To usher it out, there is still worse: faithful D'Argens dies, 26th December, 1771, on a visit in his native Provence,--leaving, as is still visible, [Friedrich's two Letters to the Widow (Ib.xix.

427-429).] a big and sad blank behind him at Potsdam." But we need not continue; at least not at present.
Long before all these, Friedrich had lost friends; with a sad but quiet emotion he often alludes to this tragic fact, that all the souls he loved most are gone.

His Winterfelds, his Keiths, many loved faces, the War has snatched: at Monbijou, at Baireuth, it was not War; but they too are gone.

Is the world becoming all a Mausoleum, then; nothing of divine in it but the Tombs of vanished loved ones?
Friedrich makes no noise on such subjects: loved and unloved alike must go.
We have still to mark Kaiser Franz's sudden death; a thing politically interesting, if not otherwise.

August, 1765, at Innspruck, during the Marriage-festivities of his Second Son, Leopold (Duke of Florence, who afterwards, on Joseph's death, was Kaiser),--Kaiser Franz, sauntering about in the evening gala, "18th August, about 9 P.M.," suddenly tottered, staggered as falling; fell into Son Joseph's arms; and was dead.