228 ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 



" le menuet de Madame de Sevigne." You see I am as much 

 intoxicated by it as that celebrated lady was when her vanity 

 was highly flattered by dancing on one occasion with le 

 grand roi. You will, I think, be glad to notice that no one 

 could guess from the king's letter the chief subject of my 

 communication.' The pleasure experienced by Humboldt from 

 this agreeable encounter with the Danish monarch again 

 finds expression in a subsequent letter to Schumacher on 

 March 11, 1841, in which he remarks: ' There is a great pre- 

 ference evinced in the highest regions here for Denmark, or, 

 as I should rather say, for your admirable and benevolent 

 sovereign. Two such 'kings are worthy of mutual apprecia- 

 tion.' In the ensuing chapter reference will again be made 

 to Humboldt's connection with Christian VIII. ; it is here 

 alluded to merely as an evidence of the amiable use he made 

 of his powers of diplomacy in furthering the wishes of his 

 friends. 



During the closing years of Frederick William III., Hum- 

 boldt's life at court was passed with its accustomed uniformity. 

 The only change of any importance was, as he complains in 

 1839, the opening of the railway between Berlin and Potsdam, 

 'which considerably increased the interruptions occurring in 

 his very unliterary and batlike existence, in consequence of 

 the more rapid oscillation between the two royal residences.' 

 On this account Humboldt was obliged to reside more fre- 

 quently than formerly at c the once famous heights of Sans- 

 souci,' where he lived in close companionship with the crown 

 prince, ' from whom, as you know/ he remarks to Schumacher, 

 c I can look alone for intellectual enjoyment.' That the king's 

 society yielded him but little of such pleasure, we have already 

 learned through earlier admissions, and the duties c of a very 

 prosaic character ' which devolved upon him during the summer 

 visits to Teplitz became increasingly irksome. He jokes with 

 some show of ill-humour at ' the gush of princes ' streaming 

 thither, and upon ' the elephants of the great world stretching 

 out their trunks to one another.' ' You are aware,' he writes to 

 Bockh, ' that the result of the periodic repetition of this piece 

 of comedy is that the world revolves daily with no improve- 



