Being their eldest grandson and godchild, I had dined every Sunday since my infancy with my grandfather and grandmother; and the hours so spent had been the most delightful of the whole week.  But now I relished not a morsel, because I was compelled to hear the most horrible slanders of my hero.  Here blew another wind, here sounded another tone, than at home.  My liking and even my respect for my grandfather and grandmother fell off.  I could mention nothing of this to my parents, but avoided the matter, both on account of my own feelings, and because I had been warned by my mother.  In this way I was thrown back upon myself; and as in my sixth year, after the earthquake at Lisbon, the goodness of God had become to me in some measure suspicious:  so I began now, on account of Frederick the Second, to doubt the justice of the public.  My heart was naturally inclined to reverence, and it required a great shock to stagger my faith in any thing that was venerable.  But alas! they had commended good manners and a becoming deportment to us, not for their own sake, but for the sake of the people.  What will people say? was always the cry; and I thought that the people must be right good people, and would know how to judge of any thing and every thing.  But my experience went just to the contrary.  The greatest and most signal services were defamed and attacked; the noblest deeds, if not denied, were at least misrepresented and diminished; and this base injustice was done to the only man who was manifestly elevated above all his contemporaries, and who daily proved what he was able to do,—­and that, not by the populace, but by distinguished men, as I took my grandfather and uncles to be.  That parties existed, and that he himself belonged to a party, had never entered into the conceptions of the boy.  He, therefore, believed himself all the more right, and dared hold his own opinion for the better one; since he and those of like mind appreciated the beauty and other good qualities of Maria Theresa, and even did not grudge the Emperor Francis his love of jewellery and money.  That Count Daun was often called an old dozer, they thought justifiable.

But, now that I look more closely into the matter, I here trace the germ of that disregard and even disdain of the public, which clung to me for a whole period of my life, and only in later days was brought within bounds by insight and cultivation.  Suffice it to say, that the perception of the injustice of parties had even then a very unpleasant, nay, an injurious, effect upon the boy; as it accustomed him to separate himself from beloved and highly valued persons.  The quick succession of battles and events left the parties neither quiet nor rest.  We ever found a malicious delight in reviving and resharpening those imaginary evils and capricious disputes; and thus we continued to tease each other, until the occupation of Frankfort by the French some years afterwards brought real inconvenience into our homes.