She left off her work for a moment, and looked him full in the face.
“I do not want to be Queen of Franconia. I am not fit for it. I am only a peasant girl, and I should be miserable if I had to spend my life in a Court.”
“Nonsense! This is absurd. If I am not miserable there, why should you be? Is it because you are too young to understand what you are refusing, or because you do not love the King after all?”
The polishing still went on, but more fitfully, as if the arm of the polisher were getting tired.
“I did not think that you attached so much importance to rank, Johann. You used to be a republican.”
He flushed angrily.
“So I am still. It is not the rank I think of, but the influence it will give you for good. Do you know that the King is already half-converted to my ideas? He has asked me to stay with him and assist in reforming his government. And think what it would be to have you, a daughter of the people, on the throne, always by the King’s side to persuade him to the right course! No woman ever had a more glorious opportunity. We should work together like one family. Do not let any girlish folly hold you back, when your marriage with the King is the one thing I rely on, the foundation stone on which everything rests. What is there to prevent you, really? You do not dislike the King?”
“No, I do not dislike the King.”
“Then why should you hesitate? Come, Dorothea, you and I have always been good friends ever since we were children, but I do not think I could forgive you, if you refused to help me in this. Think it over before the King comes, and at all events do not break off with him altogether. Promise me that?”
The polishing had grown feebler. It ceased.