Once on the spot, judge if the Konigsberg Domain-Kammer had not a stiff muster to pass; especially if Schlubhut's drill-exercise was gentle! Schlubhut, summoned to private interview with his Majesty, carries his head higher than could be looked for: Is very sorry;knows not how it happened; meant always to refund; will refund, to the last penny, and make all good.--"Refund? Does He (ER) know what stealing means, then? How the commonest convicted private thief finds the gallows his portion; much more a public Magistrate convicted of theft? Is He aware that He, in a very especial manner, deserves hanging, then?"--Schlubhut looks offended dignity; conscious of rank, if also of quasi-theft: "ES IST NICHTMANIER (it is not the polite thing) to hang a Prussian Nobleman on those light terms!" answers Schlubhut, high mannered at the wrong time: "I can and will pay the money back!"--NOBLE-man? Money back?
"I will none of His scoundrelly money." To strait Prison with this SCHURKE!--And thither he goes accordingly: unhappiest of mortals;to be conscious of rank, not at the right place, when about to steal the money, but at the wrong, when answering to Rhadamanthus on it!
And there, sure enough, Schlubhut lies, in his prison on the SCHLOSSPLATZ, or Castle Square, of Konigsberg, all night;and hears, close by the DOMANEN-KAMMER, which is in the same Square, DOMANEN-KAMMER where his Office used to be, a terrible sound of carpentering go on;--unhappiest of Prussian Noblemen.
And in the morning, see, a high gallows built; close in upon the Domain-Kammer, looking into the very windows of it;--and there, sure enough, the unfortunate Schlubhut dies the thief's death, few hours hence, speaking or thinking what, no man reports to me.
Death was certain for him; inevitable as fate. And so he vibrates there, admonitory to the other Raths for days,--some say for weeks,--till by humble petition they got the gallows removed.
The stumps of it, sawed close by the stones, were long after visible in that Schlossplatz of Konigsberg. Here is prompt justice with a witness! Did readers ever hear of such a thing? There is no doubt about the fact, [Benekendorf (Anonymous), <italic>
Karakterzuge aus dem Leben Konig Friedrich Wilhelm I. <end italic>
(Berlin, 1788), vii. 15-20; Forster (ii. 268), &c. &c.] though in all Prussian Books it is loosely smeared over, without the least precision of detail; and it was not till after long searching that I could so much as get it dated: July, 1731, while Friedrich Crown-Prince is still in eclipse at Custrin, and some six weeks after Wilhelmina's betrothal. And here furthermore, direct from the then Schlubhut precincts, is a stray Note, meteorological chiefly; but worth picking up, since it is authentic. "Wehlau," we observe, is on the road homewards again,--on our return from uttermost Memel,--a day's journey hitherwards of that place, half a day's thitherwards of Konigsberg:--"TUESDAY, 10th JULY, 1731. King dining with General Dockum at Wehlau,"--where he had been again reviewing, for about forty hours, all manner of regiments brought to rendezvous there for the purpose, poor "General Katte with his regiment" among them;--King at dinner with General Dockum after all that, "took the resolution to be off to Konigsberg; and arrived here at the stroke of midnight, in a deluge of rain." This brings us within a day, or two days, of Schlubhut's death, Terrible "combat of Bisons (URI, or AUEROCHSEN, with such manes, such heads), of two wild Bisons against six wild Bears," then ensued; and the Schlubhut human tragedy; I know not in what sequence,--rather conjecture the Schlubhut had gone FIRST. Pillau, road to Dantzig, on the narrow strip between the Frische Haf and Baltic, is the next stage homewards; at Pillau, General Finkenstein (excellent old Tutor of the Crown-Prince) is Commandant, and expects his rapid Majesty, day and hour given, to me not known, Majesty goes in three carriages; Old Dessauer, Grumkow, Seckendorf, Ginkel are among his suite; weather still very electric:--"At Fischhausen, half-way to Pillau, Majesty had a bout of elk-hunting; killed sixty elks [Melton-Mowbray may consider it],--creatures of the deer sort, nimble as roes, but strong as bulls, and four palms higher than the biggest horse,--to the astonishment of Seckendorf, Ginkel and the strangers there. Half an hour short of Pillau, furious electricity again; thunder-bolt shivered an oak-tree fifteen yards from Majesty's carriage. And at Pillau itself, the Battalion in Garrison there, drawn out in arms, by Count Finkenstein, to receive his Majesty [rain over by this time, we can hope], had suddenly to rush forward and take new ground;Frische Haf, on some pressure from the elements, having suddenly gushed out, two hundred paces beyond its old watermark in that place." [See Mauvillon, ii. 293-297;--CORRECTING by Fassmann, p. 422.]
Pillau, Fischhausen,--this is where the excellent old Adalbert stamped the earth with his life "in the shape of a crucifix" eight hundred years ago: and these are the new phenomena there!--The General Dockum, Colonel of Dragoons, whom his Majesty dined with at Wehlau, got his death not many months after. One of Dockum's Dragoon Lieutenants felt insulted at something, and demanded his discharge: discharge given, he challenged Dockum, duel of pistols, and shot him dead. [7th April, 1732(<italic> Militair-Lexikon, <end italic> i. 365).] Nothing more to be said of Dockum, nor of that Lieutenant, in military annals.
CASE OF THE CRIMINAL-COLLEGIUM ITSELF.
And thus was the error of the Criminal-Collegium rectified IN RESchlubhut. For it is not in name only, but in fact, that this Sovereign is Supreme Judge, and bears the sword in God's stead,--interfering now and then, when need is, in this terrible manner.
