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rheinsbergThe Trier archive offers a huge (but not entirely complete, and heavily tilted towards the Fritz side of the correspondance) selection of Friedrich's entire correspondance, including, of course, with members of his family. It's always bearing in mind that the original selection of the letters was made by Preuss in the middle of the 19th century when adoration for "The One King" was unquestioned. Letters like the ones about Marwitz did emphatically not make the cut.
All this being said: what there is does give a good impresson of Fritz' changing relationship with the younger brother he called "l'autre moi-meme", his other self, from his pov through nearly 50 years.
Our younger days
First, when Fritz, age 28, gets to the throne and takes over 14 years old Heinrich's education, you get Fritz in (still lightside) Dad mode. (Actually, asmildred_of_midgard points out, you get Fritz in Wilhelmine mode, since he credits her with having inspired his love of reading and of working hard when they were children; there's a famous passage in Catt's memoirs about it.)
Big brotherly admonishments at this point sound thusly:
Always continue to apply yourself to reason correctly and to do your duty well.
or:
It is with sorrow that I have just learned that you are starting to go idle, preferring entertainment to studies. If you want to please me, you will apply yourself more diligently to the business of reading, which will be infinitely more useful to you than anything else.
Or:
If you want to become something in the world, know how to distinguish useful things from pleasant ones, the solid of the frivolous; and that pleasure never prevents you from applying yourself to things that are a thousand times more essential to you than trifles. Think about it, please.
(BTW, I did wonder: just how idle was fourteen years old Heinrich, given that Dad FW had been the ultimate "work work work" urger? Then I thought, well, the sudden lack of paternal pressure combined with the age might have led to a stint of teenage slackerness and rebellion. If so, he got cured quickly of it by Big Bro, not to mention that he imprinted on Fritz' taste in literature - and music - for a life time.)
I was delighted to find in your letter feelings worthy of a prince of the blood who, having forgotten himself, now knows how to take the right path. I trust your promises, being convinced that you will rectify the past by a firm application to your studies. This conduct will cause me pleasure, and will serve you to make you happy.
Being victorious in his first Silesia invasion - which also got him a lot of hero worship from teen Heinrich and just about still a teen AW (both of whom wanted to come, too) - also brought out a rare playfulness of tone which isn't in the letters often, like:
Be patient in Berlin, dear Henri, because there is not much to do here, only to make arrangements for shops, hospitals, etc. There are illnesses at Neisse, and I prefer to leave you both in Berlin until the time when the army assembles than to expose myself to losing you unfortunately and ill-timed by some illness. Farewell my dear; pay my respects to the Queen, my compliments to the great Wilhelm, my friendships to Amélie, my tenderness to Sophie, and tell yourself that I love you with all my heart.
Let me know about Jordan, and write me trifles.
Then we get a complete shift in tone, from a friendly 1745 letter by Heinrich about SD's stay at Oranienburg (which AW has just reopened with a big party for their mother), to several biting salvos from Fritz in 1946. Because the Marwitz letters from February and March 1746 are not there, and I'm really glad Ziebura included them in her biography and thus I could share them with you, there is no transition. Because unless one has read these letters (in combination with Lehndorff's complete diary entry on Marwitz) which start out semi-teasingly and then turn to vicious sarcasm at top speed, it would be a complete mystery as to why fraternal relations have suddenly achieved sub zero temperatures. Quoth Fritz:
We have nothing to reproach each other with, we have the same coldness towards each other; and since you want it so, I'm happy. It is only my intercession for your love affairs which sometimes softens you towards me, when you need it. Besides, the little friendship that you show me on all occasions does not excite me to make new efforts of tenderness in favor of a brother who has so little return for me. This is all I have to say to you this time, assuring you that I am, my dear brother, etc.
And because this is the year for thick, thick sarcasm, the next letter offers more of same:
If you love me, your friendship must be metaphysical, for I have never seen people like that loved, without looking at them, without speaking to them, without giving them the slightest sign of affection. Happy are the people you love, I want to believe it. If you put me in that number, I can assure you that I live in a deep ignorance of the feelings you have for me. I only know your distance, your lukewarmness, and the most perfect indifference that ever was.
Culminating in the next salvo:
Surely I did not expect to receive a letter from you; but for six whole months that you find it appropriate to sulk with me, that you live in the same house without seeing me and talking to me that unless propriety absolutely prevents you from dispensing with it, nothing should surprise me more. I was even less prepared for the project you are forming.
Which is Heinrich's request to be allowed to go on the Grand Tour, excuse me, on a military research project involving research on foreign fortresses and armies. (This was how he tried to sell it to Big Bro in order to get his travel permission. Flash forward: Heinrich won't get permission from Fritz to leave the country until well after the 7-Years-War.) If I may reconstruct the 1746 timeline:
February/March 1746: 19 years old Heinrich is in love with Marwitz the hot page, Fritz may or may not be in lust with him as well but at the very least behaves like he is, tells Heinrich Marwitz is a cheating gonorhea ridden no good flirt, makes fun of Heinrich's crush in general and ends up using the "I was only joking!" excuse. According to Lehndorff a decade later, then Marwitz gets fired as a page, at Heinrich's pleadings rehired as a guard, and some time later Heinrich breaks up with Marwitz accusing him of dishonesty. Meanwhile, according to the earlier Fritz letter, he doesn't talk to Big Brother for the next six months, until the Grand Tour/Military Research Project Abroad business, which is promptly declined with more sarcasm.
(What I find fascinating: is he actually insulted that Heinrich gives him the silent treatment and doesn't love him for this whole interlude, or is he just pretending to be?)
(mildred_of_midgard: Fritz? If Heinrich really was ignoring him and he wasn't just claiming that Heinrich was? Armchair psychology here, but I have to go with genuinely insulted. Fritz was the needy type. [ETA: Or as Wilhelmine put it, "I have always told you the King is very sensitive."])
For the next round of "Bringing Heinrich To Heel", happening in 1749, which starts with an argument about Heinrich being a sloppy regiment leader and ends with Heinrich having to agree to marry, see here. During said argument, Fritz accusing AW of being blindly prejudiced in favor of younger brother and idolizing him, whereas he, Fritz, could see through Heinrich. That certainty of seeing through the other appears to be mutual, though, given that when AW and Heinrich start their RPG in the early 50s - imagining a war between a Prussia allied with France versus Hannover/England allied to Austria and writing letters, battle plans etc. on this scenario , there seems to have been no question as to which of them is able to play Fritz.
