Rafael Sabatini

King in Prussia Rafael Sabatini

CHARLES STUART-DENE, Marquess of Alverley, looked at humanity, and wondered why it was. You conceive the pessimism prompting this spirit of philosophic inquiry. How far it was justified you may gather from the Memoirs of the Margravine of Bayreuth, a lady who was no more curbed by discretion in the glimpses she affords us of her family, and particularly of her abominable sire, than in other matters that are commonly accounted intimate. Through the bright, prominent eyes that stared out of her young face, which would have been winsome had it not been pockmarked, you may view the scene that is to be regarded as the prelude to all this mischief. It was set in the Porcelain Gallery of the Palace of Monbijou. Music was being made by the flute of the Crown Prince of Prussia, to an accompaniment by his sister Wilhelmina, the future Margravine, on the lute, and the young Rittmeister von Katte on the clavichord. The three were rendering a sugary composition which the Prince claimed for his own, but which Katte believed would never have been written but for the previous existence of a melody of Scarlatti's. Monbijou with all its choice contents had been a gift to Queen Sophia Dorothea from her father-in-law, Frederick, the first King in Prussia; and this spacious Porcelain Gallery, so called because of the immensely tall and valuable Chinese vases that were the most conspicuous objects in its subdued and impeccable appointments, was one of the pleasantest of the palace's chambers. Light and airy, its lofty windows commanded a view of the long gardens that stretched down to the tranquil river.