Then, leading the lady, she softly locked the door and Louisa and Frederika, running to the pump, clung to the handle, and pumped and pumped until the water ran in streams and splashed their stockings and elastic strap slippers, and made them for once enjoy themselves quite as if they had not been princesses.
When time for good-byes came the two happy little girls threw loving arms around the neck of this kind Frau Rat and grateful little lips whispered thanks for her kindness, telling her that never, never, never would they forget their joy in being permitted to play like other children. "Never, dear Frau Rat, never!" they cried.
Nor did Louisa, at any rate.
"Frau Rat," concluded Marianne, "showed me one day the most beautiful gold ornaments she had only a few months before received as a present from our Queen, who really loves her."
A second time Louisa visited Frankfort-on-Main. It was two years later when, Leopold being dead, Francis, the last Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, came to receive the crown which, in 1806, just before the battle of Jena, he resigned forever.
At that time the Princess and her brother Carl came to supper with Frau Rat Goethe.
There was omelette, very light and delicious, and famous bacon salad, a dish much loved in that day throughout Germany.
"Oh, how fine!" cried Carl and the princess, and when they stopped eating there was not even so much as a half leaf left on either plate!
All her life Frau Rat loved to tell about this, and Marianne related how she joked when she told the story.
"And, mother," said Marianne, "Frau Rat told me that our Queen, though she was then a princess, made her own satin shoes for the coronation."