HISTORY OF FRIEDRICH II. OF PRUSSIA
Page: 20

Five years ago, on the death of the first little Prince, there
had surmises risen, obscure rumors and hints, that the Princess
Royal, mother of the lost baby, never would have healthy children,
or even never have a child more: upon which, as there was but one
other resource,--a widowed Grandfather, namely, and except the
Prince Royal no son to him,--said Grandfather, still only about
fifty, did take the necessary steps: but they have been entirely
unsuccessful; no new son or child, only new affliction,
new disaster has resulted from that third marriage of his.
And though the Princess Royal has had another little Prince,
that too has died within the year;--killed, some say on the other
hand, by the noise of the cannon firing for joy over it! [Forster,
Friedrich Wilhelm I., Konig von Preussen
(Potsdam, 1834), i. 126 (who quotes Morgenstern, a contemporary
reporter). But see also Preuss, Friedrich der Grosse mit
seinen Verwandten und Freunden (Berlin, 1838),
pp. 379-380] Yes; and the first baby Prince, these same parties
farther say, was crushed to death by the weighty dress you put
upon it at christening time, especially by the little crown it
wore, which had left a visible black mark upon the poor soft
infant's brow! In short, it is a questionable case; undoubtedly a
questionable outlook for Prussian mankind; and the appearance of
this little Prince, a third trump-card in the Hohenzollern game,
is an unusually interesting event. The joy over him, not in Berlin
Palace only, but in Berlin City, and over the Prussian Nation, was
very great and universal;--still testified in manifold dull,
unreadable old pamphlets, records official and volunteer,--which
were then all ablaze like the bonfires, and are now fallen dark
enough, and hardly credible even to the fancy of this new Time.

The poor old Grandfather, Friedrich I. (the first King of
Prussia),--for, as we intimate, he was still alive, and not very
old, though now infirm enough, and laden beyond his strength with
sad reminiscences, disappointments and chagrins,--had taken much
to Wilhelmina, as she tells us; [ Memoires de Frederique