But, in spite of all this, Prussia had no money.
"But our King does all he can," said Ludwig to Madame von Bergman one evening when he and Pauline came to supper.
"Yes," put in Franz, who was then in Berlin, "he has ordered the Royal table to be laid with four dishes only at dinner, and at supper with two."
"And I heard," said Pauline, looking up from her embroidery, "that when a servant asked how much champagne to order, the King said none should be purchased until all his subjects could drink beer again."
Madame von Bergman shook her head sadly.
"No hope of that. Look at this coffee," and she poured out a cupful from the pot on the tray the maid had brought in for the visitors.
"Oak bark, carrots, and beans burned together, that is our coffee, thanks to Napoleon."
While they were talking, in came a visitor.
"Napoleon has shot Andreas Hofer," he announced, "at Mantua!"
The two men started from their seats.
"Impossible!" they cried out, but alas, next day they learned the truth of it. This brave innkeeper of Innsbruck, who had fought so bravely to free his people, had been betrayed by a friend to Napoleon and shot in Mantua, over the mountains.
The Queen wept tears of sorrow when she heard of this sad tragedy.
"What a man," she had written, "is this Andreas Hofer, the leader of the Tyrolese. A peasant has become a captain, and what a captain! His weapon, prayer, and his ally, God. Oh, that the time of the Maid of Orleans might return that the enemy might be driven from the land!"
It was about this time that Napoleon permitted Minister Hardenburg to return to his duties. At once affairs began to prosper.
"And the Queen," Marianne wrote to her mother, "is to take a journey. She is to go with the King and her children to all the places where she had lived as Crown Princess, to Paretz, to Oranienburg, and Peacock Island."
At Paretz the Queen walked up and down the avenues with her husband. Suddenly she turned to him very solemnly and said:
"Fritz, you have made me very happy, you and our children."
But Napoleon had no mind to add to her happiness.
"Pay your war debt!" he kept crying.
"We have no money," said the poor Prussians.
"Then I rule you until you do," was Napoleon's unchanging answer.
"And the wretch," said Madame von Stork, "has ordered our King to assist a huge Russian force through Prussia."
"And I heard," said Pauline, "that when the King heard the news he bowed his head and said that of all men he was most unlucky."
"But our Queen," put in Marianne, who was working at tent stitch, "is to have a great pleasure."
The two ladies gazed at her in curiosity.
"She is going to visit her father," answered Marianne. "The Countess told me. She has not been home for many years, and when she told the King of her great longing, he consented. She is to leave to-morrow."
Bettina, who was on her way to the "Stork's Nest," saw her depart. Catching sight of the girl, the Queen smiled a farewell. For some reason it made Bettina solemn.
"It was as if she were saying good-bye forever," she told Marianne later. Marianne laughed merrily.
"She will be back in a few days. What nonsense!"
On the night of July 18 a travelling carriage dashed towards Fürstenburg, the first town within the Duke of Mecklenburg's dominions, the driver urging its horses to their utmost.
Within sat the King, pale and thin from a severe attack of malaria. With him were the Crown Prince and Prince William, the faces of the boys wet with tears, their eyes struggling with weariness.
On dashed the horses.
"Faster! Faster!" now and then ordered the King, clenching his hands.
Presently a rosy light heralded the day, the clarion of the cocks announced the morning, the stars faded from the brightening sky, and the carriage dashed through Fürstenburg.
Two hours more. The King looked at his watch and cried:
"Faster! Faster!"
The people of the town, startled by the wheels, wondered who was passing in such haste. Later came a second carriage, a girl's white, tearful face gazing from one window, a round, rosy-cheeked boy against her shoulder.
It was the King, the Crown Prince and Prince William, and Princess Charlotte and Prince Carl hastening to Queen Louisa.
After she had reached Mecklenburg the King had joined her.
Never had he seen her look happier.
Like a girl, she told him of how she had been met at Fürstenburg by her sister, Frederika, her father and her brothers. Her grandmother, being old, welcomed her at the door of the Duke's palace, and for the first time in many years she found herself alone with her own people.
When the King came they were given a public reception.
"But only one, let it be, dear father," begged Queen Louisa. "I feel that this happiness cannot last. Something oppresses me, so please let us make the most of seeing each other in quiet."
When she dressed herself for this one reception, her ladies noticed that she had only pearls for jewels.
