“Folichon: my dearest bitch. I love you and adore you. I pine for you since we were parted. Dejected I spend my time at the feet of my mistress.”

It was a strange correspondence Frederick and his sister Wilhelmine were in. No, these were not the sister’s words; it was her male Papillon who directed these lines to the king’s favourite bitch.
The king who was a Francophile called his first sighthound that was brought to the court “Biche”, doe. When Biche died she was the first of altogether eleven sighthounds who were buried on the palace terrace at Sanssouci; a sandstone panel carries her name. Only much later, in 1991, the another wish of the king was fulfilled; in a solemn ceremony his mortal remains were transferred to the place he had assigned in his lifetime – the palace terrace at Sanssouci. The inscription and the potatoes regularly placed on his grave are the only differences between the king’s last resting place and those of his favourite animals.