soon into your Countries; [Did come, 26th February, as we shall
see.] and perhaps will say like Caesar, VENI, VIDI, VICI." ...

Paragraph of tragic compliments to Grumkow we omit. Letter ends in
this way:--

"Your Baireuth News is very interesting; I hope, in September next
[time of a grand problem coming there for Wilhelmina], my Sister
will recover her first health. If I go travelling, I hope to have
the consolation of seeing her for a fortnight or three weeks;
I love her more than my life; and for all my obediences to the
King, surely I shall deserve that recompense. The diversions for
the Duke of Lorraine are very well schemed; but"--but what mortal
can now care about them? Close, and seal. [Forster, iii. 160-162;
OEuvres de Frederic, xvi, 37-39.]

As to this Duke of Lorraine just coming, he is Franz Stephan, a
pleasant young man of twenty-five, son of that excellent Duke
Leopold Joseph, whom young Lyttelton of Hagley was so taken with,
while touring in those parts in the Congress-of-Soissons time.
Excellent Duke Leopold Joseph is since dead; and this Franz has
succeeded to him,--what succession there was; for Lorraine as a
Dukedom has its neck under the foot of France this great while,
and is evidently not long for this world. Old Fleury, men say, has
his eye upon it. And in fact it was, as we shall see, eaten up by
Fleury within four years' time; and this Franz proved the last of
all the Dukes there. Let readers notice him: a man of high destiny
otherwise, of whom we are to hear much. For ten years past he has
lived about Vienna, being a born Cousin of that House (Grandmother
was Kaiser Leopold's own Sister); and it is understood, nay it is