Berlin—who saw those PROFOSSEN, or Scavenger-Executioners in French Costume long since, and was always good to me:—might not that be a method? Lieutenant Keith indeed is in Wesel, waiting only a signal. Suppose he went to the Hague, and took soundings there what welcome we should have? No, not till we have actually run; beware of making noise!—The poor Prince is in unutterable perplexity; can only answer Katte by that Messenger of his, to the effect (date and Letter burnt like the former): "Doubt is on every hand; doubt—and yet CERTAINTY. Will write again before undertaking anything."
And there is no question he did write again; more than once: letters by the post, which his faithful Lieutenant Katte in Berlin received; one of which, however, stuck on the road; and this one—by some industry of postmasters spirited into vigilance, as is likeliest, though others say by mere misaddressing, by "want of BERLIN on the address,"—fell into the hands of vigilant RITTMEISTER Katte at Erlangen. Who grew pale in reading it, and had to resolve on a painful thing! This was, I suppose, among the last Letters of the series; and must have been dated, as I guess, about the 29th of July, 1730; but they are now all burnt, huddled rapidly into annihilation, and one cannot say!—
Certain it is that the Royal Travelling-Party left Anspach in a few days, to go, southward still, "by the OEttingen Country towards Augsburg." [Fassmann, p. 410.] Feuchtwang (WET Wang, not Durrwang or DRY Wang) is the first stage; here lives the Dowager Margravine of Anspach: here the Prince does some inconceivably small fault "lets a knife, which he is handing to or from the Serene Lady, fall," [Ranke, i. 304 ("from a Letter the Prince had written to Katte").] who, as she is weak, may suffer by the jingle; for which Friedrich Wilhelm bursts out on him like the Irish Rebellion—to the silent despair of the poor Prince. The poor Prince meditates desperate resolutions, but has to keep them strictly to himself.
Doubtless the Buddenbrock Trio, good old military gentlemen, would endeavor to speak comfort to him, when they were on the road again. Here is Nordlingen, your Highness, where Bernhard of Weimar, for his over-haste, got so beaten in the Thirty-Years War; would not wait till the Swedes were rightly gathered: what general, if he have reinforcement at hand, would not wait for it? The waters now, you observe, run all into the Wornitz, into the Donau: it is a famed war-country this; known to me well in my young Eugene-Marlborough days!—"Hm, Ha, yes!" For the Prince is preoccupied with black cares; and thinks Blenheim and the Schellenberg businesses befell long since, and were perhaps simple to what he has now on hand. That Feuchtwang scene, it would appear, has brought him to a resolution. There is a young page Keith of the party, Lieutenant Keith of Wesel's Brother; of this page Keith, who is often busy about horses, he cautiously makes question, What help may be in him? A willing mind traceable in this poor lad, but his terrors great.
To Donauworth from Anspach, through Feuchtwang and Nordlingen, is some seventy or eighty miles. At Donauworth one surely ought to lodge, and see the Schellenberg on the morrow; nay drive to the Field of Hochstadt (Blenheim, BLINDHEIM), which is but a few miles farther up the River? Buddenbrock was there, and Anhalt-Dessau: for their very sake, were there nothing farther, one surely ought to go? Such was the probability, a visit to Blenheim field in passing. And surely, somewhere in those heart-rending masses of Historical Rubbish, I did at last find express evanescent mention of the fact—but cannot now say where;—the exact record, or conceivable image of which, would have been a perceptible pleasure to us. Alas, in those dim dreary Books, all whirling dismal round one's soul, like vortices of dim Brandenburg sand, how should anything human be searched out and mentioned to us; and a thousand, things not-human be searched out, and eternally suppressed from us, for the sake of that? I please myself figuring young Friedrich looking at the vestiges of Marlborough, even in a preoccupied uncertain manner. Your Majesty too, this is the very "Schellenberg (or JINGLE-HILL)," this Hill we are now skirting, on highways, on swift wheels; which overhangs Donauworth, our resting-place this hot July evening. Yes, your Majesty, here was a feat of storming done—pang, pang!—such a noise as never jingled on that Hill before: like Doomsday come; and a hero-head to rule the Doomsday, and turn it to heroic marching music. A very pretty feat of war, your Majesty! His Majesty well knows it; feat of his Marlborough's doing, famed everywhere for the twenty-six years last past; and will go to see the Schellenberg and its Lines. The great Duke is dead four years; sank sadly, eclipsed under tears of dotage of his own, and under human stupidity of other men's! But Buddenbrock is still living, Anhalt-Dessau and others of us are still alive a little while!
