Tragi-comedy, of Much Ado about Nothing, is at last ended. Courage, friends; all things do end!—
The high guests hereupon go their ways again; and the Court of Berlin, one cannot but suppose, collapses, as after a great effort finished. Do not Friedrich Wilhelm and innumerable persons—the readers and the writer of this History included—feel a stone rolled off their hearts?—It is now, and not till now, that Queen Sophie falls sick, and like to die; and reproaches Wilhelmina with killing her. Friedrich Wilhelm hopes confidently, not; waits out at Potsdam, for a few days, till this killing danger pass; then departs, with double impetuosity, for Preussen, and despatch of Public Business; such a mountain of Domestic Business being victoriously got under.
Poor King, his life, this long while, has been a series of earthquakes and titanic convulsions. Narrow miss he has had, of pulling down his house about his ears, and burying self, son, wife, family and fortunes, under the ruin-heap—a monument to remote posterity. Never was such an enchanted dance, of well-intentioned Royal Bear with poetic temperament, piped to by two black-artists, for the Kaiser's and Pragmatic Sanction's sake! Let Tobacco-Parliament also rejoice; for truly the play was growing dangerous, of late. King and Parliament, we may suppose, return to Public Business with double vigor.
Chapter IV. — CRIMINAL JUSTICE IN PREUSSEN AND ELSEWHERE.
Not that his Majesty, while at the deepest in domestic intricacies, ever neglects Public Business. This very summer he is raising Hussar Squadrons; bent to introduce the Hussar kind of soldiery into his Army;—a good deal of horse-breaking and new sabre-exercise needed for that object. [Fassmann, pp. 417, 418.] The affairs of the Reich have at no moment been out of his eye; glad to see the Kaiser edging round to the Sea-Powers again, and things coming into their old posture, in spite of that sad Treaty of Seville.
Nay, for the last two years, while the domestic volcanoes were at their worst, his Majesty has been extensively dealing with a new question which has risen, that of the SALZBURG PROTESTANTS; concerning which we shall hear more anon. Far and wide, in the Diets and elsewhere, he has been diligently, piously and with solid judgment, handling this question of the poor Salzburgers; and has even stored up moneys in intended solace of them (for he foresees what the end will be);—moneys which, it appears about this time, a certain Official over in Preussen has been peculating! In the end of June, his Majesty sets off to Preussen on the usual Inspection Tour; which we should not mention, were it not in regard to that same Official, and to something very rhadamanthine and particular which befell him; significant of what his Majesty can do in the way of prompt justice.
CASE OF SCHLUBHUT.
The Konigsberg Domain-Board (KRIEGS-UND DOMANEN-KAMMER) had fallen awry, in various points, of late; several things known to be out-at-elbows in that Country; the Kammer Raths evidently lax at their post; for which reason they have been sharply questioned, and shaken by the collar, so to speak. Nay there is one Rath, a so-called Nobleman of those parts, by name Schlubhut, who has been found actually defaulting; peculating from that pious hoard intended for the Salzburgers: he is proved, and confesses, to have put into his own scandalous purse no less than 11,000 thalers, some say 30,000 (almost 5,000 pounds), which belonged to the Public Treasury and the Salzburg Protestants! These things, especially this latter unheard-of Schlubhut thing, the Supreme Court at Berlin (CRIMINAL-COLLEGIUM) have been sitting on, for some time; and, in regard to Schlubhut, they have brought out a result, which Friedrich Wilhelm not a little admires at. Schlubhut clearly guilty of the defamation, say they; but he has moneys, landed properties: let him refund, principal and interest; and have, say, three or four years' imprisonment, by way of memento. "Years' imprisonment? Refund? Is theft in the highest quarters a thing to be let off for refunding?" growls his Majesty; and will not confirm this sentence of his Criminal-Collegium; but leaves it till he get to the spot, and see with his own eyes. Schlubhut, in arrest or mild confinement all this while, ought to be bethinking himself more than he is!