"I have sold the rest," she said with a smile, "but, never mind, pearls are suitable for me, for they signify tears, and I have shed many. Moreover," and she took out a miniature worn about her neck, "I have my best treasure."
It was a picture of the King, and the Queen gazed at it lovingly.
"After all these years, my good Fritz loves me quite the same," she said, and looked as happy as a girl.
"Come, Fritz," she cried to her husband, and led him about, showing him this and that and telling stories of her childhood. Never had she seemed so happy.
One morning they were to go to see a chapel the King had expressed an interest in.
"I will stay with George," said the Queen, who complained of not feeling well, and so they left her with her brother.
When her father returned he found on his writing desk a note written in French, by his daughter, the Queen.
"My dear father," he read, "I am very happy to-day as your daughter and as the wife of the best of husbands."Louisa."New Strelitz, July 28, 1810."
"My dear father," he read, "I am very happy to-day as your daughter and as the wife of the best of husbands.
"Louisa.
"New Strelitz, July 28, 1810."
At once he showed it, to the King, and the two men were silent with happiness. But little did they think that never again was the woman who so loved them to touch paper or pen.
She had not been well, but nothing had been thought of it. And now, in the early summer morning, the King was hastening to her.
"Faster!" he called. "Faster!"
She had told him good-bye with a smile and the hope of soon seeing him, and he had returned to Berlin.
There had come despatch after despatch.
"The Queen is ill. She grows worse. Come! Come!"
But this poor, always unfortunate King was himself severely ill with a sudden attack of malaria. For days he could not leave his bed, and it was not until the twenty-eighth that he set off for New Strelitz. And then the Queen was so ill there was no delaying.
It was between four and five in the morning when the carriage reached the castle.
The Queen, who lay awake in her room, heard them come. At midnight she had grown worse, at two she had called out to her sister, who at once went to her bed.
"Dear Frederika," she asked in a voice like a whisper, "what will my husband and children do if I die?"
But now the King had come.
In the hall he met the physicians. They explained that an abscess had formed and burst in one lung. The heart was involved and the Queen was sinking.
"Majesty," they said, "there is no hope."
The Queen's old grandmother, her withered cheeks wet with tears, took the King's hand in both of hers.
"While there is life there is hope," she said, her old voice struggling to comfort him.
Unlucky Frederick William shook his head.
"If she were not mine," he said, "she might recover."
The old Duke joined him. In the night they had called him from his sleep.
The Princess Frederika was at the door.
"Is my daughter in danger?" he asked.
She pressed his hand.
"Lord," said the poor old father, "Thy ways are not our ways."
With trembling hands he now led the King to the room.
Propped up on pillows, the bed curtains looped back to give her air, lay poor Queen Louisa.
On one side was the old Countess von Voss, Frau von Berg held one hand, and Princess Frederika the other.
The poor "Rose of the King," whose stem had been so roughly handled, had drooped forever.
When the physicians had entreated her to move that she might be more comfortable, it was impossible for her strength to accomplish it.
"I am a Queen," she said sadly, "and I have no power to move my arm."
But when she saw the King, joy made her like the old Louisa.
The King embraced her as if he would never again see her.
"Am I then so ill?" she asked.
The King went from the room.
The poor Queen gazed from one face to the other, and the strength again left her.
"The King seems as if he wished to take leave of me," she gasped. "Tell him not to do so, or I shall die directly."
At once he returned and sat on her bed and the minutes wore away, the arms of the old Countess supporting her dear Queen Louisa.
"Where are my children, Fritz?"
The Crown Prince and William came, hand in hand, to her bed.
"My Fritz! My William!" she said, and gave them each a smile. Then she struggled to ask about Charlotte, who had sent her a letter about her birthday full of tears that her mother was absent.
The effort brought on such pain that they sent the boys away.
They went from the castle and out into the garden where the air was fresh and cool and the dew lay on the roses.
In the room the doctors were begging the Queen to stretch her arms that she might lie higher.
"I cannot," said the poor Queen. "Only death will help me."
Holding her hand, the King sat on the bed, the old Countess knelt, and Frau von Berg supported her head.
All through her illness she had repeated over and over the texts which she loved and found comfort in, but now her lips could only flutter as the breath came slower and slower.
The poor King, with bowed head, was thinking of Jena and all his Queen had suffered.
