king, the blows which he distributed so freely in his rooms, and the monotonous daily routine which he forced upon her, were the subject of no end of complaining, sulking, and ridicule in her apartments.  Crown Prince Frederick grew up, the playmate of his elder sister, into a gentle child with sparkling eyes and beautiful light hair.  He was taught with exactness what the king desired,—­and that was little enough:  French, a certain amount of history, and the necessary accomplishments of a soldier.  Against the will of his father (the great King had never surmounted the difficulties of the genitive and dative) he acquired some knowledge of the Latin declensions.  To the boy, who was easily led and in the king’s presence looked shy and defiant, the women imparted his first interest in French literature.  He himself later gave his sister the credit for it, but his governess too was an accomplished French woman.  That the foreign atmosphere was hateful to the king certainly contributed to make the son fond of it; for almost systematically praise was bestowed in the queen’s apartments upon everything that was displeasing to the stern mind of the master.  When in the family circle the king made one of his clumsy, pious speeches, Princess Wilhelmina and young Frederick would look at each other significantly, until the mischievous face of one or the other aroused childish laughter, and brought the king’s wrath to the point of explosion.  For this reason, the son, even in his earliest years, became a source of vexation to his father, who called him an effeminate, untidy fellow with an unmanly pleasure in clothes and trifles.

But from the report of his sister, for whose unsparing judgment censure was easier than praise, it is evident that the amiability of the talented boy had its effect upon those about him:  as when, for instance, he secretly read a French story with his sister, and recast the whole Berlin Court into the comic characters of the novel; when they made forbidden music with flute and lute; when he went in disguise to her and they recited the parts of a French comedy to each other.  But in order to enjoy even these harmless pleasures the prince was constantly forced into falsehood, deception, and disguise.  He was proud, high-minded, magnanimous, with an uncompromising love of truth.  The fact that deception was utterly repulsive to him, that even where it was advisable he was unwilling to stoop to it, and that, if he ever undertook it, he dissimulated unskilfully, threw a constantly increasing strain upon his relations with his father.  The king’s distrust grew, and the son’s offended sense of personal dignity found expression in the form of stubbornness.