A ROYAL WHIM.

FROM THE GERMAN OF WILHELM MEINHOLD, AUTHOR OF "THE AMBER WITCH," &c.

WE are about to tell our readers a very strange event that occurred in the reign of Frederick William I. of Prussia, father of the great Frederick, and a man generally disliked on account of his rough and frequently tyrannical manner, but who was really one of the best regents of his fatherland, as he alone (and to this his son afterwards bore testimony) was the real founder of its future greatness.

This extraordinary man, who should be judged by the customs of the age in which he lived, in order to prove him extraordinary both in his errors and his virtues, had one passion which far outweighed all othersnamely, love for the chase. We remember reading in his historian, Förster, that within one year he killed upwards of 3000 partridges with his own gun, without taking the other game into account, in which the queen was the greatest sufferer, as she had to find him, according to a marriage contract, in powder and shot gratis. When there was nothing for him to shoot in his own forests, he never declined the invitations of the landed gentry to pay them a visit.

Thus it happened that-it might be about the year 1720—the rich landed proprietor, Von W- sent his majesty an invitation to a wolf hunt, with the humble request that he would bring his most illustrious consort with him, as the nobleman's wife had formerly belonged to her majesty's suite.

On a fine September day, then, the king and queen, with several officers and ladies of the bedchamber, as well as the court fool, Baron von Gündling, arrived at the nobleman's ancestral château. On the very next day the chase commenced, and Von Gündling, who found as little pleasure in the sports of the field as the king did in the arts and sciences, took a solitary walk in the meadows, and lay down to read in the long grass.

But before we hear what happened further, we must first give our readers a description of this strange man. He was, as we have already remarked, the king's fool, and had received all imaginable titles and honours, in order to afford his majesty and the court still greater sport. In fact, his Excellency, the Supreme Master of the Ceremonies, Privy Councillor, and President of the Academy of Arts, Baron von Gündling, acquired such arrogance through his titles, that nothing could be more comical than the contrast between these dignities and the indignities he had to suffer daily, even from the youngest lieutenants. His excellency on such occasions would grow very angry-the very thing his tormentors wished-and would lay a protest before the king against a man of his rank being so treated, which naturally increased the general laughter. Through such scenes, which were in that day considered remarkably comical, our fool had become a necessity for the king and court. Besides, we may add that he was a walking lexicon, and had to give all possible explanations in the daily meetings of the so-termed "tabaks collegien." His pedantry, in fact, was the best thing about him: as for

wit, he possessed as little as a mule; but, to make up for it, he could be as vicious and obstinate as that amiable animal.

The Baron von Gündling, then, lay at full length in the grass, in his peculiar dress, the chief ornament of it being an immense full-bottomed wig, and in such a position that only the locks of his peruke could be seen as he moved from side to side. A gentleman who arrived rather late for the chase happened to notice it, and taking it for some strange animal, fired point blank at the wig, but very fortunately missed it. His excellency sprung up immediately in the highest indignation, and cried out,

"You vagabond rascal, how dare you?"

The gentleman, however, when he perceived that the strange animal must necessarily belong to the royal suite, did not wait to reply, but ran off at full speed to the neighbouring forest. The baron, however, was not satisfied with this, but, as he saw a man ploughing at a short distance from him, he called out in his arrogant manner,

"Come hither, man!"

The reply he received was,

"I have no time or inclination to do so; but if you'll speak civilly, I may."

His excellency was not accustomed to such an answer; he, therefore, walked toward the impudent ploughman with upraised stick, and was about to apply it to his back, when he noticed that it was the clergyman of the village, whom he had seen the preceding evening at the nobleman's château. The baron, therefore, lowered his stick, and contented himself by punishing the clergyman with his tongue.

"How can he be such an impertinent ass. Does he not know who I

am ?"

"Oh, yes! he's the king's fool."

His excellency trembled with rage, and raised his stick again; but on measuring the sturdy pastor from head to foot, and seeing no help near, he let it fall for the second time, and merely uttered the threat,

"Just wait, my fine fellow. I'll tell the king you pretend to be a pastor, and yet go out ploughing."

The clergyman replied, quite calmly,

"My gracious master will probably remember that Cincinnatus ploughed too, and he was a dictator, while I am only a poor village pastor."