(This is all the more remarkable because at this point Heinrich may have had a few early war experiences in the second Silesian War and done quite well there, but then so had AW, he was older, and he was the one who would in all likelihood become the next King of Prussia. So why doesn't he play the role of the King in that RPG?)
Also happening in the early 50s: Friedrich demands Heinrich gets married, Heinrich eventually submits. (This leads to a Fritzian letter on the note of "glad you see sense".)
The Trier archived correspondance doesn't get vivid until the 7 Years War. Most of the many many letters there are military and political in nature - btw, I do wonder, was Heinrich turning out to be actually good at commanding something that surprised Fritz or did he expect this to happen? Either way, it makes for another shift in the relationship. Because competence does impress our antihero, and it just so turns out younger brother is very competent indeed.
War Time
Even while during the terrible AW tragedy Heinrich sides with AW, his military star rises, and thus his oldest brother starts to confide in in him Not just when Fritz can bask in victory, as in the aftermath of the battle of Leuthen (one of his most famous victories against overwhelming odds):
In a word, Fortune returned to me; but send me the best scissors you can find, so I can cut off her wings. Please be so kind as to communicate all this news to dear Seydlitz, who, I am sure, takes a sincere part in it. Add on my part that I forbid him to go out before his wounds are healed, and that he must not ride a horse without having the permission of the (medical) Faculty.
Something which also strikes me are the repeated references to other siblings, as in:
My sister Amélie arrived here, which made me very happy; she will be kind enough to stay a week or so here.
(This is why the Hohenzollern are so interestingly messed up. He did want and need the company of those siblings, the more so the older he got, it seems.)
But then AW dies, and on 25th Juni 1757, we get the terrible horrible no good "Just think of that that means to meeeee!" letter to Heinrich about that, which you can read here. The subsequent Fritzian letters are a bit better, though I agree with Mildred that Fritz is talking to himself as as well as to Heinrich when he writes:
You lost a brother; but you have a whole family that loves you, and you have to keep yourself for them. So do, please, whatever you can imagine best, not to console you, but to distract yourself. I am truly in pain for you, and I am afraid that this sorrow will alter your days, and entirely ruin the little health that you have. I am not writing business to you, because my grimoire will be moreover quite filled with it. Tell me, please, what you know about my sister from Baireuth; I haven't heard from her for a long time.
I've quoted from Heinrich's reply on earlier occasions already, but since it's one of the few letters where he's not politely restrained in the Trier correspondance, here we go again. (Reminder: he's actually in Franconia and thus has just visited Wilhelmine in Bayreuth.)
I groaned at the misunderstanding that was between you and my brother. Your renewed reminding me of it aggravates my sorrows; but respect and pain impose silence on me, so that I cannot answer you anything on this subject. My wound will last, while my brother rests safe from misfortune. If he still lived, I would gladly take my days off to wipe out the number of those where you were mad at him. (...)
My sister from Bayreuth is near her ending. She cannot write. I fear that she will not recover from this illness. She still is ignorant of my brother's death, and it is feared that this news will cause the little hope that one has of her recovery to vanish.
That does it. Fritz sounds positively pleading now:
We have enough foreign enemies without our family wanting to tear itself apart. I hope that you do my feelings enough justice to not regard me as an unnatural brother or relative. It is now a question, my dear brother, of preserving the State, and of making use of all imaginable means to defend ourselves against our enemies. What you tell me about my sister from Baireuth makes me tremble; she is, after our worthy mother, whom I have most dearly cherished in the world; she is a sister who has my heart and all my confidence, and whose character could not be paid for by all the crowns of the universe. I have been brought up with her since my childhood; so you can count on the fact that between us two, these indissoluble bonds of tenderness and attachment for life reign, which all other bonds and the disproportion of age can never equal. May Heaven give that I perish before her, and that this last blow does not take the life without which I am truly lost (...) If you can, I beg you to tell my dear Sister of Bayreuth on my behalf all that the warmest and most tender friendship can inspire in you.
Whether or not Heinrich had meant his "she'll die of the AW news" as an emotional revenge, he seems to have softened up at that a bit, because just a month later, we get this:
11. September 1758
I give you a thousand thanks for the pleasant day you gave me yesterday. Except for the moment when I saw my sister Amélie, nothing has happened to me for six months that has given me so much pleasure.
Now I seem to remember Catt mentioned Fritz spending a day with Heinrich post AW death which he described to Catt as a good if tearful one, and I was a bit sceptical, but here we have actually back up. At least from Fritz' pov. Of course, ten days later, Fritz is back to fretting about Wilhelmine:
21. September
My dear brother,
We share the Elbe; you have the left bank, me the right; we just have to follow our project. You cannot try impossible things; but I rely on you to succeed in the doable. There is nothing new on this side.
Do not take away from me, I implore you, hope, which is the only resource of the poor. Think that I was born and raised with my sister from Bayreuth, that these first attachments are indissoluble, that between us the keenest tenderness has never received the least alteration, that we have separate bodies, but that we have one soul. Think that, after having wiped away so many kinds of misfortunes capable of disgusting me with life, there is only one blow left for me to anticipate which will make life truly unbearable. This, my dear brother, is the bottom of my heart, and I paint for you only a part of the dismal ideas which reign there. My thoughts are so dark today that you will not find it bad that I enclose them in myself.
And I really wish we had some reply letters preserved, which the Fritz letters mention, but we don't, at least not in the Trier archive. What Heinrich felt about all this "I can't live without Wilhelmine!" and "no love is like the love of siblings who grew up together" (which applies to AW and Heinrich just as it does to Fritz and Wilhelmine) only a few months after AW's death, I have no idea about. I mean, I know he was venting to Ferdinand about Fritz' behavior in the AW matter and also utterly convinced that Fritz would do it to him as well if he gave him the slightest opening for it, but how he felt about Wilhelmine - and Fritz' feelings for her - I have no idea. As late as October and pre battle of Hochkirch, Fritz is still writing:
I receive, heaven be praised! letters from Bayreuth that give me hope. There, my dear brother, is a ray of sunshine through a thick cloud. I confess that hope gives me pleasure, and that if I do not find perfect consolation in it, at least I enjoy the illusion as long as it lasts.
It doesn't last long, as we know. On to less angsty things. Clearly, the modern equivalent of a Prussian monarch is a mafia don. Seckendorff, as a reminder, was the former Imperial Envoy at father FW's court, instrumental in foiling mother SD's English marriage plans for her two oldest children, but also later a source of money for Crown Prince Fritz.
