And a few years later this charming relation was broken up in the most painful manner.  How was that possible!  The marquis was perhaps the best Frenchman that the King had brought into his circle, a man of honor, with fine feelings, fine education, and really devoted to the King; but he was neither a great character nor an especially strong man.  For years the King had admired in him a scholar—­which he was not—­a wise, clear-sighted, assured philosopher with pleasing wit and fresh humor; he had in short set up an extremely pleasing, fanciful image of him.  Now, in daily intercourse, Frederick found himself mistaken.  A lack of robustness on the part of the Frenchman, causing him to dwell with hypochondriac exaggeration on his poor health, annoyed the King, who began to realize that the aging marquis was neither a great genius nor an intellectual giant.  The ideal which he had formed of him was destroyed.  Now the King began to make fun of him on account of his weaknesses.  The sensitive Frenchman thereupon asked for leave of absence, that a sojourn of a few months in France might restore his health.  The King was offended by this ill-humored attitude, and continued his raillery in friendly letters which he sent him.  He said that it was rumored that a werewolf had appeared in France.  This was undoubtedly the marquis, in the disguise of a Prussian and a sick man, and he asked if he had begun to eat little children.  He had not formerly had that bad habit, but people change a good deal in traveling.  The marquis, instead of a few months, stayed two winters.  When he was about to return, he sent certificates from his physicians.  Probably the worthy man had really been ill, but the King was deeply offended by this awkward attempt at justification on the part of an old friend, and when the latter returned, the old intimacy was gone forever.  The King would not let him go, but he took pleasure in punishing the renegade by stinging speeches and harsh jokes.  Finally the Frenchman, deeply hurt, asked for his dismissal.  His request was granted, and the sorrow and anger of the King is seen from the wording of the order.  When the marquis, in the last letter which he wrote the King before his death, represented to him again, and not without bitterness, how scornfully and badly he had treated an unselfish admirer, Frederick read the letter without a word.  But he wrote with grief to the dead man’s widow telling her of his friendship for her husband, and had a costly monument erected for him in a foreign land.  The great prince fared similarly with most of his intimates.  Magic as was his power to attract, he had demoniac faculties for repelling.  But if any one is disposed to blame the man for this, let him be told that hardly another king in history has so unsparingly disclosed his most intimate soul-life to his friends as Frederick.