Tumultuous cloud-world of Lapland Witchcraft had ceased hereby, and daylight had begun: old women (or old Cardinals) riding through the sky, on broomsticks, to meet Satan, where now are they?
The fact still dimly perceptible is, Europe, thanks to that pair of Black-Artists, Gortz and Alberoni, not to mention Law the Finance-Wizard and his French incantations, had been kept generally, for these three or four years past, in the state of a Haunted House; riotous Goblins, of unknown dire intent, walking now in this apartment of it, now in that; no rest anywhere for the perturbed inhabitants.
As to Friedrich Wilhelm, his plan in 1717, as all along, in this bewitched state of matters, was: To fortify his Frontier Towns; Memel, Wesel, to the right and left, especially to fortify Stettin, his new acquisition;--and to put his Army, and his Treasury (or Army-CHEST), more and more in order.

In that way we shall better meet whatever goblins there may be, thinks Friedrich Wilhelm.

Count Lottum, hero of the Prussians at Malplaquet, is doing his scientific uttermost in Stettin and those Frontier Towns.

For the rest, his Majesty, invited by the Czar and France, has been found willing to make paction with them, as he is with all pacific neighbors.

In fact, the Czar and he had their private Conference, at Havelberg, last year,--Havelberg, some sixty miles from Berlin, on the road towards Denmark, as Peter was passing that way;--ample Conference of five days; [23d-28th November, 1716: Fassmann, p.