There is nothing more pathetic in the range of his works, if in that of our literature, than the account of the relations of father and son in the domestic history of the Prussian Court, from the first estrangement between them--the young Friedrich in his prison at Cuestrin, the old Friedrich gliding about seeking shelter from ghosts, mourning for Absalom--to the reconciliation, the end, and the afterthoughts:-- The last breath of Friedrich Wilhelm having fled, Friedrich hurried to a private room; sat there all in tears; looking back through the gulfs of the Past, upon such a Father now rapt away for ever. Sad all and soft in the moonlight of memory--the lost Loved One all in the right as we now see, we all in the wrong!--This, it appears, was the Son's fixed opinion. Sever, years hence here is how Friedrich concludes the _History_ of his Father, written with a loyal admiration throughout: "We have left under silence the domestic chagrins of this great Prince; readers must have some indulgence for the faults of the children, in consideration of the virtues of such a Father." All in tears he sits at present, meditating these sad things. In a little while the Old Dessauer, about to leave for Dessau, ventures in to the Crown Prince, Crown Prince no longer; "embraces his knees," offers weeping his condolence, his congratulation; hopes withal that his sons and he will be continued in their old posts, and that he the Old Dessauer "will have the same authority as in the late reign." Friedrich's eyes, at this last clause, flash out tearless, strangely Olympian. "In your posts I have no thought of making change; in your posts yes; and as to authority I know of none there can be but what resides in the king that is sovereign," which, as it were, struck the breath out of the Old Dessauer; and sent him home with a painful miscellany of feelings, astonishment not wanting among them. At an after hour the same night Friedrich went to Berlin, met by acclamation enough. He slept there not without tumult of dreams, one may fancy; and on awakening next morning the first sound he heard was that of the regiment Glasenap under his windows, swearing fealty to the new King. He sprang out of bed in a tempest of emotion; bustled distractedly to and fro, wildly weeping. Poellnitz, who came into the anteroom, found him in this state, "half-dressed, with dishevelled hair, in tears, and as if beside himself." "These huzzahings only tell me what I have lost," said the new King. "He was in great suffering," suggested Poellnitz; "he is now at rest." True, he suffered; but he was here with us; and now----! Carlyle has said of Dante's _Francesco_ "that it is a thing woven as of rainbows on a ground of eternal black." The phrase, well applied to the _Inferno_, is a perhaps half-conscious verdict on his own tenderness as exhibited in his life and in his works. CHAPTER IX