"Yes," the baron said, after inspecting his coarse and peasant-like dress; "but when Cincinnatus ploughed, he did not look like a common peasant."

"I am certain he did not look like a fool," the clergyman replied, as he drove his oxen on.

This was too much for the baron, and he rushed away towards a peasant he saw approaching, vowing vengeance on the impudent pastor, whom he determined to ruin on the first opportunity.

He was very glad, then, to find in the peasant a most determined enemy to the clergyman, who complained bitterly of his sternness, and of the fact of his compelling him to make up a quarrel he had carried on very successfully with his wife for several weeks.

Our fool was clever enough to see that this anecdote would not be of

any service to him in trying to injure the pastor with the king, he therefore answered, most pathetically, "But the pastor was perfectly in the right; that could do you no harm ?"

"Well, that's very true," the peasant replied, "especially as he's getting old, and can't carry on as he used; but I'm sure when his son soon takes his place-a fellow like a church steeple-he'll break all our bones for us. For that reason, if the matter was left to me, I wouldn't choose him for our clergyman; for if the patron is to beat us on workdays, and the pastor play the same game on Sundays, when will our backs find time to get well ?"

Gündling now listened attentively, and his plan was soon formed, when he learned that the pastor's son would return from Halle in a few days to preach his trial sermon on the next Sunday, as the patron had promised him his father's living. He therefore quitted the peasant with a mocking smile, and made some pretext for visiting the sexton, to make further inquiries into the matter. The latter confirmed the story, and gave his opinion that the young master must be at least six feet two in height, and as straight as a poplar-tree.

"Wait!" Gündling murmured between his teeth, as soon as he again reached the street; "we will put a blue coat on the young fellow, and that will annoy that vagabond preacher." He therefore returned to the château, where he looked up a captain of his acquaintance, whom he took on one side, with the hurried question, "How many fellows have you already got?"

To understand this question, our readers must know that the king, at every review, requested each commander of a company to present his new recruits to him. If the poor gentleman had less than three he fell into partial disgrace; and so each captain, about review time, which was close at hand, tried to procure a few young men by any method, legal or illegal, but especially those particularly tall, for the king had a peculiar delight in such soldiers.

"Woe is me! I've but one," the officer replied, journeyman tailor."

"and he's only a

"Well, then," Gündling replied, "you can get a journeyman clergyman of six feet two."

"Well, that's no tremendous height, but still it's better than nothing." The captain then requested an explanation, and both discussed the measures by which to get hold of the clergyman's son. They soon agreed that the officer should feign illness when the king departed. Gündling would remain with him as company: a few soldiers would be secretly procured from a neighbouring town, and the young candidate taken nolens volens by the ears, and transported to the next garrison.

In the meanwhile, the king and his suite followed the chase on the next day with their usual ardour. It so happened that two ladies in attendance on the queen, tortured by ennui, followed the windings of the stream, which led them from the nobleman's garden into the open fields. One of them, Wilhelmine von B- was a young and charming crea ture, and was evidently attempting to cheer her companion, who was silent, and not nearly so charming. In consequence there was a deal of laughing, which might have been heard at some distance off, and might have led to the conclusion that the old, though still ever new, story

of marriage and love was being discussed by the ladies. They had gradually wandered some quarter of a mile from the village, when a wolf, probably disturbed by the beaters, and which they at first took for a dog, ran towards them, regarding them with a look which they interpreted: "This little darling I'll make my breakfast off, and the other little darling I'll leave on that bed of forget-me-nots till supper time."

The poor girls had not in the least expected such a bridegroom, and stood petrified with fear as soon as they recognised the animal, for they possibly did not know that a wolf, in the summer or autumn, would attack nobody, and that the Isegrim who fascinated their eyes was, probably, as much afraid of them as they were of him. The silent young lady sobbed out a masculine name-we presume that of her lover-while the charming one, after recovering from her first terror, looked round on all sides for assistance.