Suddenly the Queen drew her head against the breast of Frau von Berg. Her blue eyes opened and gazed towards heaven.
"I am dying," she said quite distinctly, "Lord Jesus, make it short."
In a few minutes the Queen of Prussia had passed beyond the power of Napoleon to harm.
"The ways of the Lord," wrote the old Countess, "are implacable and holy, but they are dreadful to travel. The King, the children, the city have lost all in the world. I speak not for myself, but my sorrow is great. My Queen! Oh, my poor Queen!"
When his first grief was stilled, the King went to Fritz and Willy in the garden. Plucking a branch on which grew three roses, he returned with the little princes to the Queen. The three kissed her, and the King laid the roses in her hand as the second carriage dashed up to the palace.
Charlotte and Carl had come too late. Their mother had been dead a half hour. The old Countess was all they had now, and she hushed her sobs to comfort the King and her Queen's poor children, but, poor old lady, her heart was broken at eighty and she lived only a few years more.
The doctors who examined the body of Queen Louisa after death declared that a polypus, formed by grief and worry, had grown on her heart and killed her, but the people of Prussia would have none of this.
"A polypus, nein," they said. "It is Napoleon who has done this. We will rise. We will drive the tyrant from our land, for he has killed the best friend of Prussia."
"The ravens, Bettina," said the Herr Lieutenant, "will fly now from Kyffhäuser. Wait, old Barbarossa will wake now and save us."
But the peasants had another hero.
"Shill is not dead!" they cried. "The brave Shill is not dead. He, too, loved our Queen. He is in hiding and will lead us against Napoleon."
"It is as if we had lost a member of our own family," wept Madame von Stork, as she tried to comfort poor Marianne.
When they brought the Queen's body to Berlin and it lay in state, Bettina went, with the girls of the "Luisenstift" to look for the last time on the face of the Queen who had cared for her. The Berliners who gazed also, thought their own thoughts, made up their minds, and went home to await the funeral, which took place on the thirtieth, the Royal children with their father following the coffin, a nurse bearing in her arms the new baby, little Albrecht.
"After Jena," said the Berliners, "we thought we had lost all, but then we had our Queen."
Not even the Queen's death, however, moved Napoleon, who, having Prussia under his thumb, meant to keep her there. Realising this, many patriotic Germans, refusing to accept French rule, departed to St. Petersburg. Among them was Baron von Stein, for the Czar, who was beginning to tire of his friend Napoleon, invited him to be his counsellor. After his departure Professor von Stork received a letter from Otto.
"Napoleon rules Prussia," he wrote. "If I return home I must fight as he orders, for we fear a war with Russia. In St. Petersburg Baron von Stein is forming a German legion of deserters from Prussia. I shall join it. Never will I fight under the banners of France. Arndt is in St. Petersburg, also, and will be Stein's secretary. Between them and with Hardenburg as Minister, Prussia may yet be saved. Until then, Auf wiedersehen."
On the very day that this letter arrived, Berlin was startled by the news that Napoleon with his soldiers was to march against Alexander.
East Prussia again was frozen. The snow lay deep on the ground and the ice rattled on the tree limbs as it had done in that year when Bettina and Hans met the Queen on her flight to Memel. Never, the East Prussians declared, had they known a winter so terrible. In the towns the women, in their wadded cloaks, went still and sad, and the men, in the high-runner sleighs with the breath frozen on their beards, talked in mournful sentences, for they knew that the frozen Vistula held fast beneath its icy crust a secret which, when spring should reveal it, would turn them sick with horror and make fiercer than ever their hatred of Napoleon.
Not that they did not hate him enough already. The Tugendbund had carried the news of the poor Queen's suffering into every hamlet of Prussia. Napoleon had killed her, the people cried out, and in secret they were making ready to fight him. Never, they believed, had a country been more cruelly treated. Villages had been destroyed, towns burned, innocent men shot or mistreated. In the free city of Hamburg hundreds of sick had been driven by Davoust from the hospitals, orphans expelled from their asylums. Twenty thousand Hamburgers, ordered from the city, shivering in the icy coldness, watched the French burn their country houses, the flames blazing up against a winter sky and lighting a blackened and desolate country. Near Dresden women were ordered out from their homes and children, and with wheelbarrows, were compelled to bring in the dead and the dying, while Napoleon enjoyed himself in the theatre.
