History of Friedrich II of Prussia, vol 7 | Page 8

[Ranke, i. 285 n.] I will have nothing to say." And as
the English answer steadily, "Both or none!"--meaning indeed to draw
Prussia away from the Kaiser's leading-strings, and out of his present
enchanted condition under the two Black-Artists he has about him, the
Negotiation sinks again into a mere smoking, and extinct or plainly
extinguishing state. The Grumkow-NOSTI Cipher Correspondence
might be reckoned as another efficient cause; though, in fact, it was
only a big concomitant symptom, much depended on by both parties,
and much disappointing both. In the way of persuading or perverting
Friedrich Wilhelm's judgment about England, this deep-laid piece of
machinery does not seem to have done much, if anything; and Hotham,
who with the English Court had calculated on it (on their detection of it)
as the grand means of blowing Grumkow out of the field, produced a
far opposite result on trying, as we shall see! That was a bit of heavy
ordnance which disappointed everybody. Seized by the enemy before it
could do any mischief; enemy turned it round on the inventor; fired it
off on the inventor, and--it exploded through the touch-hole; singeing
some people's whiskers: nothing more!--
A PEEP INTO THE NOSTI-GRUMKOW CORRESPONDENCE
CAUGHT UP IN ST. MARY AXE.
Would the reader wish to look into this Nosti-Grumkow
Correspondence at all? I advise him, not. Good part of it still lies in the
Paper-Office here; [Prussian Despatches, vols. xl. xli.: in a fragmentary
state; so much of it as they had caught up, and tried to make use of;--far

too much.] likely to be published by the Prussian Dryasdust in coming
time: but a more sordid mass of eavesdroppings, kitchen-ashes and
floor-sweepings, collected and interchanged by a pair of treacherous
Flunkies (big bullying Flunky and little trembling cringing one,
Grumkow and Reichenbach), was never got together out of a
gentleman's household. To no idlest reader, armed even with barnacles,
and holding mouth and nose, can the stirring-up of such a dust-bin be
long tolerable. But the amazing problem was this Editor's, doomed to
spell the Event into clearness if he could, and put dates, physiognomy
and outline to it, by help of such Flunky-Sanscrit!-- That
Nosti-Grumkow Correspondence, as we now have it in the
Paper-Office,--interpretable only by acres of British Despatches, by
incondite dateless helpless Prussian Books ("printed Blotches of
Human Stupor," as Smelfungus calls them): how gladly would one
return them all to St. Mary Axe, there to lie through Eternity! It is like
holding dialogue with a rookery; asking your way (perhaps in flight for
life, as was partly my own case) by colloquy with successive or even
simultaneous Rookeries. Reader, have you tried such a thing? An
adventure, never to be spoken of again, when once DONE!
Wilhelmina pretends to give quotations [Wilhelmina, i. 233-235.] from
this subterranean Grumkow-Reichenbach Correspondence; but hers are
only extracts from some description or remembrance; hardly one word
is close to the original, though here and there some outline or shadow
of a real passage is traceable. What fractional elements, capable of
gaining some vestige of meaning when laid together in their cosmic
order, I could pick from the circumambient immensity not cosmic, are
here for the reader's behoof. Let him skip, if, like myself, he is weary;
for the substance of the story is elsewhere given. Or perhaps he has the
curiosity to know the speech of birds? With abridgment, by occasional
change of phrase, above all by immense omission,--here, in specimen,
is something like what the Rookery says to poor Friedrich Wilhelm and
us, through St. Mary Axe and the Copyists in the Foreign Office!
Friedrich Wilhelm reads it (Hotham gives him reading of it) some
weeks hence; we not till generations afterwards. I abridge to the
utmost;--will mark in single commas what is not Abridgment but exact
Translation;--with rigorous attention to dates, and my best fidelity to

any meaning there may be:--
TO NOSTI (the so-called Excellenz Reichenbach) IN LONDON:
Gumkow from Berlin LOQUITUR, Reichenbach listening with both
his ears (words caught up in St. Mary Axe).
BERLIN, 3d MARCH, 1730. "The time has now come when
Reichenbach must play his game. Let him write that the heads of the
Opposition, who play Austria as a card in Parliament, 'are in
consternation, Walpole having hinted to them that he was about to
make friends with the King of Prussia;' 'that by means of certain
ministers at Berlin, and by other subterranean channels (AUTRES
SOUTERRAINS), his Prussian Majesty had been brought to a
disposition of that kind' [Knyphausen, Borck and others will be much
obliged to Reichenbach for so writing!], That Reichenbach knows they
intend sending a Minister to Berlin; but is certain enough, as perhaps
they are, his Prussian Majesty will not let himself be lured or caught in
the trap: but