My dear brother,
I saw our two nephews in Torgau, and I must tell you that I found the elder greatly changed to his advantage, and the younger charming. (The younger is Henricus Minor, his favourite.)
I'm not talking to you about the roads or the horses, but certainly this trade is not a pleasure trip. I forgot to tell you, my dear brother, that it would be good to have old Seckendorff kidnapped; we could take him straight to Magdeburg. He is the architect of all the dangerous projects of our enemies; he is currently at their service, and if it is not other thing, that will facilitate the ransom of Prince Maurice. Adieu, dear brother; I kiss you.
Yes, you guys are definitely mobsters. Though I can see why neither AW nor Heinrich made it into the mobster AU fanfiction at the AO3 archive. In a Mafia movie, there is no way Heinrich wouldn't attempt a coup at some point and would duly be killed.
(Seckendorff: gets indeed traded for Maurice of Saxon, who'd been captured by the Austrians.)
The last major shift in Fritz' letters to Heinrich as presented in the Trier archive comes when after the break between Bavarian war of succession the correspondance resumes two years later in 1781. Politics are still and always subjects, but now we get history and philosophy debates as well. (Well, we get Fritz' side of same, since most of Heinrich's letters aren't there.) Many of the people either or both of them loved are now dead, and it turns out they can't do without each other in their dysfunctional way.
Two old men in a new age
Here's Fritz in a Senecan mood again (writing from the leisure palace he build for himself):
You ask me, my dear brother, in which countries there have been the most virtues. I believe it was at Sparta, as long as the institution of Lycurgus was followed there, in Rome until after the second Punic War, in England in the time of Queen Elizabeth; and, if you want me to tell you the cause, I attribute it to the frugality of manners. We have seen all the monarchies perverted by wealth, which brings luxury; the worldly goods attract consideration, so everyone believes that money takes the place of merit. We do not care about the choice of means to acquire it, it is who will have the most; from then on mores are perverted, and vices and crimes are overflowing. If I am not mistaken, it was Agesilaus who first introduced gold from Asia to Lacedemon, and from then on the old discipline was altered. In Rome, it was all the money brought there from Spain, Carthage, Macedonia and Syria, which softened Latium, and which perverted the citizens. In England, it was wealth which, in Cromwell's time, flooded Great Britain which introduced a frenzied debauchery and the license of morals.
Fritz, this is, err, an original interpretation of the Puritan republic under Cromwell followed by the Restoration of the Monarchy under Charles II.
In general, for men to be virtuous, they must enjoy a mediocre lot, that they are neither too poor nor too rich; add to that that they occupy themselves, and that work distracts them from the malice and nastiness that idleness would hatch in their brains.There is in the mountains of Silesia a population of about five hundred thousand souls, but laborious and simple in its manners; therefore, in the forty years that I have governed this country, I have only signed one death sentence, having only had one man who deserved to be punished. In all our possessions, which contain five million past souls, it almost never happens that, in a common year, there are more than twelve death sentences. The only crime that I cannot eradicate, and the most common, is that of these unhappy women who kill their children.
I mean, it's not that I don't see reasons for critisizing capitalism, but if a highly successful robber of worldly goods does it... (Sorry, still channelling Maria Theresia sometimes.)
1780s Fritz is also very much in the misanthropic "it's all meaningless" vein, and he knows best about history. Looks like Heinrich mentioned Cardinal Richelieu - whom he played in a 1750 masque when everyone was young and optimistic - in a positive manner. This gets instant fraternal disagreement:
I see, my dear brother, that, at whatever cost, you want to raise our species. You say that Cardinal Richelieu made Louis XIII tremble; not only did he make him tremble, but he killed his king's mother in exile and poverty, he had Montmorency and many others beheaded; but such bad deeds can only honor the lives of tigers and wolves. Richelieu was haughty and vengeful, I insist on it, and I refuse him the title of great in all his wickedness; I only grant him the title of enlightened minister when he unites with the Swedes to demean Austrian despotism in Germany.
Historical footnotes here: Maria de' Medici, mother of Louis XIII, did die in exile after having lost a power struggle with Richelieu, but no poverty was involved, and that was the end of a long road; she also was as loving and kind a mother to Louis XIII as SD was to Wilhelmine, much preferring his younger brother Gaston and backing several conspiracies against her older son. As for Richelieu's politics in general, I'd say he was no more or less bloody than Fritz, and also prone to seeing himself justified in the same way. ("I have no enemies but the enemies of the State.") He'd have loved the "first servant of the state" designation, considering he himself did not sit on the throne.
Uniting with the Swedes to demean Austrian despostism in Germany: This would be the Fritzian way to describe Ricihelieu (Catholic clergy, de facto PM of France) allying with Gustav Adolf (Protestant King of Sweden) against the (Catholic) Habsburg Emperor during the 30 Years War.
However all these are only trifles; what does it matter to the universe whether Germany is divided between fifty princes, or whether it bends under the scepter of a tyrant? These things are important to us, relative to our small interests; they are indifferent to the mass of the universe; the planets will also revolve around the sun, and so will we, whether we are free or slaves. We also see in history that a perpetual vicissitude changes the destinies of empires: some rise, and others fall; this uninterrupted game represents the same scene with different actors. I am convinced that the ants in your garden in Rheinsberg often go to war, my dear brother, for a grain of millet, and that you have no idea of their famous quarrels. We are these ants, and we imagine that the whole universe must have our eyes on us; what am I saying, the whole universe? the celestial court still, with all the choir of the angels and the saints, are occupied only with reading the gazettes of our nonsense. This is how human vanity feeds on visions, and rises to admire in it the masterpiece of nature.
They keep arguing this point, and much as Fritz strikes the "it all doesn't matter" attitude, I get the impression he secretly is relieved Heinrich argues back that it does matter, there's sense in it all, etc. Even the arguing about historical figures though of course he's convinced he knows best. As ever.
As opposed to the Voltaire correspondance, the letters to Heinrich prove Fritz did take notice there was something going on over seas in the soon to be ex colonies. He thinks it's a bit tricky when the new rebels wants to trade, because on the one hand, yay trade, on the other, Britain is an ally, but as long as he doesn't officially open the harbors but unofficially buys the goods, it's fine.
