Dine, yea dine abundantly: let all mortals have one good dinner!--Royal dinner is not yet done when a new miracle appears on the field: the largest Cake ever baked by the Sons of Adam. Drawn into the Head-quarter about an hour ago, on a wooden frame with tent over it, by a team of eight horses; tent curtaining it, guarded by Cadets; now the tent is struck and off;--saw mortals ever the like? It is fourteen ells (KLEINE ELLEN) long, by six broad;and at the centre half an ell thick. Baked by machinery;how otherwise could peel or roller act on such a Cake? There are five thousand eggs in it; thirty-six bushels (Berlin measure) of sound flour; one tun of milk, one tun of yeast, one ditto of butter; crackers, gingerbread-nuts, for fillet or trimming, run all round. Plainly the Prince of Cakes! A Carpenter with gigantic knife, handle of it resting on his shoulder,--Head of the Board of Works, giving word of command,--enters the Cake by incision;cuts it up by plan, by successive signal from the Board of Works.
What high person would not keep for himself, to say nothing of eating, some fraction of such a Nonpareil? There is cut and come again for all. Carpenter advances, by main trench and by side trenches, steadily to word of command.
I mention, as another trait of the poor devil of an August, full of good-humor after all, That he and his Royalties and big Lordships having dined, he gave the still groaning table with all its dishes, to be scrambled for by "the janizaries." Janizaries, Imitation-Turk valetaille; who speedily made clearance,--many a bit of precious Meissen porcelain going far down in society by that means.
Royal dinner done, the Colonel and Officers of every regiment, ranked in high order, with weapons drawn, preceded by their respective bands of music, came marching up the Hill to pay their particular respects to the Majesty of Prussia. Majesty of Prussia promised them his favor, everlasting, as requested; drank a glass of wine to each party (steady, your Majesty!), who all responded by glasses of wine, and threw the glasses aloft with shouts.
Sixty pieces of artillery speaking the while, and the bands of music breathing their sweetest;--till it was done, and his Majesty still steady on his feet. He could stand a great deal of wine.
And now--? Well, the Cake is not done, many cubic yards of cake are still left, and the very corporals can do no more: let the Army scramble! Army whipt it away in no time. And now, alas now--the time IS come for parting. It is ended; all things end. Not for about an hour could the HERRSCHAFTEN (Lordships and minor Sovereignties) fairly tear themselves away, under wailing music, and with the due emotion.
The Prussian Royalties, and select few, took boat down the River, on the morrow; towards Lichtenburg Hunting-Palace, for one day's slaughtering of game. They slaughtered there about one thousand living creatures, all driven into heaps for them,--"six hundred of red game" (of the stag species), "four hundred black," or of the boar ditto. They left all these creatures dead; dined immensely;then did go, sorrowfully sated; Crown-Prince Friedrich in his own carriage in the rear; Papa in his, preceding by a few minutes;all the wood horns, or French horns, wailing sad adieu;--and hurried towards Berlin through the ambrosial night. [28th June, 1730: Helden-Geschichte, i. 205.]
And so it is all ended. And August the Strong--what shall we say of August? History must admit that he attains the maximum in several things. Maximum of physical strength; can break horse-shoes, nay half-crowns with finger and thumb. Maximum of sumptuosity; really a polite creature; no man of his means so regardless of expense. Maximum of Bastards, three hundred and fifty-four of them; probably no mortal ever exceeded that quantity. Lastly, he has baked the biggest Bannock on record;Cake with 5,000 eggs in it, and a tun of butter. These things History must concede to him. Poor devil, he was full of good-humor too, and had the best of stomachs. His amputated great-toe does not mend: out upon it, the world itself is all so amputated, and not like mending! August the Strong, dilapidated at fifty-three, is fast verging towards a less expensive country: and in three years hence will be lodged gratis, and need no cook or flunky of either sex.
"This Camp of Radewitz," says Smelfungus, one of my Antecessors, finishing his long narrative of it, "this Camp is Nothing; and after all this expense of King August's and mine, it flies away like a dream. But alas, were the Congresses of Cambrai and Soissons, was the life-long diplomacy of Kaiser Karl, or the History of torpid moribund Europe in those days, much of a Something? The Pragmatic Sanction, with all its protocolling, has fled, like the temporary Playhouse of King August erected there in the village of Strohme. Much talk, noise and imaginary interest about both; but both literally have become zero, WERE always zero.
As well talk about the one as the other."---Then why not SILENCEabout both, my Friend Smelfnngus? He answers: "That truly is the thing to be aimed at;--and if we had once got our own out of both, let both be consumed with fire, and remain a handful of inarticulate black ashes forevermore." Heavens, will I, of all men, object!
Smelfungus says elsewhere:--
"The moral to be derived, perhaps the chief moral visible at present, from all this Section of melancholy History is:
