TWO:The king then rattled on without waiting for replies: How do you like your Cüstrin life? Do you still have as much aversion to Wusterhausen, and to wearing your shroud, as you called your uniform? Likely enough my company does not suit you. I have no French manners, and can not bring out witty sayings in the coxcomb way; and I truly consider all that as a thing to be thrown to the dogs. I am a German prince, and mean to live and die in that character. But you can now say what you have got by your caprices and obstinate heart, hating every thing that I liked, and if I distinguished any one, despising him. If an officer was put in arrest, you took to lamenting about him. Your real friends, who intended your good, you hated and calumniated. Those who flattered you and encouraged your bad purpose you caressed. You see what that has come to. In Berlin, in all Prussia, for some time back, nobody asks after you, whether you are in the world or not. And were it not that one or the other coming from Cüstrin reports you as playing tennis or wearing French hair-bags, nobody would know whether you were dead, or alive.
TWO:In May the King of Poland returned the visit of Frederick William. He came with a numerous retinue and in great splendor. During the past year his unhappy wife had died; and he, then fifty-five years of age, was seeking to bargain for the hand of Wilhelmina, hoping, by an alliance with Prussia, to promote53 some of his political schemes. The wicked old Polish king was much broken by age and his terrible debaucheries. He had recently suffered the amputation of two toes from an ulcerated foot, which no medical skill could cure. He was brought into the palace at Berlin in a sedan, covered with red velvet embroidered with gold. Wilhelmina had no suspicion of the object of his visit, and was somewhat surprised by the intensity of his gaze and his glowing compliments. Diplomatic obstacles arose which silenced the question of the marriage before Wilhelmina knew that it had been contemplated.