Hochstadt itself—Blenheim, as the English call it, meaning BLINDHEIM, the other village on the Field—is but a short way up the River; well worth such a detour. By what way they drove to the field of honor and back from it, I do not know. But there, northward, towards the heights, is the little wood where Anhalt-Dessau stood at bay like a Molossian dog, of consummate military knowledge; and saved the fight in Eugene's quarter of it. That is visible enough; and worth looking at. Visible enough the rolling Donau, Marlborough's place; the narrow ground, the bordering Hills all green at this season;—and down old Buddenbrock's cheek, end Anhalt's, there would roll an iron tear or two. Augsburg is but some thirty miles off, once we are across the Donau—by the Bridge of Donauworth, or the Ferry of Hochstadt—swift travellers in a long day, the last of July, are soon enough at Augsburg.
As for Friedrich, haunted and whipt onwards by that scene at Feuchtwang, he is inwardly very busy during this latter part of the route. Probably there is some progress towards gaining Page Keith, Lieutenant Keith of Wesel's Brother; some hope that Page Keith, at the right moment, can be gained: the Lieutenant at Wesel is kept duly advised. To Lieutenant Katte at Berlin Friedrich now writes, I should judge from Donauworth or Augsburg, "That he has had a scene at Feuchtwang; that he can stand it no longer. That Canstatt being given up, as Katte cannot be there to go across the Kniebiss with us, we will endure till we are near enough the Rhine. Once in the Rhineland, in some quiet Town there, handy for Speyer, for French Landau,"—say Sinzheim; last stage hitherward of Heidelberg, but this we do not write—"there might it not be? Be, somewhere, it shall and must! You, Katte, the instant you hear that we are off, speed you towards the Hague; ask for 'M. le Comte d'Alberville;' you will know that gentleman WHEN you see him: Keith, our Wesel friend, will have taken the preliminary soundings;—and I tell you, Count d'Alberville, or news of him, will be there. Bring the great-coat with you, and the other things, especially the 1,000 gold ducats. Count d'Alberville at the Hague, if all have gone right:—nay if anything go wrong, cannot he, once across the Rhine, take refuge in the convents in those Catholic regions? Nobody, under the scapulary, will suspect such a heretic as him. Speed, silence, vigilance! And so adieu!" A letter of such purport Friedrich did write; which Letter, moreover, the Lieutenant Katte received: it was not this, it was another, that stuck upon the road, and fell into the Rittmeister's hand. This is the young Prince's ultimate fixed project, brought to birth by that slight accident of dropping the knife at Feuchtwang; [Ranke, i. 304.] and hanging heavy on his mind during this Augsburg drive. At Augsburg, furthermore, "he bought, in all privacy, red cloth, of quantity to make a top-coat;" red, the gray being unattainable in Katte's hands: in all privacy; though the watchful Rochow had full knowledge of it, all the same.
Chapter VI. — JOURNEY HOMEWARDS FROM THE REICH; CATASTROPHE ON JOURNEY HOMEWARDS.
The travelling Majesty of Prussia went diligently up and down, investigating ancient Augsburg: saw, I doubt not, the FUGGEREI, or ancient Hospice of the Fuggers—who were once Weavers in those parts, and are now Princes, and were known to entertain Charles V. with fires of cinnamon, nay with transient flames of Bank-bills on one old occasion. Saw all the Fuggeries, I doubt not; the ancient Luther-and-Melanchthon relics, Diet-Halls and notabilities of this renowned Free Town;—perhaps remembered Margraf George, and loud-voiced Kurfurst Joachim with the Bottle-nose (our DIRECT Ancestor, though mistaken in opinion on some points!), who were once so audible there.
One passing phenomenon we expressly know he saw; a human, not a historically important one. Driving through the streets from place to place, his Majesty came athwart some questionable quaint procession, ribbony, perhaps musical; Majesty questioned it: "A wedding procession, your Majesty!"—"Will the Bride step out, then, and let us see how she is dressed!" "VOM HERZEN GERN; will