In the preceding decade, Heinrich is a fan of General Paoli, rebel against the French for Corsican independence, which struck me as typical. (In the 1770s, everyone discovered the Corsicans as the oppressed nation to sympathize with - James Boswell wrote his first book on the subject.) When he's finally allowed to go to Paris in 1784 (only five more years until the Revolution!), he reports back on the (bad) state of the French countryside, which causes Fritz to insightfully comment:
The public in France follows this natural common sense right which sees objects without disguise; but the ministers have many other reflections to make, the main one of which concerns their conservation. The influence of the Queen alarms them and contains them, without counting the exhaustion of the coffers, the little credit of the court in finances, and the strange decline of the army, which is almost reduced to nothing.
Indeed. Mind you, both Fritz and Heinrich are biased against Marie Antoinette for the obvious reason - her marriage to Louis makes it impossible to detach France from its Austria alliance, which the brothers would love to do. Thus, MT's marriage politics still stand in their way years after her death. (Fritz thought she would survive him and writes as much to Heinrich in 1778, saying "women refill their oil, while our lamp burns out empty - Lady Theresia (Dame Therese) will survive me".) Something that is inadvertendly funny is Fritz' insistence, post War of Bavarian Succession, of seeing Joseph II. as the coming menace who will try to conquer Prussia and all of Europe as soon as he, Fritz, as breathed his last:
The evil that I fear will happen when I am no longer; however, it is my duty to dismiss it or entirely annihilate it, if I can. I fear the close ties which may form over time between the Emperor and Russia; I fear that the great Catherine will allow herself to be deceived by the Emperor without noticing it, and that, by making him take one step after another, he will drag her against us; and I confess that I would like to warn the plans of those who would like to ravage and devastate Prussia, Silesia and the Marches.
Seriously, Fritz, I know you couldn't see Napoleon coming, but still, projecting much? Just because he imitated you by invading Bavaria doesn't mean Joseph wants to conquer Europe. As for him bamboozling Catherine...
Unexpectedly touching: Fritz' reaction to the death of Friederike Luise, aka the sister who got married first of all the siblings, who started out as a spirited girl cheeking FW and calling him "unjust" to his face and ended up frozen into permanent depression and ill health by a rotten husband almost as bad as the Schwedt guy:
My dearest brother,
It is the heartbroken with pain that I write to you today. I have just learned of the death of our poor and unhappy sister in Ansbach. This comes back, my dear brother, to what I have been telling you lately, that what is left of our family is shaking up their sleeves. I have always thought of going to Ansbach to see my poor sister again; I never could find the moment. She was a very good and honest person, whose heart was full of integrity. I confess to you, my dear brother, that this distresses me so much, that I will put off another day to answer you.
Back to Heinrich's 1784 journey to Paris, the holy grail of Hohenzollern travel destinations, longed for and never seen by Fritz:
My dearest brother,
When you are in Paris, my dear brother, a multitude of materials appear under the pen; a prodigiously populated city, an industrious nation, are inexhaustible sources from which one draws a hundred pleasant, interesting and instructive things. In this I find myself very backward, and unable to return the favor to you. Shall I speak to you of my vines, which have produced very poor grapes, of our trees, which the cold strips of their leaves, of my garden, which the cold will force me to abandon shortly? What will I tell you about society? I live as a recluse like the monks of La Trappe, on which you have glanced; I work, I walk, and I don't see anyone. But I talk to the dead by reading their good works, which is better than invoking the manes and talking to the Sorbonne and its evil genius, a use that masonry has put in vogue, and that popular superstition adopted. I beg you, my dear brother, to familiarize yourself a little with the Gallic hermits, so that when you return you can live with your old brother, who no longer cares about the world except by a thread. What a fall to leave Paris, and find yourself in Potsdam, at the home of an old rambler who has already sent part of his big baggage to take the lead for the last trip he has left to make. There, you saw busts, you were presented with operas, you heard famous academicians declaim; here, you will see an old cacochym body, whose memory is almost lost, who will annoy you with used words and the nonsense of his gossip. But bear in mind, however, that this old man loves you more than all the fine ésprits in Paris do. Be convinced of his tender attachment and the high regard with which, etc.
Say what you want, the man can write sad, longing letters. We are a far cry from "apply yourself" or "we're both cold". This is one lonely old man writing to one of the few people he does give a damn about, even if that giving a damn about happened very dysfunctionally.
We've arrived in the last year of Fritz' life. The last time the brothers saw each other was on the occasion of Heinrich's birthday, January 18th. Fritz' birthday was January 24th, but he was in no condition to celebrate:
My dearest brother,
I give you a thousand thanks for the wishes that you deign to make regarding my birth day. I passed it very badly, having had a very strong attack of asthma, and of which I am not yet entirely quit. We have here a M. Mirabeau, whom I do not know; he will come to my house today. As far as I can judge, he is one of those effeminate satirists who write for and against everyone. It is said that this man is going to seek asylum in Russia, from where he can publish his sarcasm with impunity against his homeland.
(Not just against his homeland. Mirabeau will write a book trashing you all, including Heinrich. BTW, Heinrich was in Paris for the second time when Mirabeau's trashy tell all hit the shelves after Fritz' death, and according to Thiébault, who visited, reacted to his being described as an incompetent geezer whose military success was just due to his boyfriend Kalkreuth and who was utterly small minded thusly: "For better or worse, I am a historical figure. If Mirabeau's judgment on me turns out to be right, then he has preceded history's judgment but for a few years. If he turns out to be wrong, why should I begrudge him a few days in the spotlight?" )
Great nephew Carl August, bff of Goethe, visits in that last year, which is the last public court activity Fritz absolves:
Today we will have the Duke of Weimar here; he goes back home, and I admit that he is far superior to his father, his grandfather, as well as his bisaïeul; to find a suitable man in his family, you have to go back to the famous Bernard de Weimar.
But to the last, he still keeps his black sense of humor:
My dearest brother,
Since the time that I did not have the satisfaction of writing to you, I suffered like a damned of asthma, which worsens at home daily. The doctor, who mixes a little witchcraft, frenzied me today by a demon named assa fetida, who, by means of a cannula, entered my stomach, and rages in guts. It is said that the devil is the sworn enemy of my evil, and that, therefore, for sure, if he wins, I will be possessed by him, or, if he loses his cause, I will continue to suffocate unceasingly, until the moment which will end my sufferings. If I had to choose between these rivals who argue for the honor of enslaving me, I admit that I would prefer the demon, because the funny one has wit, he seduced our first mother and many others; instead asthma is a ruthless executioner who constantly chokes you, and never completes you. Here, my dear brother, is the picture of my puny existence, and I will have to spend a few more days in uncertainty to judge which of these two heroes, by expelling his rival, will secure my conquest. I will not fail to realize this, begging you to count on all my tenderness, as on all my esteem, being, etc.
