By the fire of his eyes, you recognized that in essentials he had not grown old.

Though bearing himself like an invalid, you felt that he could strike like a young soldier; in his small figure, you discerned a spirit greater than any other man's....
"If used at all to intercourse with the great world, and possessed of any elevation of mind, you have no embarrassment in speaking to a King; but to a Great Man you present yourself not without fear.

Friedrich, in his private sphere, was of sufficiently unequal humor; wayward, wilful; open to prejudices; indulged in mockery, often enough epigrammatic upon the French;--agreeable in a high degree to strangers whom he pleased to favor; but bitterly piquant for those he was prepossessed against, or who, without knowing it, had ill-chosen the hour of approaching him.

To me, luck was kind in all these points;" my Interview delightful, but not to be reported farther.

[_"Memoires par M.le Comte de Segur_ (Paris, 1826), ii.