The check, however, had come in that icy winter of 1812-13.
Along the road from Russia, limping on frozen feet bound with straw, or marking with blood the snow, came French and Prussian soldiers, dropping here, dying there, sinking on land or into the Vistula. Five hundred thousand French and the Germans forced to assist Napoleon in this war against Russia, had marched with flying banners against Moscow. Instead of Russians, flames met them, and now twenty thousand, for the others had perished in the snow, or were frozen in the Vistula, were limping back to Prussia. The horses had fallen like leaves before the icy blasts of the Baltic, and their bodies marked the line of Napoleon's retreat from Moscow. On they struggled, swords gone, their feet like clods, their glory vanished. Half starved, there was nothing for them to eat, for in Napoleon's own war against Prussia they had burned her farmhouses, destroyed her crops and killed her farmers. They had sown destruction and now were reaping famine.
"But God be praised," cried Otto von Stork, sitting at the campfire of the German legion, "Napoleon is beaten."
"Ja wohl," cried his companions, flushed with their pursuit of the flying. Then Otto lifted his voice and started a hymn Arndt had written for German soldiers:
"What is the German's Fatherland?Oh name at length this mighty land,As wide as sounds the German tongue,And German hymns to God are sung,That is the land;That, German, name thy Fatherland!To us this glorious land is given;Oh Lord of Hosts look down from Heaven,And grant us Germans loyaltyTo love our country faithfully;To love our land,Our undivided Fatherland!"
"What is the German's Fatherland?Oh name at length this mighty land,As wide as sounds the German tongue,And German hymns to God are sung,That is the land;That, German, name thy Fatherland!To us this glorious land is given;Oh Lord of Hosts look down from Heaven,And grant us Germans loyaltyTo love our country faithfully;To love our land,Our undivided Fatherland!"
And, as they sang, Otto remembered Friedland and his brother, Wolfgang. He remembered Queen Louisa and how she had often smiled at him in Memel, he remembered his beloved hero, Shill, and brave Andreas Hofer. Suddenly he interrupted his song with a laugh.
"Bettina was right," he thought. "Poor little maiden! Old Barbarossa has waked up and his sword is the spirit of the German people."
And when war was over, one day he appeared in Königsberg, a great, handsome soldier.
"Ach Himmel!" said his mother, "but I am glad to see my boy again." But Otto had talk only for the future of Germany.
His father nodded when he declared that good fortune would come again to Prussia. And then he told how, all over Prussia, and in the smaller states, the people were refusing to speak French, wear French clothes, or be anything but good Germans.
"God be praised!" he ended piously.
"Where is Bettina, mother?" asked Otto quite suddenly.
When he heard of the "Luisenstift" his face fell, for he had intended teasing her about Frederick Barbarossa.
"And Hans?"
"Not a word has ever been heard of him," answered his father sadly.
"Shot, perhaps," said Otto. "Poor old man!" and he offered his arm to his mother. Nothing pleased her more than to walk out with her fine soldier boy. She forgot all the trouble he had caused her and remembered only that he had returned a hero.
Carl followed him everywhere, and informed the family that he, too, would be a soldier.
"No, no!" cried his mother, shrinking.
But the professor reproved her.
"All my sons," he said most solemnly, "I give freely to the Fatherland."
But Madame von Stork, remembering her Wolfgang, set hard her lips.
"If there comes a war against Napoleon, I shall go as a nurse. I am old enough now, am I not, dear father?" and Marianne slipped her arm around his neck.
The professor nodded.
"I agree willingly, dear daughter," and he pressed her hand.
Goethe was no longer Marianne's hero.
"He sat in his garden in quiet," she said, "when the cannon roared at Jena, and never in all our trouble has he raised his voice for Germany. He is the greatest poet, yes, but not a hero. He saw Napoleon, he admired him, and says he has sympathy with him because of his great dream of uniting Europe. I cannot forgive it."
Bettina's head was shaven like a boy's, and she held out to Marianne her golden hair, long, heavy and in thick waves.
As for Marianne, herself, she was laying on a table in the room in which the two stood, all her books, her beloved Goethe, Schiller, all of them, her laces and the jewels which had been given her since her childhood.
"How nice it is, dear Bettina," she said, "to have you again with us, now that after all these dreadful years, we are again in Berlin."