All this being said: what there is does give a good impresson of Fritz' changing relationship with the younger brother he called "l'autre moi-meme", his other self, from his pov through nearly 50 years.
Our younger days
First, when Fritz, age 28, gets to the throne and takes over 14 years old Heinrich's education, you get Fritz in (still lightside) Dad mode. (Actually, as
mildred_of_midgard points out, you get Fritz in Wilhelmine mode, since he credits her with having inspired his love of reading and of working hard when they were children; there's a famous passage in Catt's memoirs about it.) Big brotherly admonishments at this point sound thusly:
Always continue to apply yourself to reason correctly and to do your duty well.
or:
It is with sorrow that I have just learned that you are starting to go idle, preferring entertainment to studies. If you want to please me, you will apply yourself more diligently to the business of reading, which will be infinitely more useful to you than anything else.
Or:
If you want to become something in the world, know how to distinguish useful things from pleasant ones, the solid of the frivolous; and that pleasure never prevents you from applying yourself to things that are a thousand times more essential to you than trifles. Think about it, please.
(BTW, I did wonder: just how idle was fourteen years old Heinrich, given that Dad FW had been the ultimate "work work work" urger? Then I thought, well, the sudden lack of paternal pressure combined with the age might have led to a stint of teenage slackerness and rebellion. If so, he got cured quickly of it by Big Bro, not to mention that he imprinted on Fritz' taste in literature - and music - for a life time.)
I was delighted to find in your letter feelings worthy of a prince of the blood who, having forgotten himself, now knows how to take the right path. I trust your promises, being convinced that you will rectify the past by a firm application to your studies. This conduct will cause me pleasure, and will serve you to make you happy.
Being victorious in his first Silesia invasion - which also got him a lot of hero worship from teen Heinrich and just about still a teen AW (both of whom wanted to come, too) - also brought out a rare playfulness of tone which isn't in the letters often, like:
Be patient in Berlin, dear Henri, because there is not much to do here, only to make arrangements for shops, hospitals, etc. There are illnesses at Neisse, and I prefer to leave you both in Berlin until the time when the army assembles than to expose myself to losing you unfortunately and ill-timed by some illness. Farewell my dear; pay my respects to the Queen, my compliments to the great Wilhelm, my friendships to Amélie, my tenderness to Sophie, and tell yourself that I love you with all my heart.
Let me know about Jordan, and write me trifles.
Then we get a complete shift in tone, from a friendly 1745 letter by Heinrich about SD's stay at Oranienburg (which AW has just reopened with a big party for their mother), to several biting salvos from Fritz in 1946. Because the Marwitz letters from February and March 1746 are not there, and I'm really glad Ziebura included them in her biography and thus I could share them with you, there is no transition. Because unless one has read these letters (in combination with Lehndorff's complete diary entry on Marwitz) which start out semi-teasingly and then turn to vicious sarcasm at top speed, it would be a complete mystery as to why fraternal relations have suddenly achieved sub zero temperatures. Quoth Fritz:
We have nothing to reproach each other with, we have the same coldness towards each other; and since you want it so, I'm happy. It is only my intercession for your love affairs which sometimes softens you towards me, when you need it. Besides, the little friendship that you show me on all occasions does not excite me to make new efforts of tenderness in favor of a brother who has so little return for me. This is all I have to say to you this time, assuring you that I am, my dear brother, etc.
And because this is the year for thick, thick sarcasm, the next letter offers more of same:
If you love me, your friendship must be metaphysical, for I have never seen people like that loved, without looking at them, without speaking to them, without giving them the slightest sign of affection. Happy are the people you love, I want to believe it. If you put me in that number, I can assure you that I live in a deep ignorance of the feelings you have for me. I only know your distance, your lukewarmness, and the most perfect indifference that ever was.
Culminating in the next salvo:
Surely I did not expect to receive a letter from you; but for six whole months that you find it appropriate to sulk with me, that you live in the same house without seeing me and talking to me that unless propriety absolutely prevents you from dispensing with it, nothing should surprise me more. I was even less prepared for the project you are forming.
Which is Heinrich's request to be allowed to go on the Grand Tour, excuse me, on a military research project involving research on foreign fortresses and armies. (This was how he tried to sell it to Big Bro in order to get his travel permission. Flash forward: Heinrich won't get permission from Fritz to leave the country until well after the 7-Years-War.) If I may reconstruct the 1746 timeline:
February/March 1746: 19 years old Heinrich is in love with Marwitz the hot page, Fritz may or may not be in lust with him as well but at the very least behaves like he is, tells Heinrich Marwitz is a cheating gonorhea ridden no good flirt, makes fun of Heinrich's crush in general and ends up using the "I was only joking!" excuse. According to Lehndorff a decade later, then Marwitz gets fired as a page, at Heinrich's pleadings rehired as a guard, and some time later Heinrich breaks up with Marwitz accusing him of dishonesty. Meanwhile, according to the earlier Fritz letter, he doesn't talk to Big Brother for the next six months, until the Grand Tour/Military Research Project Abroad business, which is promptly declined with more sarcasm.
(What I find fascinating: is he actually insulted that Heinrich gives him the silent treatment and doesn't love him for this whole interlude, or is he just pretending to be?)
(
mildred_of_midgard: Fritz? If Heinrich really was ignoring him and he wasn't just claiming that Heinrich was? Armchair psychology here, but I have to go with genuinely insulted. Fritz was the needy type. [ETA: Or as Wilhelmine put it, "I have always told you the King is very sensitive."]) For the next round of "Bringing Heinrich To Heel", happening in 1749, which starts with an argument about Heinrich being a sloppy regiment leader and ends with Heinrich having to agree to marry, see here. During said argument, Fritz accusing AW of being blindly prejudiced in favor of younger brother and idolizing him, whereas he, Fritz, could see through Heinrich. That certainty of seeing through the other appears to be mutual, though, given that when AW and Heinrich start their RPG in the early 50s - imagining a war between a Prussia allied with France versus Hannover/England allied to Austria and writing letters, battle plans etc. on this scenario , there seems to have been no question as to which of them is able to play Fritz.
(This is all the more remarkable because at this point Heinrich may have had a few early war experiences in the second Silesian War and done quite well there, but then so had AW, he was older, and he was the one who would in all likelihood become the next King of Prussia. So why doesn't he play the role of the King in that RPG?)
