"Poor child," she said, "poor little Bettina!"
When she had heard it all, she had Marianne bring Bettina back again.
"Dear child," she said, "surely I have seen you before. Is it not true?"
And she smiled at the little girl most enchantingly.
Now, nobody had ever told Bettina that a little girl must be afraid of a Queen, so she smiled back at her with the eager, bright look which made her so pretty.
"Ja, ja, dear Queen," she said, for no one had told her to say "Majesty," and then she told of the inn on the road from Jena.
A look of pain banished the brightness from Queen Louisa's face. Very gravely she asked Bettina question after question, and she heard of the cruel journey, and of how Bettina's grandfather had left her.
"Yes, yes," she nodded to the Countess, "I remember the old man. It was of him that we spoke to the Professor, your father," and she glanced at Marianne with a look of warning.
"But, dear Queen," said little Bettina, nodding her head in her bright, fairy way, "my dear grandfather will come back soon, and we will go to Thuringia when the Kaiser Barbarossa comes from the cave and with his great sword kills the Emperor!"
The Queen did not laugh.