Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 097.djvu/314



are about to tell our readers a very strange event that occurred in the reign of Frederick William I. of Prussia, father of the great Frederick, and a man generally disliked on account of his rough and frequently tyrannical manner, but who was really one of the best regents of his fatherland, as he alone (and to this his son afterwards bore testimony) was the real founder of its future greatness.

This extraordinary man, who should be judged by the customs of the age in which he lived, in order to prove him extraordinary both in his errors and his virtues, had one passion which far outweighed all others—namely, love for the chase. We remember reading in his historian, Förster, that within one year he killed upwards of 3000 partridges with his own gun, without taking the other game into account, in which the queen was the greatest sufferer, as she had to find him, according to a marriage contract, in powder and shot gratis. When there was nothing for him to shoot in his own forests, be never declined the invitations o£ the landed gentry to pay them a visit.

Thus it happened that—it might be about the year 1720—the rich landed proprietor. Von W, sent his majesty an invitation to a wolf hunt, with the humble request that he would bring his most illustrious consort with him, as the nobleman's wife had formerly belonged to her majesty's suite.

On a fine September day, then, the king and queen, with several officers and ladies of the bedchamber, as well as the court fool. Baron von Gündling, arrived at the nobleman's ancestral chateau. On the very next day the chase commenced, and Von Gündling, who found as little pleasure in the sports of the field as the king did in the arts and sciences, took a solitary walk in the meadows, and lay down to read in the long grass.

But before we hear what happened further, we must first give our readers a description of this strange man. He was, as we have already remarked, the king's fool, and mid received all imaginable titles and honours, in order to afford his majesty and the court still greater sport. In fact, his Excellency, the Supreme Master of the Ceremonies, Privy Councillor, and President of the Academy of Arts, Baron von Gündling, acquired such arrogance through his titles, that nothing could be more comical than the contrast between these dignities and the indignities he had to suffer daily, even from the youngest lieutenants. His excellency on such occasions would grow very angry—the very thing his tormentors wished—and would lay a protest before the king against a man of his rank being so treated, which naturally increased the general laughter. Through such scenes, which were in that day considered remarkably comical, our fool had become a necessity for the king and court. Besides, we may add that he was a walking lexicon, and had to give all possible explanations in the daily meetings of the so-termed "tabaks collegien." His pedantry, in fact, was the best thing about him: as for