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 286 WIFE OF FREDERICK THE GREAT. the most profuse of letter-writers ; but his letters to his wife are brief indeed, and frequently of cruel coldness. Take this one specimen, written from the battle-field : " Madame, I have the satisfaction to inform you that Neisse is taken. I am with much esteem, your very faith- ful servant, Frederick." From another bloody field, on which the brother of the Queen lay dead of his wounds, the King wrote thus to his wife: " Madame, you know probably what passed the day before yesterday. I pity the dead, and regret them. My brothers and Ferdinand are well. Prince Louis is said to be wounded. I am with much esteem, etc., Frederick." The poor Queen, who had never enjoyed anything like tenderness from her husband, was not schooled to the point of receiving such a letter without feeling the cruel hardness of it. The Ferdinand spoken of by the King was another brother of hers, and to him she wrote a day or two after : " I am accustomed to the King's manners ; but that does not prevent me from being sensible of them, especially on such occasions, when one of my brothers has ended his life in his service. Such maimers are too cruel." The extreme brevity of the King's letter was due, in part, to the pressing nature of his occupations at the close of a campaign. A few days after, when he had more leisure, he wrote in a tone somewhat kinder and more solacing to her affectionate heart : " Madame, I deplore the death of your brother, Prince Albert ; but he died like a brave man, although he courted death from gaiety of heart and without necessity. Some- time ago, I notified the Duke, your father, of what could not fail to happen, and often said the same to the deceased Prince ; but he only followed his own head, and I wonder he was not killed a long time ago. I pity you, Madame,