French Ministries, though he will not enter on it with Voltaire.
This Journey to Baireuth and Anspach, for example, this is not for
a visit to his Sisters, as Friedrich labels it; but has extensive
purposes hidden under that title,--meetings with Franconian
Potentates, earnest survey, earnest consultation on a state of
things altogether grave for Germany and Friedrich; though he
understands whom to treat with about it, whom to answer with a
"BIRIBIRI, MON AMI." That Austrian Exorbitancy of a message to the
Diet has come out (August 16th, and is struggling to DICTATUR);
the Austrian procedures in Baiern are in their full flagrancy:
Friedrich intends trying once more, Whether, in such crisis, there
be absolutely no "Union of German Princes" possible; nor even of
any two or three of them, in the "Swabian and Franconian Circles,"
which he always thought the likeliest?

The Journey took effect, Tuesday, 10th September [Rodenbeck,
i. 93.] (not the day before, as Friedrich had been projecting);
went by Halle, straight upon Baireuth; and ended there on Thursday.
As usual, Prince August Wilhelm, and Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick,
were of it; Voltaire failed not to accompany. What the complexion
of it was, especially what Friedrich had meant by it, and how ill
he succeeded, will perhaps be most directly visible through the
following compressed Excerpts from Voltaire's long LETTER to
Secretary Amelot on the subject,--if readers will be diligent with
them. Friedrich, after four days, ran across to Anspach on
important business; came back with mere failure, and was
provokingly quite silent on it; stayed at Baireuth some three days
more; thence home by Gotha (still on "Union" business, still mere
failure), by Leipzig, and arrived at Potsdam, September 25th;--
leaving Voltaire in Wilhelmina's charmed circle (of which unhappily