"Der teufel! der teufel!" groaned the grenadier, who was actually perspiring with the idea of the whole affair, while the old woman, with her grey hairs, yellow fangs, and grimy wrinkles, grinned like some gnome sent by the Ruberzahl, or a witch from the Blocksberg; and to him it seemed as the sentence of death when my father said,-- "Send for the chaplain of the brigade, and desire him to bring his prayer-book and surplice." "Oh, Colonel, remember Cunnersdorf, and how when a boy I held Velt-marshal Keith dying in my arms at Hochkirchen--I was his favourite orderly," urged poor Vogelwiede, melted almost to tears; but it was espouse or Spandau, and he was married in the military chapel, to his own intense misery, to the utter bewilderment of his comrades, who knew not what to make of the affair, and to the exulting joy of the hideous old crone. Six months after, Frederick returned from the reviews at Halle to Berlin, and desired my father to bring before him the couple who had been married by his orders. "Ach Gott!" he exclaimed, on seeing the grinning hag and the miserable grenadier, who already looked grey and worn; "what the devil is this you have done, Herr Colonel?" "I obeyed your majesty's singular command," replied my father, haughtily. "Is this the woman to whom you have married Otto Vogelwiede, the premier grenadier of my Guards?" "'Tis the woman who bore your majesty's somewhat peremptory order, as all the corps can testify." "Der teufel! she is no more to compare to the one who received it, than a cup of Dresden dima is to a bowl of Bunzlau clay! But I shall find her out yet, and married she shall be to the next tallest man in the battalion, so sure as Heaven hears me! and as for you, Colonel--dummer teufel--as for you----" "No more dummer teufel (blockhead) than yourself, Frederick of Prussia," exclaimed my father, furiously. "This to me? Have you forgotten my services, and that day at Amoneburg, when side by side we built up breastworks of the fallen dead, and fired over them?" "I have not Herr Colonel; but potztausend!--" "Remember that I am the well-born Warriston von Warriston, which in plain Scottish means _of that ilk_, and I shall not be sworn at even by a king of Prussia." Frederick danced with rage in his old jackboots, and dashed his Rosbach pipe upon the floor, exclaiming-- "Out of my sight, sir! Begone to your Bergschotten.* I have done with you!" * Scots Highlanders; this is a true anecdote of Frederick's caprice.