Also happening in the early 50s: Friedrich demands Heinrich gets married, Heinrich eventually submits. (This leads to a Fritzian letter on the note of "glad you see sense".)
The Trier archived correspondance doesn't get vivid until the 7 Years War. Most of the many many letters there are military and political in nature - btw, I do wonder, was Heinrich turning out to be actually good at commanding something that surprised Fritz or did he expect this to happen? Either way, it makes for another shift in the relationship. Because competence does impress our antihero, and it just so turns out younger brother is very competent indeed.
War Time
Even while during the terrible AW tragedy Heinrich sides with AW, his military star rises, and thus his oldest brother starts to confide in in him Not just when Fritz can bask in victory, as in the aftermath of the battle of Leuthen (one of his most famous victories against overwhelming odds):
In a word, Fortune returned to me; but send me the best scissors you can find, so I can cut off her wings. Please be so kind as to communicate all this news to dear Seydlitz, who, I am sure, takes a sincere part in it. Add on my part that I forbid him to go out before his wounds are healed, and that he must not ride a horse without having the permission of the (medical) Faculty.
Something which also strikes me are the repeated references to other siblings, as in:
My sister Amélie arrived here, which made me very happy; she will be kind enough to stay a week or so here.
(This is why the Hohenzollern are so interestingly messed up. He did want and need the company of those siblings, the more so the older he got, it seems.)
But then AW dies, and on 25th Juni 1757, we get the terrible horrible no good "Just think of that that means to meeeee!" letter to Heinrich about that, which you can read here. The subsequent Fritzian letters are a bit better, though I agree with Mildred that Fritz is talking to himself as as well as to Heinrich when he writes:
You lost a brother; but you have a whole family that loves you, and you have to keep yourself for them. So do, please, whatever you can imagine best, not to console you, but to distract yourself. I am truly in pain for you, and I am afraid that this sorrow will alter your days, and entirely ruin the little health that you have. I am not writing business to you, because my grimoire will be moreover quite filled with it. Tell me, please, what you know about my sister from Baireuth; I haven't heard from her for a long time.
I've quoted from Heinrich's reply on earlier occasions already, but since it's one of the few letters where he's not politely restrained in the Trier correspondance, here we go again. (Reminder: he's actually in Franconia and thus has just visited Wilhelmine in Bayreuth.)
I groaned at the misunderstanding that was between you and my brother. Your renewed reminding me of it aggravates my sorrows; but respect and pain impose silence on me, so that I cannot answer you anything on this subject. My wound will last, while my brother rests safe from misfortune. If he still lived, I would gladly take my days off to wipe out the number of those where you were mad at him. (...)
My sister from Bayreuth is near her ending. She cannot write. I fear that she will not recover from this illness. She still is ignorant of my brother's death, and it is feared that this news will cause the little hope that one has of her recovery to vanish.
That does it. Fritz sounds positively pleading now:
We have enough foreign enemies without our family wanting to tear itself apart. I hope that you do my feelings enough justice to not regard me as an unnatural brother or relative. It is now a question, my dear brother, of preserving the State, and of making use of all imaginable means to defend ourselves against our enemies. What you tell me about my sister from Baireuth makes me tremble; she is, after our worthy mother, whom I have most dearly cherished in the world; she is a sister who has my heart and all my confidence, and whose character could not be paid for by all the crowns of the universe. I have been brought up with her since my childhood; so you can count on the fact that between us two, these indissoluble bonds of tenderness and attachment for life reign, which all other bonds and the disproportion of age can never equal. May Heaven give that I perish before her, and that this last blow does not take the life without which I am truly lost (...) If you can, I beg you to tell my dear Sister of Bayreuth on my behalf all that the warmest and most tender friendship can inspire in you.
Whether or not Heinrich had meant his "she'll die of the AW news" as an emotional revenge, he seems to have softened up at that a bit, because just a month later, we get this:
11. September 1758
I give you a thousand thanks for the pleasant day you gave me yesterday. Except for the moment when I saw my sister Amélie, nothing has happened to me for six months that has given me so much pleasure.
Now I seem to remember Catt mentioned Fritz spending a day with Heinrich post AW death which he described to Catt as a good if tearful one, and I was a bit sceptical, but here we have actually back up. At least from Fritz' pov. Of course, ten days later, Fritz is back to fretting about Wilhelmine:
21. September
My dear brother,
We share the Elbe; you have the left bank, me the right; we just have to follow our project. You cannot try impossible things; but I rely on you to succeed in the doable. There is nothing new on this side.
Do not take away from me, I implore you, hope, which is the only resource of the poor. Think that I was born and raised with my sister from Bayreuth, that these first attachments are indissoluble, that between us the keenest tenderness has never received the least alteration, that we have separate bodies, but that we have one soul. Think that, after having wiped away so many kinds of misfortunes capable of disgusting me with life, there is only one blow left for me to anticipate which will make life truly unbearable. This, my dear brother, is the bottom of my heart, and I paint for you only a part of the dismal ideas which reign there. My thoughts are so dark today that you will not find it bad that I enclose them in myself.
And I really wish we had some reply letters preserved, which the Fritz letters mention, but we don't, at least not in the Trier archive. What Heinrich felt about all this "I can't live without Wilhelmine!" and "no love is like the love of siblings who grew up together" (which applies to AW and Heinrich just as it does to Fritz and Wilhelmine) only a few months after AW's death, I have no idea about. I mean, I know he was venting to Ferdinand about Fritz' behavior in the AW matter and also utterly convinced that Fritz would do it to him as well if he gave him the slightest opening for it, but how he felt about Wilhelmine - and Fritz' feelings for her - I have no idea. As late as October and pre battle of Hochkirch, Fritz is still writing:
I receive, heaven be praised! letters from Bayreuth that give me hope. There, my dear brother, is a ray of sunshine through a thick cloud. I confess that hope gives me pleasure, and that if I do not find perfect consolation in it, at least I enjoy the illusion as long as it lasts.
It doesn't last long, as we know. On to less angsty things. Clearly, the modern equivalent of a Prussian monarch is a mafia don. Seckendorff, as a reminder, was the former Imperial Envoy at father FW's court, instrumental in foiling mother SD's English marriage plans for her two oldest children, but also later a source of money for Crown Prince Fritz.
My dear brother,
I saw our two nephews in Torgau, and I must tell you that I found the elder greatly changed to his advantage, and the younger charming. (The younger is Henricus Minor, his favourite.)
