Lieutenant Spaen too had got into trouble for the Crown-Prince's sake, though we have forgotten him again; had "admitted Katte to interviews," or we forget what;--had sat his "year in Spandau" in consequence; been dismissed the Prussian service, and had taken service with the Dutch. Lieutenant Spaen either did not return at all, or disliked the aspects when he did, and immediately withdrew to Holland again. Which probably was wise of him. At a late period, King Friedrich, then a great King, on one of his Cleve Journeys, fell in with Spaen; who had become a Dutch General of rank, and was of good manners and style of conversation:
King Friedrich was charmed to see him; became his guest for the night; conversed delightfully with him, about old Prussian matters and about new; and in the colloquy never once alluded to that interesting passage in his young life and Spaen's. [Nicolai, Anekdoten, vi. 178.] Hard as polished steel!
thinks Spaen perhaps; but, if candid, must ask himself withal, Are facts any softer, or the Laws of Kingship to a man that holds it?
--Keith silently did his Lieutenant-Colonelcy with the appendages, while life lasted: of the Page Keith, his Brother, who indeed had blabbed upon the Prince, as we remember, and was not entitled to be clamorous, I never heard that there was any notice taken;and figure him to myself as walking with shouldered firelock, a private Fusileer, all his life afterwards, with many reflections on things bygone. [These and the other Prussian Keiths are all of Scotch extraction; the Prussians, in natural German fashion, pronounce their name KAH-IT (English "KITE" with nothing of the Yin it), as may be worth remembering in a more important instance.]
Old friendship, it would seem, is without weight in public appointments here: old friends are somewhat astonished to find this friend of theirs a King every inch! To old comrades, if they were useless, much more if they were worse than useless, how disappointing! "One wretched Herr [name suppressed, but known at the time, and talked of, and whispered of], who had, like several others, hoping to rise that way, been industrious in encouraging the Crown-Prince's vices as to women, was so shocked at the return he now met, that in despair he hanged himself in LobeJun"(Lobegun, Magdeburg Country): here is a case for the humane!
[Kuster, Characterzuge des &c. von Saldern
(Berlin, 1793), p. 63.]
Friend Keyserling himself, "Caesarion" that used to be, can get nothing, though we love him much; being an idle topsy-turvy fellow with revenues of his own. Jordan, with his fine-drawn wit, French logics, LITERARY TRAVELS, thin exactitude; what can be done for Jordan? Him also his new Majesty loves much; and knows that, without some official living, poor Jordan has no resource.
Jordan, after some waiting and survey, is made "Inspector of the Poor;"--busy this Autumn looking out for vacant houses, and arrangements for the thousand spinning women;--continues to be employed in mixed literary services (hunting up of Formey, for Editor, was one instance), and to be in much real intimacy.
That also was perhaps about the real amount of amiable Jordan.
To get Jordan a living by planting him in some office which he could not do; to warm Jordan by burning our royal bed for him:
that had not entered into the mind of Jordan's royal friend.
The Munchows he did promote; the Finks, sons of his Tutor Finkenstein: to these and other old comrades, in whom he had discovered fitness, it is no doubt abundantly grateful to him to recognize and employ it. As he notably does, in these and in other instances. But before all things he has decided to remember that he is King; that he must accept the severe laws of that trust, and do IT, or not have done anything.
An inverse sign, pointing in the same way, is the passionate search he is making in Foreign Countries for such men as will suit him. In these same months, for example, he bethinks him of two Counts Schmettau, in the Austrian Service, with whom he had made acquaintance in the Rhine Campaign; of a Count von Rothenburg, whom he saw in the French Camp there; and is negotiating to have them if possible. The Schmettaus are Prussian by birth, though in Austrian Service; them he obtains under form of an Order home, with good conditions under it; they came, and proved useful men to him. Rothenburg, a shining kind of figure in Diplomacy as well as Soldiership, was Alsatian German, foreign to Prussia; but him too Friedrich obtained, and made much of, as will be notable by and by. And in fact the soul of all these noble tendencies in Friedrich, which surely are considerable, is even this, That he loves men of merit, and does not love men of none; that he has an endless appetite for men of merit, and feels, consciously and otherwise, that they are the one thing beautiful, the one thing needful to him.
This, which is the product of all fine tendencies, is likewise their centre or focus out of which they start again, with some chance of fulfilment;--and we may judge in how many directions Friedrich was willing to expand himself, by the multifarious kinds he was inviting, and negotiating for. Academicians,--and not Maupertuis only, but all manner of mathematical geniuses (Euler whom he got, 's Gravesande, Muschenbroek whom he failed of);and Literary geniuses innumerable, first and last. Academicians, Musicians, Players, Dancers even; much more Soldiers and Civil-Service men: no man that carries any honest "CAN DO" about with him but may expect some welcome here. Which continued through Friedrich's reign; and involved him in much petty trouble, not always successful in the lower kinds of it. For his Court was the cynosure of ambitious creatures on the wing, or inclined for taking wing: like a lantern kindled in the darkness of the world;--and many owls impinged upon him; whom he had to dismiss with brevity.
