Hotham said to the Swedish Ambassador: 'Reichenbach, walking in the dark, would give himself a fine knock on the nose ( aurait un furieux pied de nez ), when,' or IF, 'the thing was done quite otherwise.' Have a caution what you write."Pooh, pooh! Hotham must have said "if," not "when;" Swede is quite astray!--And indeed we will here leave off, and shut down this magazine of rubbish; right glad to wash ourselves wholly from it (in three waters) forevermore. Possibly enough the Prussian Dryasdust will, one day, print it IN EXTENSO, and with that lucidity of comment and arrangement which is peculiar to him;exasperated readers will then see whether I have used them ILL or not, according to the opportunity there was!--Here, at any rate, my reader shall he free of it. Indeed he may perceive, the negotiation was by this time come to a safe point, the Nosti-Grumkows triumphant, and the interest of the matter mainly out. Farther transient anxieties this amiable couple had,--traceable in that last short croak from Grumkow,--lest the English might consent to that of the "Single-Marriage in the mean time"(which the English never did, or meant to do). For example, this other screech of Nosti, which shall be his final last-screech:--LONDON, 12th MAY.--"Lord Townshend alarmingly hinted to me:
Better have done with your Grumkow-and-Seckendorf speculations:
the ill-intentioned are perfectly sure to be found out at the end of the account; and their tools will get ruined along with them.
Nosti endeavored to talk big in reply: but he shakes in his shoes nevertheless; and with a heart full of distraction exclaims now, Save yourselves, save me!--If Hotham speak of the Single-Marriage only, it is certain the Prince-Royal must mean to run away," and so make it a Double one in time.
Yes, indeed! But these were transient terrors. The day is our own, my Grumkow; yes, our own, my Nosti:--and so our Colloquy of Rookeries shall be suppressible henceforth.
HIS MAJESTY GETS SIGHT OF THE ST.-MARY-AXE DOCUMENTS;BUT NOTHING FOLLOWS FROM IT.
We have only to add what Hotham reports (Berlin, May 6th), That he "has had an interview with his Majesty, and spoken of the St.-Mary-Axe affair; Knyphausen having found a moment to lay it before his Majesty." So that the above Excerpts from St. Mary Axe (all but the last two),--the above, and many more suppressed by us,--are in his Majesty's hands: and he is busy studying them;will, it is likely, produce them in an amazed Tobacco-Parliament one of these evenings!--What the emotions of the royal breast were during the perusal of this extraordinary dialogue of birds, which has come to him through St. Mary Axe--? Manifold probably: manifold, questionable;but not tragical, or not immediately so. Certainly it is definable as the paltriest babble; no treason visible in it, nor constructive treason; but it painfully indicates, were his Majesty candid, That his Majesty is subject to spies in his own House;nay that certain parties do seem to fancy they have got his Majesty by the nose, and are piping tunes with an eye to his dancing, thereto. This is a painful thought, which, I believe, does much agitate his Majesty now and afterwards.--A painful thought or suspicion, rising sometimes (in that temperament of his) to the pitch of the horrible. I believe it occasionally, ever henceforth, keeps haunting the highly poetic temperament of his Majesty, nor ever quits him again at all; stalking always, now and then, through the vacant chambers of his mind, in what we may call the night-season (or time of solitude and hypochondriacal reflection),--though in busy times again (in daylight, so to speak) he impatiently casts it from him. Poor Majesty!
But figure Grumkow, figure the Tobacco-Parliament when Majesty laid these Papers on the Table! A HANSARD of that night would be worth reading. There is thunderous note of interrogation on his Majesty's face;--what a glimmer in the hard puckery eyes of Feldzeugmeister Seckendorf, "JARNI-BLEU!" No doubt, an excessively astonished Parliament. Nothing but brass of face will now serve the principal Honorable Gentleman there; but in that happily he is not wanting.
Of course Grumkow denies the Letters point-blank: Mere forgeries, these, of the English Court, plotting to ruin your Majesty's faithful servant, and bring in other servants they will like better! May have written to Reichenbach, nay indeed has, this or that trifling thing: but those Copyists in St. Mary Axe, "deciphering,"--garbling, manufacturing, till they make a romance of it,--alas, your Majesty? Nay, at any rate, what are the Letters? Grumkow can plead that they are the foolishest insignificant rubbish of Court-gossip, not tending any bad road, if they have a tendency. That they are adapted to the nature of the beast, and of the situation,--this he will carefully abstain from remarking.
We have no HANSARD of this Session; all is conjecture and tobacco-smoke. What we know is, not the least effect, except an internal trouble, was produced on the royal mind by the St.-Mary-Axe Discovery. Some Question there might well be, inarticulately as yet, of Grumkow's fidelity, at least of his discretion; seeds of suspicion as to Grumkow, which may sprout up by and by; resolution to keep one's eye on Grumkow. But the first practical fruit of the matter is, fierce jealousy that the English and their clique do really wish to interfere in our ministerial appointments; so that, for the present, Grumkow is firmer in his place than ever. And privately, we need not doubt, the matter continues painful to his Majesty.
