For food, when they were in need of it, bread and
cheese and similar viands might be had.
A strange picture of palatial grandeur this. Fortune had missed
Frederick William's true vocation in not making him an inn-keeper in a
German village instead of a king. Around this smoke-shrouded table the
most important affairs of state were discussed. Around it the rudest
practical jokes were perpetrated. Gundling, a beer-bibbing author, whom
the king made at once his historian and his butt, was the principal
sufferer from these frolics, which displayed abundantly that absence of
wit and presence of brutality which is the characteristic of the
practical joke. As if in scorn of rank and official dignity, Frederick
gave this sot and fool the title of baron and created him chancellor and
chamberlain of the palace, forcing him always to wear an absurdly
gorgeous gala dress, while to show his disdain of learned pursuits he
made him president of his Academy of Sciences, an institution which, in
its condition at that time, was suited to the presidency of a Gundling.
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