately or imposing. He stooped about the shoulders, and had a snuffy drop at the end of his nose. Over his uniform and decorations he wore a greasy old military surtout-coat of blue cloth, lined with white merino, its buttons, sleeves, and all of the plainest kind; an old battered cocked-hat, with what had once been a white feather binding the edge of it, and its rim being perforated by musket-shot; a pair of common dragoon pistols in holsters without flaps, and a pair of rusty spurs on long jack-boots that had never been blackened since they left the maker's hands, though they were greased by Strutzki every morning. "What is your name, my handsome fraulein?" he inquired, while lifting his hat. "Gretchen Viborg," replied the tall beauty. "Are you married?" he asked with increasing suavity. "No, mein herr." "But anxious to be, doubtless," said Frederick, perpetrating a wink. Then the girl, supposing that this funny old man was about to make some proposal to her, burst into a fit of laughter, in which the king good-humouredly joined, and then asked, "How old are you?"