But before all things he has decided to remember that he is King; that he must accept the severe laws of that trust, and do IT, or not have done anything.
An inverse sign, pointing in the same way, is the passionate search he is making in Foreign Countries for such men as will suit him.

In these same months, for example, he bethinks him of two Counts Schmettau, in the Austrian Service, with whom he had made acquaintance in the Rhine Campaign; of a Count von Rothenburg, whom he saw in the French Camp there; and is negotiating to have them if possible.

The Schmettaus are Prussian by birth, though in Austrian Service; them he obtains under form of an Order home, with good conditions under it; they came, and proved useful men to him.

Rothenburg, a shining kind of figure in Diplomacy as well as Soldiership, was Alsatian German, foreign to Prussia; but him too Friedrich obtained, and made much of, as will be notable by and by.

And in fact the soul of all these noble tendencies in Friedrich, which surely are considerable, is even this, That he loves men of merit, and does not love men of none; that he has an endless appetite for men of merit, and feels, consciously and otherwise, that they are the one thing beautiful, the one thing needful to him.
This, which is the product of all fine tendencies, is likewise their centre or focus out of which they start again, with some chance of fulfilment;--and we may judge in how many directions Friedrich was willing to expand himself, by the multifarious kinds he was inviting, and negotiating for.