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Suddenly a carriage made its appearance from a branch road, drawn by two horses, in which a young and handsome man was sitting. Both ladies cried out together in joyful surprise when they perceived this unexpected assistance, and the wolf immediately ran off, and took station some distance from them. "You have saved us from death," the charming Wilhelmine said, as she approached the young man, who immediately ordered the coachman to stop, and leaped from the carriage. After begging, in the style of French gallantry, to have his doubts cleared up as to whether he looked upon nymphs or hamadryads, or actual mortals, and all possible explanations had been furnished him, he presented himself to the ladies as the son of the old pastor, and just arrived from Halle, in order to act as curate to his father. The young man, whom we will call Carl, then invited the ladies to take seats in his vehicle, and thus return to the château.

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The ladies quickly accepted this invitation, and Carl had the pleasure of lifting them into the lofty carriage, in which he also took his seat, exactly opposite the fair Wilhelmine, who, however, was cruel enough, for some time, to look every way but at him. At length, when he began to speak of Halle, where he had been several years "Famulus " house of Freylinghausen, she turned her eyes with pleasure towards him, for she was well acquainted with this poet, and became so eloquent that her companion blushed, nudged her repeatedly, and at length whispered in her ear, "Ah, mon Dieu! he's not a nobleman." Wilhelmine, however, paid no attention to her, and as the young man was very well read, and recited several of Freylinghausen's newest poems, the time passed so quickly, that they stopped before the rectory almost without perceiving it. Here all the family assembled round the carriage, and wished to embrace their dear relative; but this he declined, and first presented his fair companions, who were immediately invited into the rectory, which the silent one at first declined, but the other immediately accepted.

After the first stormy salutation the old clergyman clasped his hands, and commenced the hymn, "Praise God for all his gifts!" in which the whole family joined; among them our friend Carl, with such a splendid tenor voice, that the young lady could not refrain from saying, after the hymn was ended,

"If you would do me a real favour, you would sing me that song of Freylinghausen's which you recited to us on our road here."

This request was so flattering, that Carl could not refuse to comply with it. He therefore sang, as solo, the song, "My heart should feel contented," without the least idea that, in a very short time, not merely all his consolation, but all his good fortune, would originate from this

song.

The charming Wilhelmine was highly delighted when he had finished the song; and the two ladies took their leave, on the earnest persuasion of the silent one of the two. Carl politely accompanied them to the neighbouring gate of the château, where they parted with mutual compliments.

The young man felt for the first day or two as if he had lost something necessary to his existence; but as the difference of rank between himself and a lady of the royal suite appeared to him an insurmountable obstacle, he soon forgot the strange adventure, in which he was materially assisted by the composition of his trial sermon, which he was to preach the next Sunday before his patron and the congregation. In the meanwhile, however, the king and his suite had returned to Berlin, while Gündling and the captain remained behind to carry out their treacherous scheme. The captain pretended to be suffering from a frightful attack of gout, and had secretly ordered a corporal and six men to come on the ensuing Sunday night from the neighbouring garrison of Gn, as he had learned that their kind host intended to pay a visit at a gentleman's house some thirty miles off, as soon as the candidate's sermon was ended, and would not return for a week. During that time they expected to have the young recruit so securely hidden away, that any reclamation would be unavailing; and besides, the king's adjutant, who attended to all military affairs, was the captain's cousin. Gündling, after his usual fashion, rubbed his stomach with both hands, as he thought of the pastor's terrible despair at the loss of his beloved son.

As soon as the anxiously-desired Sunday arrived, both gentlemen went to the overcrowded church: the captain, as he hypocritically told his host, to return thanks for his sudden and fortunate recovery, but in truth, to have a nearer look at his young recruit, whose height he was delighted with, and paid Gündling repeated compliments for his discrimination. The poor young man gained complete approbation from his patron and the whole parish, and even Gündling, after the service was over, approached the pastor, and treacherously praised his good fortune in having such a son. We must say, that the captain, to his credit, was not guilty of such hypocrisy in this case.

At a late hour in the evening, which was both stormy and cold, the sound of arms and a loud knocking was heard at the door of the parsonage. The door was at length opened by the unfortunate Carl, with the words,

"Who are you, and what do you want at this unseasonable hour of the night ?"

"We want you!" the captain exclaimed, as he sprang forward, and seized the young man by the arm. "You must come with us, and change your black coat for a blue one."

We may easily imagine the terror of the wretched man, who, only partly dressed, was standing speechless before them, when his old father, who had heard this conversation, rushed out of bed, and interposed be