Bettina's face glowed.
"Yes, dear Mademoiselle——"
Marianne lifted her hand.
"No French, Bettina, German."
"Ja, ja, dear Fräulein Marianne, please excuse me. I was so happy when I heard that the Herr Professor was to come to the new University here in Berlin and that the Gracious Frau Mother would need me again."
Marianne smiled, and then, lifting her hand to stop conversation, for she heard someone, she called out:
"Ilse, Elsa, here, come, bring your offerings here!"
In came the twins, tall like Bettina, and quite young ladies, but as much alike as ever.
In their hands were trinkets, books, needlework and laces.
"Here," they said, and placed them on the table. Then catching sight of Bettina, they cried: "Your hair, oh, Bettina! Your lovely, lovely hair!"
"It was all I had," said Bettina blushing. "They tell me it will sell and for much money."
Carl came out next, a tall young fellow now with a faint moustache to foretell his manhood.
"This is all I have, dear sister," and he added to the pile a little purse, some books, and a pair of pistols, once his grandfather's.
Madame von Stork followed, her hair gray now, her face lined with sorrow. In her arms was a pile of fine embroideries, linen and lace-trimmed table covers. In one hand was a box of jewels, in the other the amethyst necklace her sister Erna had worn to the marriage of Princess Frederika.
Behind her came the Herr Professor, Franz and Otto, bearing books, old weapons and each a purse of gold.
"Now, the maids," cried Marianne. "Here, Gretchen, oh, that is fine!" for the rosy-cheeked girl laid on the pile her peasant necklace of old coins.
Elise, the other, gave the gold pins with which she fastened her headdress.
"And the Gracious Frau," they said, glancing at Madame von Stork, "can give half our wages."
While they talked, in came Ludwig and Pauline. With them was a tiny child, bearing in her dimpled, chubby hands an earthen pot or bank in which people save money. Ludwig led her to the table.
"For the dear Fatherland," she lisped, and she laid her little offering with the rest.
Ludwig and Pauline added theirs, the one, gold, the other, linen, silver and ornaments.
For a moment there was silence, then the Herr Professor stepped to the table. His eye glanced from Bettina's shaven head to the bank of the tiny Ernchen. Then he held his hands above the gifts.
"Dear Father in Heaven," he said, "bless the offerings of great and small, rich and poor, to the use of the dear Fatherland, and let truth and rightousness prosper."
"Amen," said all the "Stork's Nest."
Then he drew forward Carl, Otto and Franz.
"Our sons, also," he said, and looked at his wife.
"Ja, ja, Richard," she said, the tears falling. "I, too, am willing now."
Marianne held out her hand to Bettina and drew her to the table.
"We go as nurses, father. You have promised."
It was the "People's War," the great German rising against Napoleon. All over the land, men, women, and children were giving their all. Russia and Austria joined with them and the great battle was fought at Leipsic in Saxony. The Crown Prince fought with his father, and when the victors marched into the city Carl, Franz and Otto were with them.
The battle itself lasted three days. On the last of these the Emperor Francis, the Czar, and Frederick William were standing on a hill watching the battle.
Up dashed an officer. Springing from his horse, he approached the three rulers.
"We have conquered!" he cried. "The enemy flies!"
The three monarchs alighted with solemn joy from their horses, knelt on the field and thanked God for the victory.
The entrance into Leipsic was magnificent. The allied armies formed in a great square about the market place, their sovereigns in the centre. The Prussians in their blue coats, red and white striped waistcoats, white trousers, high boots and bearskin caps, held their eagle aloft before the old Rathaus. The Russians, in blue coats and red collars, their trousers strapped over their boots, bore their flags of white and yellow, while the Austrians, in white and red, completed the huge square of soldiers.
Bells were rung, flags were waved, and, when the war was declared ended, Napoleon was banished to the Island of Elba in the Mediterranean Sea.
"Now we are rid of the monster," said Madame von Stork. "We can all be happy. Thank the good God, I again have my children."
But the world was not yet through with the foe of Queen Louisa.
"Napoleon has escaped! Marshall Ney has joined him! Our foe is loose again!" was the cry which, not many months later, rang through Europe.
It was all to be done over again. But this time England joined Prussia. Off marched Franz, Otto and Carl, and Marianne and Bettina again became nurses.
