But Madame von Stork decided it.
"I should go crazy with you, Marianne," she said. "You would be reading when I needed my medicine. I am sorry, dear child," she smiled to soften the lesson, "but I am nervous, very nervous, and I must have a thoughtful person. Pauline, you know, remembers."
Marianne rushed to her room. In a flood of bitter tears she flung herself on her couch. There in rows on their shelves stood her books. How she hated them!
Seizing one, she flew to the kitchen, her cheeks blazing. In a rage she opened the door of the stove. She thrust in "The Sorrows of Werther." With a blaze it ascended on the air of Memel in smoke, the maid staring in wonder. Marianne tore back to her room. She flung herself face downward on her couch.
"It is my mother, not Pauline's," she sobbed, and she wept for an hour.
Worn out at last, she rose to bathe her face in cold water.
On her chest of drawers stood a little picture that a lady of the court had given to her.
Marianne started. A flush dyed her face as she gazed into the blue eyes of the Queen. She who loved books above all things, put them aside without a word if the King, if the Royal children, if the ladies wanted her. She was never well, but was always helping others, always forgetting what she wanted, what pleased her, that she might do her duty.
"Dear Marianne," again the girl heard her voice as it had soothed her after the death of her brother Wolfgang, "there is no trouble in which the dear God will not help us."
All the demons of self and anger and dislike of Pauline ceased to struggle in Marianne, as she remembered. She would be good, she had promised Queen Louisa. She hesitated a moment, then she bowed her head and whispered a little prayer that the dear God would help her and make her good like the Queen who so loved Him.