[Illustration:  STATUE OF FREDERICK THE GREAT, UNTER DEN LINDEN, BERLIN.]

It was in some such fashion that he sought to make his son love him, and with much the same result.  In fact, he seemed to entertain a bitter dislike for the beautiful and delicate boy whom fortune had sent him as an heir, and treated him with such brutal severity that the unhappy child grew timid and fearful of his presence.  This the harsh old despot ascribed to cowardice, and became more violent accordingly.

On one occasion when young Frederick entered his room, something having happened to excite his rage against him, he seized him by the hair, flung him violently to the floor, and caned him until he had exhausted the strength of his arm on the poor boy’s body.  His fury growing with the exercise of it, he now dragged the unresisting victim to the windows, seized the curtain cord, and twisted it tightly around his neck.  Frederick had barely strength enough to grasp his father’s hand and scream for help.  The old brute would probably have strangled him had not a chamberlain rushed in and saved him from the madman’s hands.

The boy, as he grew towards man’s estate, developed tastes which added to his father’s severity.  The French language and literature which he hated were the youth’s delight, and he took every opportunity to read the works of French authors, and particularly those of Voltaire, who was his favorite among writers.  This predilection was not likely to overcome the fierce temper of the king, who discovered his pursuits and flogged him unmercifully, thinking to cane all love for such enervating literature, as he deemed it, out of the boy’s mind.  In this he failed.  Germany in that day had little that deserved the name of literature, and the expanding intellect of the active-minded youth turned irresistibly towards the tabooed works of the French.

In truth, he needed some solace for his expanding tastes, for his father’s house and habits were far from satisfactory to one with any refinement of nature.  The palace of Frederick William was little more attractive than the houses of the humbler citizens of Berlin.  The floors were carpetless, the rooms were furnished with common bare tables and wooden chairs, art was conspicuously absent, luxury wanting, comfort barely considered, even the table was very parsimoniously served.

The old king’s favorite apartment in all his places of residence was his smoking-room, which was furnished with a deal table covered with green baize and surrounded by hard chairs.  This was his audience-chamber, his hall of state, the room in which the affairs of the kingdom were decided in a cloud of smoke and amid the fumes of beer.  Here sat generals in uniform, ministers of state wearing their orders, ambassadors and noble guests from foreign realms, all smoking short Dutch pipes and breathing the vapors of tobacco.  Before each was placed a great mug of beer, and the beer-casks were kept freely on tap, for the old despot insisted that all should drink or smoke whether or not they liked beer and tobacco, and he was never more delighted than when he could make a guest drunk or sicken him with smoke.  For food, when they were in need of it, bread and cheese and similar viands might be had.