"Ach Himmel!" wept Madame von Stork, "will the world never be rid of this monster?"
Ludwig nodded.
"This is the last," he said. "We now have England to help us."
On the eleventh day of June, in the year 1815, Prince William received his first communion, all the Royal family being present. The next day, he and his father, the King, departed to join the army.
At Merseburg they were stopped by a courier. A great battle had been fought near Brussels, the English under the Duke of Wellington, the Prussians under General Blücher, the brave commander who had wept when he had given up the keys of Lübeck.
"Napoleon is conquered!" announced the courier as he handed the despatches to the King.
The English call the battle "Waterloo," the Prussians, "La Belle Alliance."
Old Blücher had proved his words by fighting. The English had fought steadily, Blücher having promised to come if he heard the firing. The French, who had defeated him a few days before, were in a position to render this well-nigh impossible. But when the cannon sounded, the brave old Prussian thought only of his promise.
"Forward, children, forward!" he cried to his soldiers.
"We cannot, Father Blücher," they answered. "It is impossible."
"Forward, children, forward!" the old man repeated. "We must. I have promised my brother, Wellington. I have promised, do you hear? It shall not be said that I broke my word. Forward, children, forward!"
And so they came to Waterloo and the Allies conquered Napoleon.
"The most splendid battle has been fought. The most glorious victory won," wrote old Blücher. "I think the Napoleon story is ended."
In triumph, the Allies entered Paris, and Napoleon, throwing himself on the protection of the English, was banished to the Island of St. Helena.
"Alas," wrote a great Frenchman, "had Napoleon made a friend of Queen Louisa at Tilsit this might never have happened, for then would Frederick William have refused to join the Allies."
Napoleon had valued Magdeburg above a hundred Queens, but one Queen had conquered him, and Europe was free from the man who had warred with it for twenty years.
"But," the Queen of Prussia once wrote, "we may learn much from Napoleon; what he has done will not be lost upon us. It would be blasphemous to say that God has been with him, but he seems to be an instrument in the hands of the Almighty to do away with old things that have lost their vitality, to cut off, as it were, the dead wood which is still externally one with the tree to which it owes its existence. That which is dead is utterly useless—that which is dying does but draw the sap from the trunk and give nothing in return."
"I did, indeed, enjoy the sight of Napoleon," the mother of Goethe told Marianne's Bettina Brentano. "He it is who has enwrapped the whole world in an enchanted dream, and for this mankind should be grateful, for if they did not dream they would have got nothing by it, and have slept like clods as they hitherto have done."
After Napoleon had stirred up Europe with his wars, things changed, and the ways of the world became what we call "Modern Times," and for this even the poor Prussians thanked him, for many things improved and liberty came more and more to the people. They spoke their own language, they drew closer together, and, in their war against a foe, they learned to love their Fatherland.
While Franz, Otto and Carl were fighting, Marianne and Bettina were nursing the wounded soldiers.
One day Bettina was called to assist with a wounded Thuringian.
When she saw his face she cried out:
"Willy! Willy Schmidt from Jena!"
The soldier's face lit up with welcome.
"Ach Himmel!" he cried, "if it isn't Bettina Weyland!"
But the doctor ordered no talking, and so the two could only smile at each other. But when Waterloo was many days old, and the soldier almost well again, there was much to talk about.
Certainly Willy had a strange tale to tell. It was about Bettina's grandfather.
"Ach Himmel, child!" he said to Bettina, "he is alive and with mother and father." And he told how, after the "Peace of Tilsit," the old man had wandered back to Thuringia.
"But don't think he forgot you, Bettina," said Willy very hastily. Then he touched his head. "Poor old man," he added, "he has forgotten everything," and he told poor, wild-eyed Bettina that old Hans was like a child, always talking about Frederick the Great and his battles, and remembering not a word about Jena.
"But the queer thing," said Willy, "is that he starts at any very loud noise and he had the mark of a wound on the back of his head. What it means we have no idea, as he remembers nothing."
Bettina's tears fell fast.
"Grandfather," she said over and over, "my poor, dear, old grandfather!
"I will go home to Jena and see him," she cried. "I will tell Fräulein Marianne."
"And I will take you," announced Willy, "just as soon as I am well enough to travel." And he gazed at Bettina as if he thought her very pretty.
