142.] So Friedrich Wilhelm; laboring amid the mortal quicksands; looking into the Inevitable, in various moods.

But the memorablest speech he made to Fritzchen or to anybody at present, was that covert one about the Kaiser and Seckendorf, and the sudden flash of insight he got, from some word of Seckendorf's, into what they had been meaning with him all along.
Riding through the village of Priort, in debate about Vienna politics of a strange nature, Seckendorf said something, which illuminated his Majesty, dark for so many years, and showed him where he was.

A ghastly horror of a country, yawning indisputable there; revealed to one as if by momentary lightning, in that manner! This is a speech which all the ambassadors report, and which was already mentioned by us,--in reference to that opprobrious Proposal about the Crown-Prince's Marriage, "Marry with England, after all; never mind breaking your word!" Here is the manner of it, with time and place:-- "Sunday last," Sunday, 17th October, 1734, reports Seckendorf, Junior, through the Nigger or some better witness, "the King said to the Prince-Royal: 'My dear Son, I tell thee I got my death at Priort.

I entreat thee, above all things in the world, don't trust those people (DENEN LEUTEN), however many promises they make.

That day, it was April 17th, 1733, there was a man said something to me: it was as if you had turned a dagger round in my heart.'" [Seckendorf (BARON), _Journal Secret;_ cited in Forster, ii.