Great skill was used to
accomplish the transportation. There were many in the secret, but not
a traitor among them. In disguise they stole through the Russian lines
at the risk of their lives, although they knew that they would reap
small thanks from the King, who did not care for his East Prussians at
all. He spoke contemptuously of them, and showed them unwillingly the
favors which he bestowed on the other provinces. His face turned to
stone whenever he learned that one of his young officers was born
between the Memel and the Vistula, and after the war he never trod on
East Prussian soil. But this conduct did not disturb the East
Prussians in their admiration. They clung with faithful love to
their ungracious lord, and his best and most enthusiastic eulogist was
Emanuel Kant.
Life in the King's service was serious, often hard--work and
deprivation without end. It was difficult even for the best to satisfy
the strict master; and the greatest devotion received but curt thanks.
If a man was worn out he was likely to be coldly cast aside. There was
work without end everywhere: something new, something beginning, some
scaffolding of an unfinished structure. To a foreign visitor this life
did not seem at all graceful; it was austere, monotonous, and rude,
with little beauty or carefree cheerfulness. And as the King's
bachelor household, his taciturn servants, and the submissive
intimates under the trees of the quiet garden, gave a foreign guest
the impression of a monastery, so in all Prussian institutions he
found something of the renunciation and the discipline of a great busy
monastic brotherhood.
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