“Will you guarantee that?  Will you undertake it?” asked the king, kindly.

“I will.”

“And look ye, you are just the man to carry out what you wish.  I am well satisfied with you.  You have justified the confidence I placed in you when I was crown prince.  You have redeemed the vow you made me then.”

“I swore to your majesty that I would be faithful to the fatherland with life and property,” cried Gotzkowsky, with noble ardor.

“And you have kept your word.  It is not difficult in easy and prosperous times to find people to serve the state.  Those are good citizens who serve her when she is in difficulty and danger.[2] You are a good citizen.”  And handing Gotzkowsky an open letter which lay on the writing-table, he said:  “Read, it is a letter from the Marquis d’Argens.  Read it aloud, I would like to hear it again.”

And Gotzkowsky read with a trembling voice, and cheeks reddened with noble modesty, the following passage from a letter of the marquis, which the king pointed out to him with his finger:  “Gotzkowsky is, indeed, an excellent man and a worthy citizen.  I wish you had many such as he.  The greatest gift which fortune can make a state is a citizen full of zeal for the welfare of his country and his prince.  And in this respect I must say, to the credit of Berlin, that in these trying times I have met many of her citizens, Gotzkowsky the foremost among them, whose virtues, the old historians of Rome, had they lived at the present day, would have immortalized!"[3]

“Are you satisfied?” asked the king, as Gotzkowsky, having finished, handed him the paper.  “Oh, I see you are a modest man, and blush like a young girl.  But tell me, now, what brings you here?  What does the city of Berlin wish?”

“Her rights, your majesty,” said Gotzkowsky, seriously.

“And who is troubling her rights?”

“Your majesty.”

The king frowned, and cast an angry glance on the bold jester.

Gotzkowsky continued, calmly:  “Your majesty is depriving us of our good rights, in so far as you wish to prevent us from being honest people, and keeping our word sacred.”

“Oh, now I understand you,” said the king, laughing.  “You are speaking of the Russian war-tax.  Berlin shall not pay it.”

“Berlin will pay it, in order that your majesty may retain her in your gracious favor; in order that the great Frederick may not have to blush for his faithless and dishonest town, which would not then deserve to be the residence of a king.  How! would your majesty trust the men who refused to redeem their openly-pledged word? who look upon sworn contracts as a mouse-trap, to be escaped from as soon as the opportunity offers, and when the dangerous cat is no longer sitting at the door?  Berlin will pay—­that our sons may not have to blush for their fathers; that posterity may not say that Berlin had stamped herself with the brand of dishonor.  We have pledged our word, and we must keep it.”