I'm not talking to you about the roads or the horses, but certainly this trade is not a pleasure trip. I forgot to tell you, my dear brother, that it would be good to have old Seckendorff kidnapped; we could take him straight to Magdeburg. He is the architect of all the dangerous projects of our enemies; he is currently at their service, and if it is not other thing, that will facilitate the ransom of Prince Maurice. Adieu, dear brother; I kiss you.
Yes, you guys are definitely mobsters. Though I can see why neither AW nor Heinrich made it into the mobster AU fanfiction at the AO3 archive. In a Mafia movie, there is no way Heinrich wouldn't attempt a coup at some point and would duly be killed.
(Seckendorff: gets indeed traded for Maurice of Saxon, who'd been captured by the Austrians.)
The last major shift in Fritz' letters to Heinrich as presented in the Trier archive comes when after the break between Bavarian war of succession the correspondance resumes two years later in 1781. Politics are still and always subjects, but now we get history and philosophy debates as well. (Well, we get Fritz' side of same, since most of Heinrich's letters aren't there.) Many of the people either or both of them loved are now dead, and it turns out they can't do without each other in their dysfunctional way.
Two old men in a new age
Here's Fritz in a Senecan mood again (writing from the leisure palace he build for himself):
You ask me, my dear brother, in which countries there have been the most virtues. I believe it was at Sparta, as long as the institution of Lycurgus was followed there, in Rome until after the second Punic War, in England in the time of Queen Elizabeth; and, if you want me to tell you the cause, I attribute it to the frugality of manners. We have seen all the monarchies perverted by wealth, which brings luxury; the worldly goods attract consideration, so everyone believes that money takes the place of merit. We do not care about the choice of means to acquire it, it is who will have the most; from then on mores are perverted, and vices and crimes are overflowing. If I am not mistaken, it was Agesilaus who first introduced gold from Asia to Lacedemon, and from then on the old discipline was altered. In Rome, it was all the money brought there from Spain, Carthage, Macedonia and Syria, which softened Latium, and which perverted the citizens. In England, it was wealth which, in Cromwell's time, flooded Great Britain which introduced a frenzied debauchery and the license of morals.
Fritz, this is, err, an original interpretation of the Puritan republic under Cromwell followed by the Restoration of the Monarchy under Charles II.
In general, for men to be virtuous, they must enjoy a mediocre lot, that they are neither too poor nor too rich; add to that that they occupy themselves, and that work distracts them from the malice and nastiness that idleness would hatch in their brains.There is in the mountains of Silesia a population of about five hundred thousand souls, but laborious and simple in its manners; therefore, in the forty years that I have governed this country, I have only signed one death sentence, having only had one man who deserved to be punished. In all our possessions, which contain five million past souls, it almost never happens that, in a common year, there are more than twelve death sentences. The only crime that I cannot eradicate, and the most common, is that of these unhappy women who kill their children.
I mean, it's not that I don't see reasons for critisizing capitalism, but if a highly successful robber of worldly goods does it... (Sorry, still channelling Maria Theresia sometimes.)
1780s Fritz is also very much in the misanthropic "it's all meaningless" vein, and he knows best about history. Looks like Heinrich mentioned Cardinal Richelieu - whom he played in a 1750 masque when everyone was young and optimistic - in a positive manner. This gets instant fraternal disagreement:
I see, my dear brother, that, at whatever cost, you want to raise our species. You say that Cardinal Richelieu made Louis XIII tremble; not only did he make him tremble, but he killed his king's mother in exile and poverty, he had Montmorency and many others beheaded; but such bad deeds can only honor the lives of tigers and wolves. Richelieu was haughty and vengeful, I insist on it, and I refuse him the title of great in all his wickedness; I only grant him the title of enlightened minister when he unites with the Swedes to demean Austrian despotism in Germany.
Historical footnotes here: Maria de' Medici, mother of Louis XIII, did die in exile after having lost a power struggle with Richelieu, but no poverty was involved, and that was the end of a long road; she also was as loving and kind a mother to Louis XIII as SD was to Wilhelmine, much preferring his younger brother Gaston and backing several conspiracies against her older son. As for Richelieu's politics in general, I'd say he was no more or less bloody than Fritz, and also prone to seeing himself justified in the same way. ("I have no enemies but the enemies of the State.") He'd have loved the "first servant of the state" designation, considering he himself did not sit on the throne.
Uniting with the Swedes to demean Austrian despostism in Germany: This would be the Fritzian way to describe Ricihelieu (Catholic clergy, de facto PM of France) allying with Gustav Adolf (Protestant King of Sweden) against the (Catholic) Habsburg Emperor during the 30 Years War.
However all these are only trifles; what does it matter to the universe whether Germany is divided between fifty princes, or whether it bends under the scepter of a tyrant? These things are important to us, relative to our small interests; they are indifferent to the mass of the universe; the planets will also revolve around the sun, and so will we, whether we are free or slaves. We also see in history that a perpetual vicissitude changes the destinies of empires: some rise, and others fall; this uninterrupted game represents the same scene with different actors. I am convinced that the ants in your garden in Rheinsberg often go to war, my dear brother, for a grain of millet, and that you have no idea of their famous quarrels. We are these ants, and we imagine that the whole universe must have our eyes on us; what am I saying, the whole universe? the celestial court still, with all the choir of the angels and the saints, are occupied only with reading the gazettes of our nonsense. This is how human vanity feeds on visions, and rises to admire in it the masterpiece of nature.
They keep arguing this point, and much as Fritz strikes the "it all doesn't matter" attitude, I get the impression he secretly is relieved Heinrich argues back that it does matter, there's sense in it all, etc. Even the arguing about historical figures though of course he's convinced he knows best. As ever.
As opposed to the Voltaire correspondance, the letters to Heinrich prove Fritz did take notice there was something going on over seas in the soon to be ex colonies. He thinks it's a bit tricky when the new rebels wants to trade, because on the one hand, yay trade, on the other, Britain is an ally, but as long as he doesn't officially open the harbors but unofficially buys the goods, it's fine.
In the preceding decade, Heinrich is a fan of General Paoli, rebel against the French for Corsican independence, which struck me as typical. (In the 1770s, everyone discovered the Corsicans as the oppressed nation to sympathize with - James Boswell wrote his first book on the subject.) When he's finally allowed to go to Paris in 1784 (only five more years until the Revolution!), he reports back on the (bad) state of the French countryside, which causes Fritz to insightfully comment:
The public in France follows this natural common sense right which sees objects without disguise; but the ministers have many other reflections to make, the main one of which concerns their conservation. The influence of the Queen alarms them and contains them, without counting the exhaustion of the coffers, the little credit of the court in finances, and the strange decline of the army, which is almost reduced to nothing.
