"It is not that which brings me, madam; I am not the person to whom my husband has left the duty of avenging him; in that respect I need only leave God's will and his to take their course; what brings me, madam, is the despair of my city upon whose ruin your armies, or rather your generals, seem to be resolved."
"Come, my child, and tell me about it," said the queen.
She led Emma into her drawing-room and seated herself beside her; but Emma slipped from the sofa and knelt once more before the queen.
"Madam, you know the city of Frankfort."
"I was there last year," said the queen, "and had the kindest possible reception."
"May the remembrance of it help my words! General Falkenstein when he came to our city began by laying upon it a tax of seven million florins; that levy was paid, together with one, about equally heavy, in kind. That made fourteen millions already, for a small town of seventy-two thousand inhabitants, half of whom were foreigners, and consequently did not contribute to the payment."
"And did Frankfort pay it?" asked the queen.
"Frankfort paid it, madam, for that was still possible. But General Manteuffel arrived and put on a tax, in his turn, of twenty-five million florins. Such a tax, if imposed upon eighteen million subjects, madam, would yield more milliards of coin than the whole world contains. Well, and at this very hour cannon are planted in the streets and on the positions that command the town. If the sum is not paid at ten o'clock to-day—and it will not be paid, madam, it is impossible—the city will be bombarded and given over to pillage, a neutral unwalled city, which has no gates, which has not defended itself and cannot defend itself."
"And how comes it, my child," asked the queen, "that you, a woman, have taken upon yourself to ask justice for this city? It has a Council."
"It has one no longer, madam; the Council has been dissolved, and two of the councillors arrested."