The King read and
wrote in leisure hours just as before; he composed verses and kept up
a correspondence with Voltaire and Algarotti, but he was prepared to
see all this come soon to an end--a swift and sudden one. He carried
in his pocket day and night something which could make him free from
Daun and Laudon. At times the whole affair filled him with disdain.
The letters of the man from whom Germany dates a new epoch in its
intellectual life deserve to be read with reverence by every German.
When you find him writing to Frau von Camas, "For the last six years I
have felt that it is the living, not the dead, for whom one should be
sorry," if you are shocked by the gloomy energy of his determination
you must beware of thinking that in it the power of this remarkable
spirit found its highest expression. It is true that the King had some
moments of desperation when he longed for death by the enemy's bullet
in order not to be forced to use the capsule which he carried in his
pocket. He was indeed fully determined not to ruin the State by living
as a captive of Austria; to this extent what he writes is terribly
true. But he was also of a poetic temperament, a child of the century
which so longed for great deeds and found such immense satisfaction in
the expression of exalted feelings. He was, to the bottom of his
heart, a German with the same emotional needs as, for instance, the
infinitely weaker Klopstock and his admirers. The consideration and
resolute expression of his final resolve made him freer and more
cheerful at heart.
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