Indeed. Mind you, both Fritz and Heinrich are biased against Marie Antoinette for the obvious reason - her marriage to Louis makes it impossible to detach France from its Austria alliance, which the brothers would love to do. Thus, MT's marriage politics still stand in their way years after her death. (Fritz thought she would survive him and writes as much to Heinrich in 1778, saying "women refill their oil, while our lamp burns out empty - Lady Theresia (Dame Therese) will survive me".) Something that is inadvertendly funny is Fritz' insistence, post War of Bavarian Succession, of seeing Joseph II. as the coming menace who will try to conquer Prussia and all of Europe as soon as he, Fritz, as breathed his last:
The evil that I fear will happen when I am no longer; however, it is my duty to dismiss it or entirely annihilate it, if I can. I fear the close ties which may form over time between the Emperor and Russia; I fear that the great Catherine will allow herself to be deceived by the Emperor without noticing it, and that, by making him take one step after another, he will drag her against us; and I confess that I would like to warn the plans of those who would like to ravage and devastate Prussia, Silesia and the Marches.
Seriously, Fritz, I know you couldn't see Napoleon coming, but still, projecting much? Just because he imitated you by invading Bavaria doesn't mean Joseph wants to conquer Europe. As for him bamboozling Catherine...
Unexpectedly touching: Fritz' reaction to the death of Friederike Luise, aka the sister who got married first of all the siblings, who started out as a spirited girl cheeking FW and calling him "unjust" to his face and ended up frozen into permanent depression and ill health by a rotten husband almost as bad as the Schwedt guy:
My dearest brother,
It is the heartbroken with pain that I write to you today. I have just learned of the death of our poor and unhappy sister in Ansbach. This comes back, my dear brother, to what I have been telling you lately, that what is left of our family is shaking up their sleeves. I have always thought of going to Ansbach to see my poor sister again; I never could find the moment. She was a very good and honest person, whose heart was full of integrity. I confess to you, my dear brother, that this distresses me so much, that I will put off another day to answer you.
Back to Heinrich's 1784 journey to Paris, the holy grail of Hohenzollern travel destinations, longed for and never seen by Fritz:
My dearest brother,
When you are in Paris, my dear brother, a multitude of materials appear under the pen; a prodigiously populated city, an industrious nation, are inexhaustible sources from which one draws a hundred pleasant, interesting and instructive things. In this I find myself very backward, and unable to return the favor to you. Shall I speak to you of my vines, which have produced very poor grapes, of our trees, which the cold strips of their leaves, of my garden, which the cold will force me to abandon shortly? What will I tell you about society? I live as a recluse like the monks of La Trappe, on which you have glanced; I work, I walk, and I don't see anyone. But I talk to the dead by reading their good works, which is better than invoking the manes and talking to the Sorbonne and its evil genius, a use that masonry has put in vogue, and that popular superstition adopted. I beg you, my dear brother, to familiarize yourself a little with the Gallic hermits, so that when you return you can live with your old brother, who no longer cares about the world except by a thread. What a fall to leave Paris, and find yourself in Potsdam, at the home of an old rambler who has already sent part of his big baggage to take the lead for the last trip he has left to make. There, you saw busts, you were presented with operas, you heard famous academicians declaim; here, you will see an old cacochym body, whose memory is almost lost, who will annoy you with used words and the nonsense of his gossip. But bear in mind, however, that this old man loves you more than all the fine ésprits in Paris do. Be convinced of his tender attachment and the high regard with which, etc.
Say what you want, the man can write sad, longing letters. We are a far cry from "apply yourself" or "we're both cold". This is one lonely old man writing to one of the few people he does give a damn about, even if that giving a damn about happened very dysfunctionally.
We've arrived in the last year of Fritz' life. The last time the brothers saw each other was on the occasion of Heinrich's birthday, January 18th. Fritz' birthday was January 24th, but he was in no condition to celebrate:
My dearest brother,
I give you a thousand thanks for the wishes that you deign to make regarding my birth day. I passed it very badly, having had a very strong attack of asthma, and of which I am not yet entirely quit. We have here a M. Mirabeau, whom I do not know; he will come to my house today. As far as I can judge, he is one of those effeminate satirists who write for and against everyone. It is said that this man is going to seek asylum in Russia, from where he can publish his sarcasm with impunity against his homeland.
(Not just against his homeland. Mirabeau will write a book trashing you all, including Heinrich. BTW, Heinrich was in Paris for the second time when Mirabeau's trashy tell all hit the shelves after Fritz' death, and according to Thiébault, who visited, reacted to his being described as an incompetent geezer whose military success was just due to his boyfriend Kalkreuth and who was utterly small minded thusly: "For better or worse, I am a historical figure. If Mirabeau's judgment on me turns out to be right, then he has preceded history's judgment but for a few years. If he turns out to be wrong, why should I begrudge him a few days in the spotlight?" )
Great nephew Carl August, bff of Goethe, visits in that last year, which is the last public court activity Fritz absolves:
Today we will have the Duke of Weimar here; he goes back home, and I admit that he is far superior to his father, his grandfather, as well as his bisaïeul; to find a suitable man in his family, you have to go back to the famous Bernard de Weimar.
But to the last, he still keeps his black sense of humor:
My dearest brother,
Since the time that I did not have the satisfaction of writing to you, I suffered like a damned of asthma, which worsens at home daily. The doctor, who mixes a little witchcraft, frenzied me today by a demon named assa fetida, who, by means of a cannula, entered my stomach, and rages in guts. It is said that the devil is the sworn enemy of my evil, and that, therefore, for sure, if he wins, I will be possessed by him, or, if he loses his cause, I will continue to suffocate unceasingly, until the moment which will end my sufferings. If I had to choose between these rivals who argue for the honor of enslaving me, I admit that I would prefer the demon, because the funny one has wit, he seduced our first mother and many others; instead asthma is a ruthless executioner who constantly chokes you, and never completes you. Here, my dear brother, is the picture of my puny existence, and I will have to spend a few more days in uncertainty to judge which of these two heroes, by expelling his rival, will secure my conquest. I will not fail to realize this, begging you to count on all my tenderness, as on all my esteem, being, etc.