"And little Hans and the baby?" asked Bettina. Willy laughed as loud as his weakness would permit him.
"Hans, ach Himmel! That's a joke, little Hans! There's no telling how many Frenchmen he finished in one battle. The baby is eight now," he added.
"Hans a soldier, the baby, a big boy!" How the years had flown! Jena, yesterday; Waterloo, to-day.
"Yes," said the girl, "I will go back to Thuringia."
Then a smile lit her pretty face.
"Do you remember, Willy, how grandfather left word we would come back when Napoleon was conquered?"
"It is nine years," said Willy, "but you can come now, for Napoleon is conquered."
Bettina nodded, her face still wet with tears, while her mouth was smiling.
"They will all be glad to see you," continued Willy. "Mother and father, and the Schmelzes, and your grandfather Weyland. He is just the same, quite as if nothing had happened."
And so Bettina went back, and old Hans called her "Annchen," thinking her always his daughter, and when she married Willy and had children of her own, he used to sing for them the old song of Frederick Barbarossa, and tell them how he had seen the beautiful Princess Louisa come into Berlin in a gold coach to be married.
Marianne went back to the "Stork's Nest," and presently home came her brothers. Madame von Stork's face lost its troubled look, and only the memory of Wolfgang came to make their happy home troubled.
"Marianne is the best daughter a mother ever had," she often told her husband, "and I owe it to our good Queen, for books and Goethe nearly ruined her."
"Not Goethe," the professor always said, but his wife insisted.
Certainly a great honour was to come to Marianne.
On March 10, 1816, on the anniversary of the birthday of the Queen, Marianne was summoned to Court, and conducted to a great room where were gathered all the Royal family and many grand people, but the old Countess, however, was there no more. She had been a mother to her dear Queen's children until she, too, had gone her way to a less troubled country than Prussia. After a long list of names, "Marianne Hedwig Erna Wilhelmina Ernestine von Stork" was called.
In her trembling hand the King placed a golden cross with the letter "L" in black enamel on a ground of blue encircled with stars. On the back were the dates, 1813-14. A white ribbon held it, and there was a pin to fasten it above her heart. It was the medal of the "Order of Louisa," instituted by the King in memory of the Queen, and given to those women of Prussia who had so nobly soothed the wounded and the sick in the war against Napoleon. Marianne was the happiest person in Germany.
As for her mother, she was never weary of showing the medal and telling her friends, "My Marianne received it."
Marianne's friend, Bettina Brentano, wrote a book called "Correspondence of a Child," into which she put all her wild fancies about Goethe, and to-day German girls are fond of reading it. She married a German author, and her granddaughter is a living writer.
But the story is not quite ended.
In the year 1872 crowds were again gathered on the streets of Berlin.
Standing on Unter den Linden was an old man with his grandchildren. His hair was snow white and his face wrinkled.
"Ja, Gretchen," he said to a little girl, whose hand was in his, "in a little time we shall see our new Emperor. This is a great day, Liebchen, for Germany at last is free and united."
"I know, dear grandfather," said one of the others, a clever looking boy they called Richard, "I have learned all about it in the Gymnasium, of Napoleon and Jena, and Queen Louisa and Napoleon, and of the Crown Prince who was Frederick William IV, and all Bismarck's and von Moltke's dreams of uniting our Germany."
The old man smiled.
"The Queen kissed me once," he said, "Queen Louisa, I mean, the mother of our new Emperor." Then he laughed.
"It's a great day for your old grandfather, children," he said. "Why, the Emperor and I, he was little Prince William then, used to fight battles against rats and mice in the old castle at Königsburg. It's a great day. God be praised that I live to see it," said Carl von Stork to his grandchildren. "Alas," he added, "that none of the 'Stork's Nest' are left to rejoice with me!"
"Simple, honourable, sensible" little William had accomplished the great things his mother had hoped one of her children would do for mankind. Before he had gone to fight the French Emperor, Napoleon III, at the battle of Sedan, he had prayed at his mother's tomb that he might do great things for Prussia. After the Germans entered Paris all the states had elected him Emperor and Germany at last was one Fatherland.
And now he was returning to Berlin with Bismarck and von Moltke, his councillor and general.
Suddenly Carl smiled.
