Friedrich was opening his Opera-House, enjoying the first ballets,
while Belleisle filed out of Prag that gloomy evening. Our poor
Kaiser will not "retain Bohemia," then; how far from it! The thing
is not comfortable to Friedrich; but what help?

This is the gayest Carnival yet seen in Berlin, this immediately
following the Peace; everybody saying to himself and others,
"GAUDEAMUS, What a Season!" Not that, in the present hurry of
affairs, I can dwell on operas, assemblies, balls, sledge-parties;
or indeed have the least word to say on such matters, beyond
suggesting them to the imagination of readers. The operas, the
carnival gayeties, the intricate considerations and diplomacies of
this Winter, at Berlin and elsewhere, may be figured: but here is
one little speck, also from the Archives, which is worth saving.
Princess Ulrique is in her twenty-third year, Princess Amelia in
her twentieth; beautiful clever creatures, both; Ulrique the more
staid of the two. "Never saw so gay a Carnival," said everybody;
and in the height of it, with all manner of gayeties going on,--
think where the dainty little shoes have been pinching!


PRINCESSES ULRIQUE AND AMELIA TO THE KING.

BERLIN, "1st March, 1743.
"MY DEAREST BROTHER,--I know not if it is not too bold to trouble
your Majesty on private affairs: but the great confidence which my
Sister [Amelia] and I have in your kindness encourages us to lay
before you a sincere avowal as to the state of our bits of finances
(NOS PETITES FINANCES), which are a good deal deranged just now;
the revenues having, for two years and a half past, been rather