This cunning hag was past fifty years of age, and one of her legs was shorter than the other leg at least by half an inch; she stooped in gait and was not much more than four feet high, and was remarkably hideous, even for a continental woman, her face being a mass of wrinkles, her pointed chin covered with wiry sprouts of grey hair, while her teeth were reduced to a few yellow fangs; thus, great was my father's astonishment, when he perused the note which she gave him faithfully at the palace-gate, just as he was mounting his charger to join the evening parade of his boasted battalion of the Guards. He was too familiar with the handwriting of the great Frederick to doubt for a moment the authenticity of the note; but he could by no means reconcile its singular contents with the extreme years and appalling aspect of the old witch who brought it, and he surveyed them alternately for some time, in utter bewilderment, till the "P.S." about Spandau, that formidable state prison in Brandenburg, made him dread a trip there in person, if the king's orders were trifled with or delayed; so turning with repugnance from the woman, who continued to grin and drop endless curtsies by his side, he summoned the sergeant-major. "Who is the tallest of our grenadiers?" he asked. "Otto Vogelwiede," replied the sergeant, with a profound salute. "How tall is he?" "Six feet, eight inches and a quarter." "Is he on parade with his company?" "No, Herr Colonel--on duty." "Where?" "With the guard at the Zeug-haus." (This was the arsenal on the narrow bridge over the Spree.) "Have him relieved by the next file for duty, and brought here immediately." Private Vogelwiede, a sturdy Silesian campaigner, who had been wounded at Cunnersdorf, and had served under my father in all the great battles of the Seven Years' War, soon appeared at the palace, with a mingled expression of surprise and alarm on his large visage, supposing that some misdemeanour was to be alleged against him; but this soon changed into downright horror, when my father, with a manner oddly indicative of half comicality and entire commiseration, read the king's peremptory order, and pointed to the blooming bride. "Sturm und Gewitter!" swore the luckless grenadier in great wrath; "do you mean to say, Herr Colonel, that I am to marry this old bag of bones--this very shrivling?" "My poor Vogelwiede, it is marry, or march to Spandau." "Ach Gott, what an old vampire it is!" said Vogelwiede, shuddering. "I am utterly bewildered, comrade," said my father. "In mercy to me, Herr Colonel, tell me _what_ I have done that I am to be punished thus?" "I can't say, my poor fellow, that I understand the affair in any way; but we all know our father Frederick, and that the dose, however nauseous, must be swallowed. You must either be chained to her, or to a thirty-six pound shot in Spandau--a companion you will not get rid of, even by day."