Once on the spot, judge if the Konigsberg Domain-Kammer had not a stiff muster to pass; especially if Schlubhut's drill-exercise was gentle! Schlubhut, summoned to private interview with his Majesty, carries his head higher than could be looked for: Is very sorry; knows not how it happened; meant always to refund; will refund, to the last penny, and make all good.—"Refund? Does He (ER) know what stealing means, then? How the commonest convicted private thief finds the gallows his portion; much more a public Magistrate convicted of theft? Is He aware that He, in a very especial manner, deserves hanging, then?"—Schlubhut looks offended dignity; conscious of rank, if also of quasi-theft: "ES IST NICHT MANIER (it is not the polite thing) to hang a Prussian Nobleman on those light terms!" answers Schlubhut, high mannered at the wrong time: "I can and will pay the money back!"—NOBLE-man? Money back? "I will none of His scoundrelly money." To strait Prison with this SCHURKE!—And thither he goes accordingly: unhappiest of mortals; to be conscious of rank, not at the right place, when about to steal the money, but at the wrong, when answering to Rhadamanthus on it!
And there, sure enough, Schlubhut lies, in his prison on the SCHLOSSPLATZ, or Castle Square, of Konigsberg, all night; and hears, close by the DOMANEN-KAMMER, which is in the same Square, DOMANEN-KAMMER where his Office used to be, a terrible sound of carpentering go on;—unhappiest of Prussian Noblemen. And in the morning, see, a high gallows built; close in upon the Domain-Kammer, looking into the very windows of it;—and there, sure enough, the unfortunate Schlubhut dies the thief's death, few hours hence, speaking or thinking what, no man reports to me. Death was certain for him; inevitable as fate. And so he vibrates there, admonitory to the other Raths for days—some say for weeks—till by humble petition they got the gallows removed. The stumps of it, sawed close by the stones, were long after visible in that Schlossplatz of Konigsberg. Here is prompt justice with a witness! Did readers ever hear of such a thing? There is no doubt about the fact, [Benekendorf (Anonymous), Karakterzuge aus dem Leben Konig Friedrich Wilhelm I. (Berlin, 1788), vii. 15–20; Forster (ii. 268), &c. &c.] though in all Prussian Books it is loosely smeared over, without the least precision of detail; and it was not till after long searching that I could so much as get it dated: July, 1731, while Friedrich Crown-Prince is still in eclipse at Custrin, and some six weeks after Wilhelmina's betrothal. And here furthermore, direct from the then Schlubhut precincts, is a stray Note, meteorological chiefly; but worth picking up, since it is authentic. "Wehlau," we observe, is on the road homewards again—on our return from uttermost Memel—a day's journey hitherwards of that place, half a day's thitherwards of Konigsberg:—
"TUESDAY, 10th JULY, 1731. King dining with General Dockum at Wehlau,"—where he had been again reviewing, for about forty hours, all manner of regiments brought to rendezvous there for the purpose, poor "General Katte with his regiment" among them;—King at dinner with General Dockum after all that, "took the resolution to be off to Konigsberg; and arrived here at the stroke of midnight, in a deluge of rain." This brings us within a day, or two days, of Schlubhut's death, Terrible "combat of Bisons (URI, or AUEROCHSEN, with such manes, such heads), of two wild Bisons against six wild Bears," then ensued; and the Schlubhut human tragedy; I know not in what sequence—rather conjecture the Schlubhut had gone FIRST. Pillau, road to Dantzig, on the narrow strip between the Frische Haf and Baltic, is the next stage homewards; at Pillau, General Finkenstein (excellent old Tutor of the Crown-Prince) is Commandant, and expects his rapid Majesty, day and hour given, to me not known, Majesty goes in three carriages; Old Dessauer, Grumkow, Seckendorf, Ginkel are among his suite; weather still very electric:—
"At Fischhausen, half-way to Pillau, Majesty had a bout of elk-hunting; killed sixty elks [Melton-Mowbray may consider it]—creatures of the deer sort, nimble as roes, but strong as bulls, and four palms higher than the biggest horse—to the astonishment of Seckendorf, Ginkel and the strangers there. Half an hour short of Pillau, furious electricity again; thunder-bolt shivered an oak-tree fifteen yards from Majesty's carriage. And at Pillau itself, the Battalion