History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 20 [105]
with the Original, for behoof of the King's Majesty.
"At Strehlen, King's Majesty not yet visible, Kappel has great difficulties in the anteroom among the sentry people. But he persists, insists: 'Read my Letter, then!' which they dare not do; which only Colonel Krusemark, the Adjutant, perhaps dare. They take him to Krusemark. Krusemark reads, all aghast; locks up Kappel; runs to the King; returns, muffles Kappel in soldier's cloak and cap, and leads him in. The King, looking into Kappel's face, into Kappel's clear story and the Warkotsch handwriting, needed only a few questions; and the fit orders, as to Warkotsch and Company, were soon given: dangerous engineers now fallen harmless, blown up by their own petard. One of the King's first questions was: 'But how have I offended Warkotsch?' Kappel does not know; Master is of strict wilful turn;--Master would grumble and growl sometimes about the peasant people, and how a nobleman has now no power over them, in comparison. 'Are you a Protestant?' 'No, your Majesty, Catholic.' 'See, IHR HERREN,' said the King to those about him; 'Warkotsch is a Protestant; his Curatus Schmidt is a Catholic; and this man is a Catholic: there are villains and honest people in every creed!'
"At noon, that day, Warkotsch had sat down to dinner, comfortably in his dressing-gown, nobody but the good Baroness there; when Rittmeister Rabenau suddenly descended on the Schloss and dining-room with dragoons: 'In arrest, Herr Baron; I am sorry you must go with me to Brieg!' Warkotsch, a strategic fellow, kept countenance to Wife and Rittmeister, in this sudden fall of the thunder-bolt: 'Yes, Herr Rittmeister; it is that mass of Corn I was to furnish [showing him an actual order of that kind], and I am behind my time with it! Nobody can help his luck. Take a bit of dinner with us, anyway!' Rittmeister refused; but the Baroness too pressed him; he at length sat down. Warkotsch went 'to dress;' first of all, to give orders about his best horse; but was shocked to find that the dragoons were a hundred, and that every outgate was beset. Returning half-dressed, with an air of baffled hospitality: 'Herr Rittmeister, our Schloss must not be disgraced; here are your brave fellows waiting, and nothing of refreshment ready for them. I have given order at the Tavern in the Village; send them down; there they shall drink better luck to me, and have a bit of bread and cheese.' Stupid Rabenau again consents:--and in few minutes more, Warkotsch is in the Woods, galloping like Epsom, towards Wallis; and Rabenau can only arrest Madam (who knows nothing), and return in a baffled state.
"Schmidt too got away. The party sent after Schmidt found him in the little Town of Nimptsch, half-way home again from his Wallis errand; comfortably dining with some innocent hospitable people there. Schmidt could not conceal his confusion; but pleading piteously a necessity of nature, was with difficulty admitted to the--to the ABTRITT so called; and there, by some long pole or rake-handle, vanished wholly through a never-imagined aperture, and was no more heard of in the upper world. The Prussian soldiery does not seem expert in thief-taking.
"Warkotsch came back about midnight that same Tuesday, 500 Wallis Hussars escorting him; and took away his ready moneys, near 5,000 pounds in gold, reports Frau Kappel, who witnessed the ghastly operation (Hussars in great terror, in haste, and unconscionably greedy as to sharing);--after which our next news of him, the last of any clear authenticity, is this Note to his poor Wife, which was read in the Law Procedures on him six months hence: 'My Child (MEIN KIND),--The accursed thought I took up against my King has overwhelmed me in boundless misery. From the top of the highest hill I cannot see the limits of it. Farewell; I am in the farthest border of Turkey.--WARKOTSCH.'" [Kuster, Lebens-Rettungen, p. 88: Kuster, pp. 65-188 (for the general Narrative); Tempelhof, v. 346, &c. &c.]
Schmidt and he, after patient trial, were both of them beheaded and quartered,--in
"At Strehlen, King's Majesty not yet visible, Kappel has great difficulties in the anteroom among the sentry people. But he persists, insists: 'Read my Letter, then!' which they dare not do; which only Colonel Krusemark, the Adjutant, perhaps dare. They take him to Krusemark. Krusemark reads, all aghast; locks up Kappel; runs to the King; returns, muffles Kappel in soldier's cloak and cap, and leads him in. The King, looking into Kappel's face, into Kappel's clear story and the Warkotsch handwriting, needed only a few questions; and the fit orders, as to Warkotsch and Company, were soon given: dangerous engineers now fallen harmless, blown up by their own petard. One of the King's first questions was: 'But how have I offended Warkotsch?' Kappel does not know; Master is of strict wilful turn;--Master would grumble and growl sometimes about the peasant people, and how a nobleman has now no power over them, in comparison. 'Are you a Protestant?' 'No, your Majesty, Catholic.' 'See, IHR HERREN,' said the King to those about him; 'Warkotsch is a Protestant; his Curatus Schmidt is a Catholic; and this man is a Catholic: there are villains and honest people in every creed!'
"At noon, that day, Warkotsch had sat down to dinner, comfortably in his dressing-gown, nobody but the good Baroness there; when Rittmeister Rabenau suddenly descended on the Schloss and dining-room with dragoons: 'In arrest, Herr Baron; I am sorry you must go with me to Brieg!' Warkotsch, a strategic fellow, kept countenance to Wife and Rittmeister, in this sudden fall of the thunder-bolt: 'Yes, Herr Rittmeister; it is that mass of Corn I was to furnish [showing him an actual order of that kind], and I am behind my time with it! Nobody can help his luck. Take a bit of dinner with us, anyway!' Rittmeister refused; but the Baroness too pressed him; he at length sat down. Warkotsch went 'to dress;' first of all, to give orders about his best horse; but was shocked to find that the dragoons were a hundred, and that every outgate was beset. Returning half-dressed, with an air of baffled hospitality: 'Herr Rittmeister, our Schloss must not be disgraced; here are your brave fellows waiting, and nothing of refreshment ready for them. I have given order at the Tavern in the Village; send them down; there they shall drink better luck to me, and have a bit of bread and cheese.' Stupid Rabenau again consents:--and in few minutes more, Warkotsch is in the Woods, galloping like Epsom, towards Wallis; and Rabenau can only arrest Madam (who knows nothing), and return in a baffled state.
"Schmidt too got away. The party sent after Schmidt found him in the little Town of Nimptsch, half-way home again from his Wallis errand; comfortably dining with some innocent hospitable people there. Schmidt could not conceal his confusion; but pleading piteously a necessity of nature, was with difficulty admitted to the--to the ABTRITT so called; and there, by some long pole or rake-handle, vanished wholly through a never-imagined aperture, and was no more heard of in the upper world. The Prussian soldiery does not seem expert in thief-taking.
"Warkotsch came back about midnight that same Tuesday, 500 Wallis Hussars escorting him; and took away his ready moneys, near 5,000 pounds in gold, reports Frau Kappel, who witnessed the ghastly operation (Hussars in great terror, in haste, and unconscionably greedy as to sharing);--after which our next news of him, the last of any clear authenticity, is this Note to his poor Wife, which was read in the Law Procedures on him six months hence: 'My Child (MEIN KIND),--The accursed thought I took up against my King has overwhelmed me in boundless misery. From the top of the highest hill I cannot see the limits of it. Farewell; I am in the farthest border of Turkey.--WARKOTSCH.'" [Kuster,
Schmidt and he, after patient trial, were both of them beheaded and quartered,--in