"Ah," he said as the Royal guests passed in their carriages, "there is the Dowager Grand Duchess of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. See, Richard, the pretty old lady with the white hair. She was the Royal baby when we were at Memel. She was named Alexandrina for the Czar, and how the old Countess loved her! They called her 'The Little Autocrat.' I remember Princess Louisa, who was named for the Queen and who was the baby at Königsburg, died during the war. There is 'The Red Hussar,' grandson of Queen Louisa. Ach Himmel! What a hero!"
When the people of Berlin saw the kind, good face of "little William," their new Kaiser, cries rent the air. "Long live the Emperor! Hoch der Kaiser! Hoch!" There were cheers for his wife, also, the granddaughter of the Duchess of Weimar, who so bravely answered Napoleon.
As for old Frederick Barbarossa, there is a poet who tells us that, when he heard all the noise the Germans were making, he sent a sleepy little page from Kryffhäuser to see what the ravens were up to.
"They have flown away, Kaiser," announced the frightened little page as he ran back to the table.
With a great yawn the old Kaiser rose from his chair and stretched himself. His sword in one hand, his sceptre in the other, a glittering crown on his flaming hair, he came blinking into the sunlight.
"Ach Himmel!" he cried, for before him were all the lords of Germany, no longer fighting and quarrelling with each other, but smiling and singing the lively tunes of "Germany over all," "United Germany shall it be," and "The Watch on the Rhine."
The old Redbeard beamed with delight.
"One Germany!" he cried, "then God be thanked and praised! One Germany!"
He turned to little William, standing between Bismarck and von Moltke, the statesman and general who had made him "Kaiser."
In his hand he laid the scepter, on his head he placed the crown.
"These," he said, "I lay in thy hand."
Then he breathed a long sigh of happiness.
"God be praised," he said again. "I can now go to sleep and be happy," and he went back into his cave to his ivory chair and his head sank to his hands as he settled his elbows on the marble table and the old Redbeard went again to his dreams.
They say he still sleeps in Thuringia, but calmly and happily, because there is one Germany, one Kaiser, and the ravens no longer trouble him.
To-day, the two Royal Foes sleep in the two famous mausoleums of the Continent, Queen Louisa at Charlottenburg, Napoleon in Paris. Beneath the dome of "Les Invalides" is the sarcophagus of Bonaparte. On the mosaic pavement the names of his battles are inscribed within a wreath of laurel. Sixty flags that he captured adorn the tomb decorated with reliefs and lighted by a glow which falls, most golden, about the coffin of the conqueror.
With him sleep his faithful Duroc and the Bertrand who brought his message to Queen Louisa and so offended the old Countess with his bad manners.
The words above the entrance are Napoleon's own:
"I desire that my ashes repose on the banks of the Seine in the midst of the French people I loved so well."
On each side is a figure of Atlas, one bearing a globe, the other, a sceptre and crown.
All is of earthly glory and victory.
Queen Louisa sleeps in a spot where she once loved to walk with her husband and children. A quiet avenue of pine trees leads to a grove of black firs, cypresses and Babylonian willows, bordered with white roses, lilies, Hortensia, the favourite flowers of the Queen, and at the end stands the mausoleum which Frederick William erected to her memory.
A flight of steps leads through the iron door to the interior, where, in a violet light, sleeps the Queen, the King, and the Emperor William and the granddaughter of the Duchess of Weimar.
The sculptor, Rauch, to whom the Queen once was very kind, carved a statue of her so beautiful that it is almost impossible to gaze on its loveliness without weeping.
At her feet is buried the heart of the Crown Prince, King Frederick William IV of Prussia, in a case of silver.
As long as her husband lived he brought wreaths to the tomb. Before Charlotte went to be Empress of Russia, she wept there. The first Kaiser, to the end of his long life, prayed there, and little Alexandrina, who died only a year or two ago, and saw her parent's prayer answered, never forgot the wreath for her mother's birthday.
Above the entrance appear two Greek letters.
"I am Alpha and Omega," they say, "the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty."
The golden light which falls on Napoleon tells of the glory of the world and things of victory.
Queen Louisa's kingdom was not, as she said, of this world; but still she lives, the "Queen of Every Heart" in the German Empire, "Her name," writes a German author, "a watchword with the patriot."
Napoleon was the Emperor of the French, the conqueror of Europe; Queen Louisa, the heroine of the German Struggle for Liberty.